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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
Sociology is an established academic discipline but there has been continuing debate over its status as a science and the nature of its subject matter. This led to the emergence of a phenomenological sociology and to critiques of positivist sociology. This critical reappraisal of the relevance of Marxian analysis for a science of society shows how these developments within sociology have had their counterpart in Marxism. The author analyses the status of Marx's work and the Marxist 'tradition' in sociology. He focuses upon those concerns which are common to both Marxian analysis and sociology - the question of subjectivity; the nature of social reality; and the dialectical relationship of the 'doing' or practice of a science of society to the social world within which such social analyses are situated. Originally published in 1976.
First published in 1986. This is a collection of editorial and articles covering military Marxist regimes in the African locations of the Horn of Africa, Benin, the People's Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Burkina Faso.
Unique among the satellites of the Soviet Union, Hungary has data from a series of fourteen substantial surveys from the mid-1960s through to 1994. How do Hungarians think about themselves, their history, their society and other countries and their peoples? Hunyady provides an excellent summary of investigations examining these questions, analysing them against the background of the social psychology literature of stereotypes.
Renowned Marxist scholar and critical media theorist Christian Fuchs provides a thorough, chapter-by-chapter introduction to Capital Volume 1 that assists readers in making sense of Karl Marx's most important and groundbreaking work in the information age, exploring Marx's key concepts through the lens of media and communication studies via contemporary phenomena like the Internet, digital labour, social media, the media industries, and digital class struggles. Through a range of international, current-day examples, Fuchs emphasises the continued importance of Marx and his work in a time when transnational media companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook play an increasingly important role in global capitalism. Discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter help readers to further apply Marx's work to a modern-day context.
A spellbinding new biography of Stalin in his formative years This is the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin from his birth to the October Revolution of 1917, a panoramic and often chilling account of how an impoverished, idealistic youth from the provinces of tsarist Russia was transformed into a cunning and fearsome outlaw who would one day become one of the twentieth century's most ruthless dictators. In this monumental book, Ronald Grigor Suny sheds light on the least understood years of Stalin's career, bringing to life the turbulent world in which he lived and the extraordinary historical events that shaped him. Suny draws on a wealth of new archival evidence from Stalin's early years in the Caucasus to chart the psychological metamorphosis of the young Stalin, taking readers from his boyhood as a Georgian nationalist and romantic poet, through his harsh years of schooling, to his commitment to violent engagement in the underground movement to topple the tsarist autocracy. Stalin emerges as an ambitious climber within the Bolshevik ranks, a resourceful leader of a small terrorist band, and a writer and thinker who was deeply engaged with some of the most incendiary debates of his time. A landmark achievement, Stalin paints an unforgettable portrait of a driven young man who abandoned his religious faith to become a skilled political operative and a single-minded and ruthless rebel.
Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.
Renowned Marxist scholar and critical media theorist Christian Fuchs provides a thorough, chapter-by-chapter introduction to Capital Volume 1 that assists readers in making sense of Karl Marx's most important and groundbreaking work in the information age, exploring Marx's key concepts through the lens of media and communication studies via contemporary phenomena like the Internet, digital labour, social media, the media industries, and digital class struggles. Through a range of international, current-day examples, Fuchs emphasises the continued importance of Marx and his work in a time when transnational media companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook play an increasingly important role in global capitalism. Discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter help readers to further apply Marx's work to a modern-day context.
Refuting the assumption that orthodox Marxist theory contains anything of relevance on international relations, this book, originally published in 1980, clarifies, reconstructs, and summarizes the theories of international relations of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet leadership of the 1970s. These are subjected to a comparative analysis and their relative integrity is examined both against one another and against selected Western theories. Marxist-Leninist models of international relations are fully explored, enabling the reader to appreciate the essence and evolution of fundamental Soviet concepts as such as proletarian, socialist internationalism, peaceful co-existence, national liberation movement and detente.
