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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
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.
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.
How do post-communist museums and cinema contribute to shaping the
image of a communist past in contemporary Central and Eastern
Europe? This is the first systematic analysis of the use of visual
techniques in grasping what the previous regime means. After the
past was lost in 1989 in the former communist world, museums and
memorials started mushrooming all over East and Central Europe.
While reflecting on possible, actual meanings of the lost history
the aim of shaping public opinion and discourse of the recent
communist past also became apparent. Most of these undertakings -
movies included - tried hard to make political use of recollections
of the earlier world, and employed select tools from contemporary
museological, memorializing and new-media practice to make their
politicized intent historically credible. Thirteen essays from
scholars in the region deal with the use of new media in shaping
and fashioning popular perception of the previous era, and provide
a fresh approach to the subject.
"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.
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.
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.
Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce
resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century
lingers on. To understand capital's paradoxical expansion and
entrenchment amidst crisis and unrest, Mute Compulsionoffers a
novel theory of the historically unique forms of abstract and
impersonal power set in motion by the subjection of social life to
the profit imperative. Building on a critical reconstruction of
Karl Marx's unfinished critique of political economy and a wide
range of contemporary Marxist theory, philosopher Soren Mau sets
out to explain how the logic of capital tightens its stranglehold
on the life of society by constantly remoulding the material
conditions of social reproduction. In the course of doing so, Mau
intervenes in classical and contemporary debates about the value
form, crisis theory, biopolitics, social reproduction, humanism,
logistics, agriculture, metabolism, the body, competition,
technology and relative surplus populations.
Young adult science fiction novel written by Harold L. Goodwin
under the pseudonym Blake Savage. Illustrated.
All the great political revolutions of the twentieth century
referred back to Marx. Reviled by some, revered by many, Marx's
influence can be found in every area of the humanities and social
sciences from literary criticism to globalization. In this
thoroughly revised and updated new edition of his classic
biography, David McLellan provides a clear and detailed account
both of Marx's dramatic life and of his path-breaking thought
together with a wealth of bibliographical information for further
reading.
A major and timely re-examination of key areas in the social and
political thought of Hegel and Marx. The editors' extensive
introduction surveys the development of the connection from the
Young Hegelians through the main Marxist thinkers to contemporary
debates. Leading scholars including Terrell Carver, Chris Arthur
and Gary Browning debate themes such as: the nature of the
connection itself; scientific method; political economy; the
Hegelian basis to Marx's 'Doctoral Dissertation'; human needs;
history and international relations.
The fourth edition of Marxism after Marx is an updated version of
what has become the classic account of Twentieth-century Marxism.
It includes new bibliographical information and sections covering
developments since the previous edition. This new edition
represents a comprehensive and reliable guide to one of the most
influential bodies of thought of the Twentieth century.
In contrast to the dissident movements of Eastern Europe, the East
German movement remained committed to the 'revisionist' reform of
the communist regime. This book tries to explain why. It is argued
that the peculiarities of German history and culture prevented the
possibility of a 'national' opposition to communism. As a result,
East German dissidents had to remain in a paradoxical way 'loyal'
to the old regime.
Corrective to male-dominated historiography of anti-fascism Draws
on new archival sources First account in English of this important
women's anti-fascist group
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.
Brucan, a former Romanian ambassador to the United States and the
United Nations, provides the first social history of the remarkable
transition from communism to capitalism in Russia and Eastern
Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He begins with an
examination of the old social structure in communist societies,
which used to be cosmetically advertised by the party and
officialdom, paying particular attention to the nomenklatura, who
have miraculously transformed themselves into big businessmen and
bankers. A chapter is devoted to the decline of the working class,
whom Brucan shows to be the big loser in the revolution. He then
examines the new social stratification, illustrating how the new
classes are taking shape under the conditions created by market
reform. The symbiosis between capital and power is analyzed in
depth, and Ambassador Brucan concludes his study with a look at the
direction the social transformations are pushing these societies,
particularly the separate paths being followed by Russia and
Eastern Europe. This is an important study for researchers,
scholars, and policy makers involved with Russia and Eastern
Europe.
First published in 1867, Capital, or Das Kapital, is the infamous
treatise on economics and capitalism by Prussian revolutionary KARL
MARX (1818-1883), who changed history with his 1848 book The
Communist Manifesto. In this work, edited by Marx's friend, German
philosopher FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1895), Marx systematically
analyzes the way the capitalist machine functions. In this academic
work written for students and serious thinkers, he explores wages,
competition, banking, rent, and the natural laws that seem to
govern the development of capitalism without any oversight by the
society in which it developed. Originally published in three
volumes, Capital is here presented in five volumes. Volume III,
Part 1 covers: . The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of
the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit . Conversion of
Profit into Average Profit . The Law of the Falling Tendency of the
Rate of Profit . Transformation of Commodity-Capital and
Money-Capital Into Commercial Capital and Financial Capital .
