'Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the USSR, was profoundly aware of the power of words. As a zealous orator and prolific writer, he used his words to launch a soaring critique of imperialist society and to theorize the development of the world's first socialist state. Much of his writing was translated into English in order to further the Socialist cause. This book is a compilation of some of Lenin's most famous sayings, taken from speeches, tracts, letters and recorded conversations. They expose his views on topics ranging from democracy to terrorism, from religion to Stalin's untrustworthiness and from education to music. Accompanied by a range of arresting images, including contemporary propaganda posters, photographs, portraits, illustrations and Soviet art, these aphoristic proclamations offer an insight into the atmosphere of pre- and post-Revolutionary Russia and the mind of one of the twentieth century's most defining political figures.

John E. Roemer, one of the founders of analytical Marxism, draws on contemporary mathematical economics to put forward a refined extension of the Marxian theory of exploitation, labour value and class.

This book describes and explains the remarkably large rural-urban divide in economic well-being that exists in China, tracing the root causes, present effects, and future implications for the increasingly marketized Chinese economy. It uses the rigorous analysis and empirical methodology of modern economics. Primarily aimed at a broad readership of development and transition economists, China specialists will also find much that is of interest.

1. One of the most outstanding leaders within Second International Marxism, George Plekhanov has interested Western scholars primarily as a historical and political figure, specifically as the first full-fledged Marxist among the Russian intelligentsia. At the end of the nineteenth century he was the leader in putting Russian progressive culture in touch with Western Marxism, breaking away from Populism and, at the same time, resuming materialistic tradition within Russian progressive thought. Among Russian revolutionaries, a few others to be sure had been interested in Marx before Plekhanov. The translations of some of Marx' works into Russian show this clearly. In 1869 Mikhail Bakunin translated The Communist Manifesto. Three years later Nikolaj Daniel'son, a populist, completed the first foreign-language version of the first book of Marx' Capital and within six months about a thousand copies had been sold. In the middle of the 1870's, an 'academic' economist, N. !. Ziber, helped to spread Marx' economic ideas by teaching them in Kiev and writing articles in the journal Slovo, which to some extent influenced Plekhanov's later choices. But it was Plekhanov who first analyzed the Russian situation as a whole in Marxist terms, thereby earning renown as the "Father of Russian Marxism". 1 His writings became the school for a whole generation of revolutionaries. At the beginning respected and venerated, then rejected and criticized, Plekhanov for long held the leadership of Russian Marxism, as its best-known 'Master'.

This book explores the regulations, goals and functioning of preparatory proceedings in four Nordic countries and eight former communist countries. The contributions discuss whether, and how the regulation and practice of preparatory proceedings enhance swift civil justice that is both inexpensive and has quality outcomes. A central question is whether the main hearing model of civil justice, in which preclusion of new evidence and claims occur at the end of the preparatory stage, results in greater efficiency, or whether the functioning of civil proceedings largely depends on other factors. It also examines regulation and use of court-connected mediation and judicial settlement efforts. This book offers comparative insights into the functioning of the preparatory civil proceedings in the countries covered. Preparatory proceedings are considered a key tool for achieving efficient civil proceedings. The claims and factual background of the case are clarified at an early stage, and the main hearing is focused. Judicial settlement efforts and court-connected mediation contribute to early resolution of cases, and are important elements of Nordic civil procedure The Nordic countries have used the main hearing model of civil proceedings for some decades, and recent reforms have further enhanced the role of the preparatory stage. Former communist countries are reforming their earlier piecemeal- format civil proceedings by introducing and strengthening written and oral preparation, as well as court-connected mediation.

This collection brings together the latest work of some of the world's leading Marxist philosophers and new young researchers. Based upon work presented at meetings of the Marx and Philosophy Society, it offers a unique snapshot of the best current scholarship on the philosophical aspects and implications of Marx's thought.

This book analyses racism in communist and post-communist contexts, examining the 'Red' promise of an end to racism and the racial logics at work in the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, Cuba and China, placing these in the context of global racialisation.

The book discusses the nature of Marxist theory of crisis and applies it to the global financial crisis which began in 2007. Is the contemporary crisis simply the usual periodic upturn and downturn or is there something more fundamental? Is there a structural crisis of capitalism, from which there is no immediate solution? Is capitalism managed and does it have a strategy? Is the financial crisis representative of a failure in capitalism itself to subject banks and other financial institutions to the overall economy? The book discusses Marx's view on crises, as well as ideas on money and finance. It considers the different modern Marxist ideas on the causes of crises - falling rate of profit, disproportionality and underconsumption. It goes into detail as to the nature of the present crisis, its course and causes in a spirited and independent manner. Apart from the United States, it considers the situation in the two countries, in which protests erupted: Iran and Greece. They are taken as examples of the effect of the crisis on the country, the society and the economy as well as its politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critique.

