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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
Politics of the Many draws inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley's
celebrated call to arms: 'Ye are many - they are few!' This idea of
the Many, as a general form of emancipatory subjectivity that
cannot be erased for the sake of the One, is the philosophical and
political assumption shared by contributors to this book. They
raise questions of collective agency, and its crisis in
contemporary capitalism, via new engagements with Marxist
philosophy, psychoanalysis, theories of social reproduction and
value-form, and post-colonial critiques, and drawing on activist
thought and strategies. This book interrogates both established and
emergent formations of the Many (the people, classes, publics,
crowds, masses, multitudes), tracing their genealogies, their
recent failures and victories, and their potentials to change the
world. The book proposes and explores an intense and provoking
series of new or reinvented concepts, figures, and theoretical
constellations, including dividuality, the centaur, unintentional
vanguard, insomnia at work, always-on capitalism, multitude (from
its 'voiding' to a '(non)emergence'), crowds, necropolitics, and
the link between political subjectivity and value-form. The
contributors to Politics of the Many are both acclaimed and
emergent thinkers including Carina Brand, Rebecca Carson, Luhuna
Carvalho, Lorenzo Chiesa, Jodi Dean, Dario Gentili, Benjamin
Halligan, Marc James Leger, Paul Mazzocchi, Alexei Penzin, Stefano
Pippa, Gerald Raunig, and Stevphen Shukaitis.
“In The Russians are Coming Again, Jeremy Kuzmarov and John
Marciano present an excellent and well researched effort to remind
liberal America of how awful the Cold War was and how it was based
on a cynical exaggeration of a largely fictional `Russian
threat.’ Their warning against creating a new Cold War with
post-communist Russia is well worth considering.”—David N.
Gibbs, University of Arizona, author, First Do No Harm:
Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia Karl
Marx famously wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.”
The Cold War waged between the United States and Soviet Union from
1945 until the latter's dissolution in 1991 was a great tragedy,
resulting in millions of civilian deaths in proxy wars, and a
destructive arms race that diverted money from social spending and
nearly led to nuclear annihilation. The New Cold War between the
United States and Russia is playing out as farce – a dangerous
one at that. The Russians Are Coming, Again is a red flag to
restore our historical consciousness about U.S.-Russian relations,
and how denying this consciousness is leading to a repetition of
past follies. Kuzmarov and Marciano's book is timely and trenchant.
The authors argue that the Democrats’ strategy, backed by the
corporate media, of demonizing Russia and Putin in order to
challenge Trump is not only dangerous, but also, based on the
evidence so far, unjustified, misguided, and a major distraction.
Grounding their argument in all-but-forgotten U.S.-Russian history,
such as the 1918-20 Allied invasion of Soviet Russia, the book
delivers a panoramic narrative of the First Cold War, showing it as
an all-too avoidable catastrophe run by the imperatives of class
rule and political witch-hunts. The distortion of public memory
surrounding the First Cold War has set the groundwork for the New
Cold War, which the book explains is a key feature, skewing the
nation’s politics yet again. This is an important, necessary
book, one that, by including accounts of the wisdom and courage of
the First Cold War's victims and dissidents, will inspire a fresh
generation of radicals in today's new, dangerously farcical times.
Marx and Critical Theory examines Marx's main philosophical,
political and social theoretical ideas. Its purpose is twofold:
making sense of the concepts and theses of Marx, and showing that
they remain relevant for contemporary critical theory. Part One
focuses on Marx's conception of philosophy. Part Two analyses the
Marxian primacy of the practical. Part Three is devoted to Capital
and the critique of political economy. This book will be useful for
those who want to deepen their understanding of Marx's main ideas,
as well as for those who want to clarify what is at stake in
contemporary debates about the ways in which contemporary critical
theory could or should refer to Marx.
Global Labour History has firmly established itself in the past
three decades. This anthology provides an overview of the
conceptual aspects of the discipline and is underpinned by case and
field studies from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and
China. It is dedicated to Marcel van der Linden, the doyen of, and
networker for, Global Labour History.
This encyclopaedia showcases the explanatory power of Marxist
educational theory and practice. The entries have been written by
51 leading authors from across the globe. The 39 entries cover an
impressive range of contemporary issues and historical
problematics. The editor has designed the book to appeal to readers
within the Marxism and education intellectual tradition, and also
those who are curious newcomers, as well as critics of Marxism. The
Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education is the first of its kind. It
is a landmark text with relevance for years to come for the
productive dialogue between Marxism and education for
transformational thinking and practice.
In Marx and Social Justice, George E. McCarthy presents a detailed
and comprehensive overview of the ethical, political, and economic
foundations of Marx's theory of social justice in his early and
later writings. What is distinctive about Marx's theory is that he
rejects the views of justice in liberalism and reform socialism
based on legal rights and fair distribution by balancing ancient
Greek philosophy with nineteenth-century political economy. Relying
on Aristotle's definition of social justice grounded in ethics and
politics, virtue and democracy, Marx applies it to a broader range
of issues, including workers' control and creativity, producer
associations, human rights and human needs, fairness and
reciprocity in exchange, wealth distribution, political
emancipation, economic and ecological crises, and economic
democracy. Each chapter in the book represents a different aspect
of social justice. Unlike Locke and Hegel, Marx is able to
integrate natural law and natural rights, as he constructs a
classical vision of self-government 'of the people, by the people'.