Division of Profit Into Interest and Profits of Enterprise
Since the 1920s, scholars have promoted a set of manuscripts, long
abandoned by Marx and Engels, to canonical status in book form as
The German Ideology, and in particular its 'first chapter,' known
as 'I. Feuerbach.' Part one of this revolutionary study relates in
detail the political history through which these manuscripts were
editorially fabricated into editions and translations, so that they
could represent an important exposition of Marx's 'theory of
history.' Part two presents a wholly-original view of the so-called
'Feuerbach' manuscripts in a page-by-page English-language
rendition of these discontinuous fragments. By including the
hitherto devalued corrections that each author made in draft, the
new text invites the reader into a unique laboratory for their
collaborative work. An 'Analytical Introduction' shows how Marx's
and Engels's thinking developed in duologue as they altered
individual words and phrases on these 'left-over' polemical pages.
Why would an American girl-child, born into a good, Irish-Catholic
family in the thick of the McCarthy era – a girl who, when she
came of age, entered a convent – morph into an atheist, feminist,
and Marxist? The answer is in Helena Sheehan’s fascinating
account of her journey from her 1940s and 1950s beginnings, into
the turbulent 1960s, when the Vietnam War, black power, and
women’s liberation rocked her bedrock assumptions and prompted a
volley of life-upending questions – questions shared by millions
of young people of her generation. But, for Helena Sheehan, the
increasingly radicalized answers deepened through the following
decades. Beginning by overturning such certainties as
America-is-the-world’s-greatest-country and
the-Church-is-infallible, Sheehan went on to embrace
existentialism, philosophical pragmatism, the new left, and
eventually Marxism. Migrating from the United States to Ireland,
she became involved with Irish republicanism and international
communism in the 1970s and 1980s. Sheehan’s narrative vividly
captures the global sweep and contradictions of second-wave
feminism, anti-war activism, national liberation movements, and
international communism in Eastern and Western Europe – as well
as the quieter intellectual ferment of individuals living through
these times. Navigating the Zeitgeist is an eloquently articulated
voyage from faith to enlightenment to historical materialism that
informs as well as entertains. This is the story of a well-lived
political and philosophical life, told by a woman who continues to
interrogate her times.
This book examines the uses made of anthropology by Marx and
Engels, and the uses made of Marxism by anthropologists. Looking at
the writings of Marx and Engels on primitive societies, the book
evaluates their views in the light of present knowledge and draws
attention to inconsistencies in their analysis of pre-capitalist
societies. These inconsistencies can be traced to the influence of
contemporary anthropologists who regarded primitive societies as
classless. As Marxist theory was built around the idea of class,
without this concept the conventional Marxist analysis foundered.
First published in 1983.
Subject of numerous interpretations and studies, the vicissitudes
of the famous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research nevertheless
still reserve some little-known pages, such as the human and
scientific relationship that bound philosopher Max Horkheimer and
economist Friedrich Pollock for over fifty years. Based on texts
and letters translated here into English for the first time as well
as some previously unpublished documents, the book reconstructs the
crucial moments in the friendship between the two scholars with a
narrative style and philological accuracy. Nicola Emery accompanies
us through the two friends and intellectuals' "nonconformism" and
search for an alternative life-form that led to the birth of the
Frankfurt critical theory.
Containing footnotes and an extensive bibliography, this edition of
Franz Mehring's classic biography is designed to assist the
English-speaking reader towards a better understanding of Marx, his
work and a history of Marxism. The book is divided into parts as
follows: Early Years; A Pupil of Hegel; Exile in Paris; Friedrich
Engels; Exile in Brussels; Revolution and Counter-Revolution; Exile
in London; Marx and Engels; The Crimean War and the Crisis;
Dynastic Changes; The Early Years of the International; 'Das
Kapital'; The Zenith and Decline of the International; The Last
Decade.
For many years a neglected figure, Nikolai Bukharin has recently
been the subject of renewed interest in the West. Now regarded as a
leading Marxist theorist, Bukharin's work has wide appeal to those
interested in Soviet history and Marxist economics as well as to
those concerned with theories of development and socialist
economies.
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