In this concise but rich book, Syverson refutes the common notion that reality television is superficial or inauthentic, explaining how such criticisms fail to appreciate the way that we form social reality in the first place. By examining shows like The Hills, The Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, and The Bachelor alongside postmodern philosophy, feminist theory, and political economy, Syverson argues that we can confront today's postmodern condition only by accepting it on its own terms. To what extent does reality television mimic and shape our public and personal lives? Is reality television a dangerous, shallow decadence, or can it provide the key to understanding our postmodern moment? And above all, what does the election of Donald Trump mean for progressive fans of the genre? Reality Squared tackles these questions head-on, arguing that reality television represents the great modern art form, and the only entertainment vehicle capable of showing what it feels like to be alive today.
This eighth volume covers the period 1942 to 1945 when Mao asserted his status as the incarnation and symbol of the Chinese Revolution and the sinification of Marxism-Leninism.
How the Chinese Communist Party maintains its power by both repressing and responding to its people Since 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has maintained unrivaled control over the country, persisting even in the face of economic calamity, widespread social upheaval, and violence against its own people. Yet the party does not sustain dominance through repressive tactics alone-it pairs this with surprising responsiveness to the public. The Party and the People explores how this paradox has helped the CCP endure for decades, and how this balance has shifted increasingly toward repression under the rule of President Xi Jinping. Delving into the tenuous binary of repression and responsivity, Bruce Dickson illuminates numerous questions surrounding the CCP's rule: How does it choose leaders and create policies? When does it allow protests? Will China become democratic? Dickson shows that the party's dual approach lies at the core of its practices-repression when dealing with existential, political threats or challenges to its authority, and responsiveness when confronting localized economic or social unrest. The state answers favorably to the demands of protesters on certain issues, such as local environmental hazards and healthcare, but deals harshly with others, such as protests in Tibet, Xinjiang, or Hong Kong. With the CCP's greater reliance on suppression since Xi Jinping's rise to power in 2012, Dickson considers the ways that this tipping of the scales will influence China's future. Bringing together a vast body of sources, The Party and the People sheds new light on how the relationship between the Chinese state and its citizens shapes governance.
In this vivid memoir, Silviu Brucan traces half a century of East European history, bringing to life the drama of a generation caught between the 1944 communist revolution and the 1989 anti-communist revolution. Brucan himself was at the heart of political power from World War II through the formation of a new government after the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaussescu. After participating in the antifascist underground movement in World War II, he became acting editor of Romania's leading communist daily. He served as Romania's ambassador to the United States and then as its ambassador to the United Nations. He later grew disenchanted with the Ceaussescu regime, becoming a prime mobilizer of popular support for reform and subsequently one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front. Brucan's insider position gave him a unique perspective on the inner workings of the Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceaussescu regimes as well as of the political machinations of Soviet and other East European leaders. He reveals for the first time the details-available nowhere else-of secret meetings between communist leaders: the 1944 conspiracy with King Michael against the German occupation; the extraordinary 1945 meeting between Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator decided that Gheorghiu-Dej and not Ana Pauker should lead the Romanian Communist Party; the secret mission assigned to Gheorghiu-Dej by Nikita Khrushchev during the 1956 revolution to install Janos Kadar as leader of the communist party; the 1958 Khrushchev-Gheorghiu-Dej meeting after a bear hunt in the Carpathians, which appeared to be a chat between two canny old peasants but concluded with Khrushchev's decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Romania; and Ceaussescu's astute maneuver to seize power while Gheorghiu-Dej was on his deathbed. Brucan then recounts the real story behind the 1989 revolution, which was rooted in earlier plots to overthrow Ceaussescu. He traces his own memorable transformation from staunch communist to outspoken critic of the regime, weaving his own story within the larger framework of his country's transformation and hopes for the future.