The collection of archival documents Karl Radek on China reflects
the views of one of the major Soviet China specialists, activists
of the Russian revolutionary movement, and leaders of the
Trotskyist Opposition, Karl Bernhardovich Radek (1885-1939). The
documents present an original conception of the history of China
from ancient times to the twentieth century as well as a
delineation of the fundamental political problems of China in the
1920s. The appendices contain letters from Trotsky to Radek as well
as the 'Chronological Information' of Zinoviev and Trotsky,
outlining the most important stages of the struggle of the United
Left Opposition against the Stalinist majority in the AUCP(b)
regarding problems of the Chinese revolution. None of the documents
have ever been published in English.
Marx's early work is well known and widely available, but it
usually interpreted as at best a kind of stepping-stone to the Marx
of Capital. This book offers something completely different; it
reconstructs, from his first writings spanning from 1835 to 1846, a
coherent and well-rounded political philosophy. The influence of
Engels upon the development of that philosophy is discussed. This,
it is argued, was a philosophy that Marx could have presented had
he put the ideas together, as he hinted was his eventual intention.
Had he done so, this first Marx would have made an even greater
contribution to social and political philosophy than is generally
acknowledged today. Arguments regarding revolutionary change,
contradiction and other topics such as production, alienation and
emancipation contribute to a powerful analysis in the early works
of Marx, one which is worthy of discussion on its own merits. This
analysis is distributed among a range of books, papers, letters and
other writings, and is gathered here for the first time. Marx's
work of the period was driven by his commitment to emancipation.
Moreover, as is discussed in the conclusion to this book, his
emancipatory philosophy continues to have resonance today. This new
book presents Marx in a unique, new light and will be indispensable
reading for all studying and following his work.
The credit crunch of 2008 produced an international recession in
2009. In this volume Claudio Katz and Michel Husson, both fellows
of the International Institute for Research and Education, and
Raphie de Santos lead an attempt not to only to describe the
present crisis, but also to understand its causes and debate
socialist solutions. Sean Thompson shows how neoliberal
globalisation has an inbuilt tendency towards deflation. As
explained in the article by Franois Sabado, the period since the
turn of the century has been a disaster for American capitalism;
first the catastrophe in Iraq and of the Bush government in
general, and now an economic collapse that has completely
undermined neoliberalism's 'Washington Consensus'. The ideologues
of capitalism are on the defensive. But the Marxist explanation of
the crisis has to be hammered home. Who caused this crisis? Why did
it occur? What is it in capitalism that leads to the globalisation
of poverty while a tiny elite become mega-wealthy? And what are
possible alternatives? This book is a signal contribution to making
those arguments.
Marx's oeuvre is vast but there are key elements of his ever
evolving, class-based contribution to social theory. Declining
usefulness for him of Hegelian philosophy and his deepening
confrontation with Ricardian political economy were expressions.
While the French edition of Capital is closest to Marx's mature
thought, Engels did not understand how work on Russia related to
Marx's evolution, and Engels distorted the outcome. Accumulation of
capital is particularly difficult conceptually, including use of
'primitive accumulation', and is carefully addressed, as is
composition of capital. After Marx, Luxemburg is the most
significant contributor to Marxism and her works on political
economy and on nationalism are highlighted here. The modern topic
of state conspiracies, too often avoided, concludes the book.
Troubling issues, however, remain.
The foremost collection of essays from one of Britain's most
important 20th century Marxist writers Considered by many to be the
most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century,
Christopher Caudwell was killed in the Spanish Civil War at the age
of 29. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and
crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until
reviews appeared of Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of
Poetry, which was published just after his death. A strikingly
original study of poetry's role, it explained in clear language how
the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change
and development. Caudwell had a powerful interest in how things
worked - aeronautics, physics, human psychology, language, and
society. In the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s he saw that
capitalism was a system that could not work properly and distorted
the thinking of the age. Self-educated from the age of 15, he wrote
with a directness that is alien to most cultural theory. Culture as
Politics introduces Caudwell's work through his most accessible and
relevant writing. Material will be drawn from Illusion and Reality,
Studies in a Dying Culture and his essay, "Heredity and
Development."
Kozo Uno's Theory of Crisis presents an unparalleled and systematic
demonstration of the inevitability of crisis under the capitalist
mode of production. Based on a radical re-interpretation of Marx's
Capital, Uno's theory of crisis emphasizes 'excess capital
alongside surplus populations' and 'the commodification of labour
power' at the heart of Marx's theory of crisis, and additionally
provides a concise overview of capitalist crises from the stage of
mercantilism to the imperialist stage of capitalism. Included are
two Appendix essays by Uno, which disentangle theoretical
difficulties related to the theory of crisis in Marx's Capital, and
two original and contemporary essays by Professors Makoto Itoh and
by Ken Kawashima and Gavin Walker. This book was originally
published in Japanese as Kyoko-ron by Iwanami Shoten, 1953.
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