Few writers have had a more demonstrable impact on the development of the modern world than has Karl Marx (1818-1883). Born in Trier into a middle-class Jewish family in 1818, by the time of his death in London in 1883, Marx claimed a growing international reputation. Of central importance then and later was his book Das Kapital, or, as it is known to English readers, simply Capital. Volume One of Capital was published in Paris in 1867. This was the only volume published during Marx's lifetime and the only to have come directly from his pen. Volume Two, published in 1884, was based on notes Marx left, but written by his friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Readers from the nineteenth century to the present have been captivated by the unmistakable power and urgency of this classic of world literature. Marx's critique of the capitalist system is rife with big themes: his theory of 'surplus value', his discussion of the exploitation of the working class, and his forecast of class conflict on a grand scale. Marx wrote with purpose. As he famously put it, 'Philosophers have previously tried to explain the world, our task is to change it.'

In Marxism and America, an accomplished group of scholars reconsiders the relationship of the United States to the theoretical tradition derived from Karl Marx. In brand new essays that cover the period from the nineteenth century, when Marx wrote for American newspapers, to the present, when a millennial socialism has emerged inspired by the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, the contributors take up topics ranging from memory of the Civil War to feminist debates over sexuality and pornography. Along the way, they clarify the relationship of race and democracy, the promise and perils of the American political tradition and the prospects for class politics today. Marxism and America sheds new light on old questions, helping to explain why socialism has been so difficult to establish in the United States even as it has exerted a notable influence in American thought. -- .

This book examines the course of official criticism of republican leaderships in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from Stalin's death until the collapse of central control in the late 1980s. It focuses upon five republics, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belorussia. The extraordinary power of the central leadership to replace particular republican leaders is contrasted with the continuing dominance of elite politics in these republics by local cliques with substantial and increasing autonomy from Moscow.

This book offers a detailed examination of the interaction between socialism and feminism through the lens of one particular socialist organisation, the Communist Party of Great Britain, from its foundation in 1920 until the outbreak of the Second World War. The study of socialism and feminism in the CPGB can be divided into four major areas - the party's concept of socialism and the role of women in a future society; the party's relationship to the feminist movement; the work of the party in relation to specific women's issues; and how the sexual division of labour operated within the party. The author here defines and explains the socialist and feminist traditions in Britain and describes the ways in which they interacted, both at the level of theory and of practice. Sources from party press and reports to interviews with party members and non-party written and oral evidence and accounts feed into this thorough chronological treatment which outlays the changes within the CPGB during the 1920s and 30s in relation to feminism.

This book, originally published in 1949 (but here re-issuing the second edition of 1966) presents a history of international socialism, not just from the political but also the economic standpoint.

Modern political and social theory is fundamentally eurocentric, yet the critique of eurocentrism remains marginal to critical realist and marxist theory. The political and social structures of modernity are dominated by really eurocentric forms and relations, yet the theorisation of the eurocentricity of modernity is largely undeveloped.

In its attempt to tackle eurocentrism, Eurocentrism: A Critical Realist and Marxian Critique of Civil Society brings social theory up against the deeply embedded constraints that modern life places on historical and social reflexivity.

This book examines the powerful anti-eurocentric tendencies of critical realism and marxian critiques of civil society, and evaluates their potential as solutions to this eurocentrist dilemma. Could a more self-consciously anti-eurocentric approach from these fields help us to focus without this historical and social bias? Accomplishing this will significantly expand the potential to provide an adequate grounding for theories of the essentially Eurocentric structures of modern theory and social relations.

The book presents an analysis of the concept of rights and provides an illuminating expression of socialist ideals. The author outlines an analysis of fundamental human rights compatible with historical relativism and applies this to the political right of freedom of expression and the economic right to work. Finally he deploys the proposed analysis of socialist rights to explain the ambivalence of socialist thinkers towards welfare rights in contemporary capitalist states and to analyze the logic of assertions that welfare law is often counter-productive.

In modernizing Russia, obshchestvennost', an indigenous Russian word, began functioning as a term to illuminate newly emerging active parts of society and their public identities. This volume approaches various phenomena associated with the term throughout the revolution, examining it in the context of the press, public opinion, and activists.