The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, first published in 1962 and corrected and revised for a 1972 edition, examines carefully and critically the origin, precise nature and subsequent role of Marx's ethical beliefs. Drawing freely on Marx's still largely untranslated philosophical works and drafts the author elicits the ethical presuppositions with which Marx began. He then examines the intellectual development that made Marx a Communist and seeks to clarify the place of Marx's ethic in his mature, 'materialist' work. Professor Kamenka distinguishes sharply between the critical, ethical views of Marx and the inept, conventional applications of his doctrine by Engels. He appraises the 'ethics' of the Communist Party and traces the development of the moral and legal theory in the Soviet Union. He concludes by subjecting Marxism as a whole to a radical, ethical and philosophical criticism for which Marx himself laid some of the foundations.
The project to publish the works of Marx and Engels continues, and this book, published in 1984, puts together a comprehensive bibliography of their works either written in or translated into English, including books, monographs, articles, chapters and doctoral dissertations, together with the works of their interpreters. The inclusion of the secondary literature makes this a particularly valuable bibliography, and contributes greatly to the understanding of the thought of Marx and Engels.
It has been said that the normal English reaction to uncomfortable facts of life, such as Marxism, is an embarrassed but determined silence. That anyone should experience a desire to enquire into ideas as such, and to probe into the motives influencing them, seems extraordinary. Marxism is, however, subjected to a close study in this book, first published in 1957, and the collected essays attempt the task of combining certain elements in the heritage of modern culture with the insights of Marxism. There can be no vital thinking for our age that does not do justice to both traditions.
This book, first published in 1991, demonstrates that Marx is the legitimate founder of what was to become the critical theory of society. It argues that in order to justify a new conception of humans as collective, cultural and historical beings, Marx undertook a radical critique of the theoretical/analytical method of his predecessors and his contemporaries in political economy, philosophy and the natural sciences. While elements of the methods of some of these thinkers - most conspicuously from the work of Aristotle, Kant and Hegel - were present in Marx's thought, he achieved a new synthesis of procedural, epistemological and ontological methods.
In this major study, first published in 1988, Professor Kitching builds on recent scholarship on Marx and Wittgenstein to provide an incisive, readable account and critique of the whole of Marx's work. He presents the philosophical, economic, and political Marx as one thinker, and argues that the key to understanding Marx is his commitment to a 'philosophy of praxis'. This sees thought as just part of that purposive activity (or praxis) which distinguishes human beings from other creatures. This is the first book to analyse all of Marx's thought from a Wittgenstein perspective; in doing so, it clarifies and deepens our understanding of Marx.
While their attempts to understand the workings of capitalism led them to the conclusion that the advanced societies of Western Europe were those most likely to be the setting for a successful socialist revolution, Marx and Engels by no means ignored developments outside this region. Indeed, given the configurations of international politics in their time, plus their conception of capitalism as a universalising system, they believed that some of the forces working for change in less advanced regions could even affect the prospects of a proletarian revolution in Western Europe itself. This book, first published in 1980, traces the development of Marx and Engels' attitudes towards, and relations with, the principal national movements of their time. It deals with their responses to such movements in areas as diverse as Ireland and India, Poland and China, and Russia and the United States, as well as in many other regions. Many of Max and Engels' most significant statements on the national question were made in their journalism, occasional addresses and private correspondence - sources not always readily accessible to, or even known by, some of their more immediate successors. Subsequent publication of this previously-dispersed material has enabled a more coherent picture of their ideas on the subject to be drawn. Marx and Engels believed that national aspirations and the cause of socialism did not always go hand in hand and each national struggle had to be examined on its merits and judged according to whether its success would retard or enhance the prospects of a socialist revolution. Based on a wide range of sources, this study examines an important, yet neglected, area of Marx and Engels' ideas and activities, and indicates the criteria by which they determined their attitudes at different times to a variety of national movements at work in four continents.
This book, first published in 1961 and revised in 1964, is both a critical study of a body of thought and an historical account of how Marxist theory arose from the context of European history in the 19th century. It traces the development of socialist thought from the French to the Russian Revolutions and attempts to show in what manner the political and intellectual problems of Central Europe between 1848 and 1948 came to dominate the theory and practice of that Marxist movement which formed the crucial link between the two revolutions. The author takes the view that Marxism is a movement and a body of doctrine which belongs essentially to the 19th century, which came to an end with the First World War and the Russian Revolution, and that its impact as a doctrine has now been absorbed.
