The Twilight of World Trotskyism analyzes the reasons behind the historic failure of the Trotskyist movement around the world. The book begins this assessment by briefly recapitulating the origins of Trotskyism, as a political current within the communist movement, and elaborating its major elements, before describing the historical development of Trotskyism in the four countries where it has sunk the deepest roots and which house the clear majority of the world's Fourth Internationals: Argentina, Britain, France and the USA. It then proceeds to map the current state of the global Trotskyist movement. Whatever their current size and status, Trotskyist organizations aspire to become mass political parties and lead revolutionary seizures of power. It is therefore appropriate to examine them through the metrics applied to mainstream parties, namely organization, membership and political influence. The author looks at the dynamics of the Trotskyist movement, focusing in particular on the supposedly harmful effects of the communist movement before then turning to examine the role of Trotskyist organizations in the many revolutionary situations that have appeared since the 1920s and in the various 'cycles of protest' that have occurred in the latter half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century. The final section examines the two success stories frequently cited in Trotskyist literature, namely the cases of Bolivia and Sri Lanka. The book concludes by setting out and examining a wide variety of explanations for the chronic and sustained weaknesses of the Trotskyist movement, including its flawed appraisals of contemporary politics and economics, ultra-radical programmes and policies, failures in understanding the dynamics of protest and the baleful legacy of Soviet communism. It is argued that these weaknesses are rooted in Trotskyist doctrine and are therefore integral, not peripheral, features of world Trotskyism. This volume will be essential reading for activists and scholars interested in the transnational history and politics of the radical left.

In this reissued collection of essays, first published in 1985, Paul Q. Hirst assesses the limits of the Marxist theory of history in its various versions. It begins with an extended critical discussion of Perry Anderson and Edward Thompson, and includes chapters on G.A Cohena (TM)s attempt to re-state the Marxist theory of history in terms compatible with analytic philosophy, on R.G. Collingwooda (TM)s theory of history, on Andersona (TM)s work on Absolutism, on Thompsona (TM)s Poverty of Theory, and on the contemporary politics of democratic socialism.

This book reveals Marx's moral philosophy and analyzes its nature. The author shows that there is an underlying system of ethics which runs the length and breadth of Marx's thought. The book begins by discussing the methodological side of Marx's ethics showing how Marx's criticism of conventional morality and his views on historical materialism, determinism and ideology are compatible with having an ideological system of his own. In the light of contemporary social, moral and political philosophy the insights and defects of Marx's major ethical themes are discussed.

This volume is concerned with the re-evaluation and criticism of Capital itself. It is in three parts, each covering a specific area of Marxist theory. The first part contains an investigation into Marx's theory of value and considers the types of questions and modes of analysis to which this theory leads. In the second part the nature and implications of necessary economic ?laws of tendency? in the capitalist mode of production are covered. Finally there is an analysis of the role of class structure and economic agents in Marxist theory.

This study examines Marx's disputes with, and attacks upon, those anarchist theoreticians he encountered at various stages of his career. Marx's attacks on Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin are shown to be of vital importance to his career as a theorist and revolutionist. The formative influences upon Marx's writings and his political activity are discussed and analyzed. The author re-situates Marx's thought in the context of the 19th century when Marxism was not an unchallenged orthodoxy but a doctrine and method that needed to be defended against rival revolutionary impulses.

Ralph Miliband was a leading contributor to the development of Marxist political theory in the late twentieth century. His writings remain highly influential in contemporary work on the state and related areas of political theory and political sociology.
This collection of new essays re-examines and evaluates the central themes in Miliband's work. It provides an essential reference point for research within the Marxist tradition, and a valuable resource for students on a range of courses in political and social theory.

This volume traces the origins, contradictions and consequences of Marx's teaching on his followers. He uses Marx to speak against the rigid dogmatism inherent in much of Marxism and concentrates on the interpretations of Marx's work by Max Weber.

This detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and anti-communism, and the impact this had on Soviet Russia in the years that followed. It reflects upon how the Bolsheviks fought not only to defend the fledgling Soviet state, but also to bring the revolution to Europe. Peter Whitewood shows that while the Red Army’s rapid drive to the gates of Warsaw in summer 1920 raised great hopes for world revolution, the subsequent collapse of the offensive had a more striking result. The Soviet military and political leadership drew the mistaken conclusion that they had not been defeated by the Polish Army, but by the forces of the capitalist world – Britain and France – who were perceived as having directed the war behind-the-scenes. They were taken aback by the strength of the forces of counterrevolution and convinced they had been overcome by the capitalist powers. The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy reveals that – in the aftermath of the catastrophe at Warsaw –Lenin, Stalin and other senior Bolsheviks were convinced that another war against Poland and its capitalist backers was inevitable with this perpetual fear of war shaping the evolution of the early Soviet state. It also further encouraged the creation of a centralised and repressive one-party state and provided a powerful rationale for the breakneck industrialisation of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1920s. The Soviet leadership’s central preoccupation in the 1930s was Nazi Germany; this book convincingly argues that Bolshevik perceptions of Poland and the capitalist world in the decade before were given as much significance and were ultimately crucial to the rise of Stalinism.