Pursuing historical analogies between nineteenth-century theories and the current practices captivated by digital reproducibility, this book offers a critical take on architecture's contemporaneity through four essays: tectonics, materiality, cladding, and labor. Fundamental to this proposition is the historicity of Gottfried Semper's theorization of architecture amidst the outpouring of new materials and construction techniques during the 1850s. Starting with Semper's differentiation between theatricalization and the tectonic of theatricality, this book closely examines thematic essential to architecture's self-representation. Even though the title of this book recalls the Semperian four elements of architecture, its argument encapsulates a unique historico-theoretical project probing the tectonic of theatricality beyond Semper. The invisible tie between technique and labor is the cord running through the four subjects covered in this book. In exploring these subjects from the theoretical standpoint of Marxian dialectics, this book's contribution is focused on, but not limited to, the topicality of labor today when its relationship with capital has been further obscured by the prevailing digitalization of commodity exchange value, starting roughly in the 1990s. Each essay examines Semper's theorization of architecture in contradistinction to the ways in which technology's mediation has dominated architecture's representation. Burrowing through the invisible tie between technique and work, asymptomatic of architecture's predicament in global capitalism, this book advances the scope of architectural criticism beyond the exhausted formalism and architecture's turn to philosophy circa the 1980s and the present tendencies for presentism. It will therefore be of interest to researchers and students of architectural history and theory.

This pioneering study shows what brought Yiddish-speaking Jewish intelligentsia to the Communist movement in the interwar years. They believed that Communism is not only a way to solve the Jewish problem but also to save the Yiddish culture. Biography of the central protagonist of the book, a Yiddish writer Dovid (David) Sfard, is just a pretext to show a full range of Jewish Communist activists (such as Hersh Smolar, Bernard Mark, Szymon Zachariasz, etc.) and their life choices. This relatively small milieu influenced and controlled the Jewish life in post-war Poland until the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968. Their lives, reconstructed thanks to sources in several languages, make up a panorama of Jewish Communist experience in 20th-century Eastern Europe.

Developments and trends in Communist education are traced in this authoritative survey by specialists. Eight chapters deal with particular aspects: ideology, psychology, the selective process, the roles of teachers and parents, polytechnical education, the universities and professional institutes. Three chapters survey the former East Germany, Poland and China as special case-studies. A concluding chapter examines common ground between Communist and other systems.

Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity argues that Fromm's humanistic ethics provides a framework for the analysis of alienation in affluent societies and his exploration of the social forces capable of challenging that alienation. It examines his work on authoritarianism, the experience of work, the struggle against patriarchy, the dangers of consumerism and the manipulation of needs, the urgent need to revive democracy, and the challenge of the emerging 'one world'. Never losing sight of the ancient dream of human solidarity, Fromm's explicitly ethical approach exerts a compelling relevance to a range of issues in contemporary social and political theory.

The material effects of World War II, in combination with Eastern Europe's disappointingly undemocratic interwar history, placed radical social change on the postwar agenda across the region and shaped the debates that took place in immediate postwar Czech society. These debates adopted both a cultural form, in struggles over the meaning of the recent past and the nation's position on the East-West continuum, and a directly political form, in battles over the meaning of socialism. The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation examines the most important and politically resonant fields of historical and cultural debate in Czech society immediately after World War II. Bradley Abrams finds that communist public figures were largely successful in controlling debate over the nation's recent past the interwar First Republic and the experiences of Munich and World War II and over its location on the East West continuum. This success preceded and was mirrored in the struggles over the political issue of the times: socialism. The communists engaged their political foes in the democratic socialist and Roman Catholic camps, and, surprisingly, found significant support from a major Protestant church. Abrams's careful reading of major publications re-creates a postwar mood sympathetic to radical social change, questioning the standard view of the communists' rise to power. This book not only contributes to the specific literature on Czech history, but also raises questions about the relationship between war and radical social change, about the communist takeover of the region, and about the role of intellectuals in public life."

Miroslav Hroch's Social Preconditions of National Revival has profoundly influenced the study of nationalism since it first appeared in English translation, particularly because of its famous three-phase model for describing and analyzing national movements in Eastern Europe. Contributors to this book explore Hroch's continued relevance to the field of nationalism studies with four case studies and two theoretical/historiographic essays. Two case studies apply Hroch's thinking to Eastern Europe in light of subsequent historiography, finding that Hroch's ideas remain useful for understanding national movements in Belarus and among the Kuban Cossacks. Two further studies apply Hroch's schema to the Mexican independence movement and contemporary Pakistan ? times and places that Hroch specifically excluded from his own considerations. The first theoretical contribution seeks to apply Begriffsgeschichte to Hroch's work; the second suggests that Hroch's phases form a useful typology of nationalism, thus facilitating communication between different branches of nationalism studies. Hroch ends the volume with his own commentary on the various contributions.

This book was published as a special issue of Nationalities Papers.