This book, originally published in 1940, is primarily intended to tell the English reader what is contained in the earlier works of Marx, with emphasis on what seemed to throw most light on the man and his systematic thought. As such, it is an invaluable contribution to the study of Marx and Marxism.
In this book, first published in 1992, the author examines the polemic fought by German Social-Democratic Party leaders and intellectuals Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein against what they perceived to be misunderstandings of Marxism propagated by members of the Social-Democratic Federation (SDF) in England and by the socialist leader Wilhelm Liebknecht in Germany. The debate raised basic questions of socialist theory, including whether the program of Marx and Engels called for scholarly study, parliamentary democracy, and gradual social evolution, or for Utopian speculation, economic collapse, and violent rebellion.
One reader has called this study, first published in 1984, 'easily the best book on the relation of Hegel to Marx'. With spirited argument, MacGregor demonstrates that Hegelian logic suited Marx's purpose so well because it already contained the unique elements that later appeared in Marx's social theory, including the notions of surplus value and the transition to communism. The most exciting thing about the book is the clear demonstration that the mature Marx gets ever closer to Hegel, and is increasingly indebted to him. In short, the author gives us a new Hegel and a new Marx. In a manner both original and penetrating, MacGregor shows that dialectical logic is pre-eminently social logic, a reconstruction in thought of social relationships and social structure. Central to the work is the examination of the Philosophy of Right, in which Hegel delineated a theory of modern capitalist society. MacGregor provides a compelling analysis of Hegel's importance for Lenin and a strong caveat that contemporary Marxism ignores Hegel to its own peril. MacGregor establishes that Hegel's absolute idealism is founded on a theory of the dialectics of labour similar to Marx's historical materialism. Another significant discovery elucidates Hegel's concept of poverty as the missing link which joins Marx's formulation to classical liberal theory.
Strife has raged about Karl Marx for decades, and never had it been so embittered as at the time of this book's first publication, 1936. Marx had impressed his image on the time as not other had done. To some he was - and still is - a fiend, the arch-enemy of human civilisation, and the prince of chaos, while to others he is a far-seeing and beloved leader, guiding the human race towards a brighter future. The arena in which Marx was fought about in 1936 was in the factories, in the parliaments and at the barricades. In both camps, the bourgeois and the socialist, Marx was first of all, if not exclusively, the revolutionary. This book sets out to describe the life of Marx the fighter.
When Lenin died and the Russian Revolution began to devour its leaders, Trotsky survived longer than most as an exile in Mexico, until his assassination in 1940. The Essential Trotsky, first published in 1963, demonstrates the significance of this innovative and radical thinker's contribution to the Bolshevik success, the magnetism of his personality, and also a certain tragic heroism discernible throughout his life. The History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk was written immediately after the events it describes, when Trotsky was attending the negotiations that extracted Russia from the First World War; The Lessons of October, an answer to his opponents in 1924, matches Lenin in power of analysis; and Stalin Falsifies History, written in 1927, presents the beginning of the distorting process by which Stalin secured his position, and defeated a range of attitudes, many more benign than his own, towards the future of the Revolution. This is a fascinating reissue that will be of value to students with an interest in early-twentieth century Russia, the Russian Revolution and the writings of Trotsky more generally.
As the Ukrainian Crisis shows both political regimes and national borders in Eurasia are still in a state of flux. Bringing together literatures on the external influences of democratization, the post-Soviet space and support for autocracy Autocratic and Democratic External influences in Post-Soviet Eurasia provides a comprehensive overview of the interaction of domestic and international politics during times of regime transition. Demonstrating the interplay of these forces the book explores the rich variation in motives and channels of autocratic and democratic influences. International scholars consider two channels of external influence on regime transition; the role of supranational organizations established by non-democracies and the role of non-governmental organizations and through a set of carefully chosen case studies offer a new theoretical discussion on the phenomenon of multi-level regime transition. |
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