Develops an interpretation of Marx's work as the basis of a critique of both orthodox Marxism and of both modern economics and sociology. The core of this book is an analysis of Marx's theory of alienated labour as the basis of Marx's critique of liberal social theory. This leads to both an original interpretation of Marx's work and to the liberal foundations of the subjects of economics and sociology. This critique is developed through an account of revolution, and of the parallel revolution in sociology carried through by Max Weber. The conclusion relates the critique to the subsequent developments in both Marxism and sociology.

Trotsky--brilliant publicist, enthusiastic speaker, organizer of the Red Army, eminent member of the Bolshevik Party during the first years of the Russian Revolution--has often been depicted as a romantic figure by biographers. Kostas Mavrakis does not see him in this light. Mavrakis submits Trotsky, his thought and work to a severe but fair critical examination. Among the issues reassessed by this controversial scholar are Trotsky's incapacity for concrete analysis, the 'economism' he shares with Stalin, his concepts of 'permanent revoluation' as compared with those of Lenin and Mao, his views and those of Stalin, on the Chinese Revolution, the fundamental traits of Trotskyism and of the different trotskyist organizations.

Antonio Gramsci is one of the few Marxist theoreticians to have considered the role and nature of education, yet paradoxically his revolutionary, political and social theory seems at odds with his conservative approach to the content and processes of schooling. This book, originally published in 1979, examines his educational, political and cultural writings in an effort to resolve this apparent discrepancy.

Gramsci's relevance lies in his treatment, in the context of his radical political theory, of themes which currently exercise modern radical educationists. Among the subjects he discusses are the sociology of the curriculum, the apparent discontinuity between the culture of school and that of daily life, problems of literacy and language in education, the role of the state in the provision of education, the cultivation of elites and the role of intellectuals, the relative functions of authority and spontaneity in education and the ambiguious relationship of these to differing political ideologies, particularly Fascism.

This anthology contains some of the more important Marxist thinkers now working on dialectics. As a whole the book is an unusual 'Introduction to Dialectics', a systematic restatement of what it is and how to use it, a survey of most of the main debates in the field, and a good picture of the current state of the art of dialectics.

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of events in 1956, that were a major turning point in the history of communist-ruled Eastern Europe, this book contains a selection of some of the most recent research on those momentous events and their memory and legacy.

Addressing Spinoza's perennial question: "why do the masses fight for their servitude as if it was salvation?", Capitalism and the Limits of Desire examines the ways in which self-love as the care of the self has become intertwined with self-love as the pursuit of pleasure. With ongoing austerity and misery for so many, why does capitalism seem to be so insurmountable, so impossible to move beyond? John Roberts offers a compelling response: it is because we love the love of self that capitalism enables, even though it brings anxiety and self-scrutiny. Capitalism in the form of commodities, and, more importantly, the online platforms through which we express ourselves, has become so much of who we are, of how we define self-love as self-pleasure that it is difficult to imagine ourselves outside of it. Roberts contends that disentangling ourselves from this collapsing of self into capitalism is possible and that understanding the insidious nature of capitalist thinking even when it comes to our deepest pleasures is the starting point. Using early and late Marx, Lacan's distinction between pleasure and desire and the recent debate on perfectionism (Hurka) as his guides, Roberts lays out a way for individuals to move forward and forge a link between self and desire outside the oppressive demands of platform capitalism.

Originally published in 1961. Russian Marxist philosophy of science originated among men and women who gave their whole lives to rebellion against established authority. The original tension within Marxist philosophy between positivism and metaphysics was repressed but not resolved in this first phase of Soviet Marxism. In this volume the author correlates the development of ideas with trends in the Cultural Revolution and against this background it is possible to understand why debates over general philosophy gave way to conflicts over specific sciences in the aftermath of the first Five Year Plan and why there was a genuine crisis in Soviet biology.

This is a work of historical critical exegesis. It aims to establish the influence of the Science of Logic (SL) of G.W.F. Hegel on the Grundrisse of Karl Marx. It is the first work in the history of Marx Studies to demonstrate that the Hegelian logic guided Marx's doctrinal development, and that the ordering of the logical categories in the SL is reflected in the ordering of economic categories in the Grundrisse.

The Chinese Communist Party, as the political leader of the world's largest country and second largest economy, plays an undeniably important role in global politics. Founded in a boarding school in Shanghai in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party is one of the oldest ruling parties in the world since its takeover of mainland China in 1949 under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong. Since its inception, the party has survived a civil war with the Kuomintang (1946-1949); the political, cultural, and humanitarian catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), where upwards of 30 million Chinese civilians died; and the death of the Chinese Communist Party's dominant leader, Mao Zedong, in 1976. In recent years, intellectuals and party members have been given increasing leeway to express their opinions, and Lawrence R. Sullivan takes advantage of this new research to provide a comprehensive history of one of the world's most fascinating political movements. The Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Communist Party contains a chronology, an introductory essay, an appendix, an extensive bibliography, and more than 400 cross-reference dictionary entries on key people, places, and institutions. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Chinese Communist Party.

Marking the 50th anniversary of events in 1956, that were a major turning point in the history of communist-ruled Eastern Europe, this book contains a selection of some of the most recent research on those momentous events and their memory and legacy. The book contains edited contributions from historians and social scientists from Hungary, Poland the UK and the USA. Their contributions are the fruit of research which has only been possible since 1989. In the years since the fall of the communist regimes the state archives have been opened to researchers and it has been possible to collect the testimony of eye-witnesses without fear of repression and censorship. The outcome of 1956 led to Poland embarking on its own distinctive version of communist rule. Meanwhile 1956 in Hungary saw the first society-wide attempt to overthrow a ruling communist regime - only to be put down by Soviet military intervention. In both countries the events of 1956 had lasting repercussions for society and its relationship with the communist regime. In retrospect they can be seen as paving the way for the eventual fall of the communist regimes in East Central Europe in 1989.

This book responds to recent events by proposing a radical reshaping of Marxist theory. Taking the core problem as that of the historical subject, it conceptualises human life in terms of four interrelated practices. It explores these in turn in the context of a capitalism divided into 'centre' and 'periphery', primarily through nine 'theoretical reconstructions', which attempt to meet such problems as the labour theory of value, the nature and role of the state, and consciousness.

A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society. It has also proved to be the most influential work in social science in the twentieth century; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology. Millions of readers this century have treated Capital as a sacred text, subjecting it to as many different interpretations as the Bible itself. No mere work of dry economics, Marx's great work depicts the unfolding of industrial capitalism as a tragic drama - with a message which has lost none of its relevance today. This is the only abridged edition to take account of the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867, excerpts from a new translation of 'The Result of the Immediate Process of Production', and a selection of key chapters from Volume 3, which Engels published in 1895.

Exploring relationships between politics, the people and social change, this book assesses the fortunes mainly of Labor, but also of the Communist Party and the New Left in postwar Britain. Using concepts like political culture, it looks at the left's articulation of "affluence": consumerism, youth culture, America, TV, advertising and its disappointment at the people under the impact of such changes. It also examines party organization, socialist thinking and the use of new communication techniques like TV, advertising and opinion polling.

Eric Roman is the first scholar to be granted access to the vast, heretofore closed, archive of documents relating to the communist era in Hungary. This archive included the files of the Hungarian Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Hungarian Socialist Worker's Party, as well as minutes of political committee meetings, private correspondence, secret papers and confidential reports on special commissions within Hungary. Skilfully using all this material, Eric Roman weaves a fascinating portrait of Hungary in the post-war period. As the country began to reconstruct itself after the War, Roman shows the toll taken by poverty and racial discord. In what amounts to the only complete English-language account of Hungary's diplomatic policy, Hungary and the Victor Powers takes an in-depth look at Hungary's relationship with those countries nearest to it, especially the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Eric Roman's Hungary and the Victor Powers, 1945-1950 is a compelling work of history that is destined to be one of the most important books on the topic.

The thought of Antonio Gramsci continues to enjoy widespread appeal in contemporary political and social theory. This book draws together some of the world's leading scholars on Gramsci to critically explore key ideas, debates and themes in his work in an accessible manner, relating them to contemporary politics and society.

"Home Front" examines the gendered exploitation of labor in the household from a postmodern Marxian perspective. The authors of this volume use the anti-foundationalist Marxian economic theories first formulated by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff to explore power, domination, and exploitation in the modern household.