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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
This book offers a critical realist intervention into the field of Marxist Sociology of Education. Critical realism, as developed by British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, is known for its capacity to serve as a conceptual underlabourer to applied fields like education. Indeed, its success in clarifying and resolving thorny issues of educational theory and practice is now well established. Given critical realism's sympathetic Marxist origins, its productive and critical engagement with Marxism has an even longer history. To date there has been little sustained attention given to the application of critical realism to Marxist educational praxis. The book addresses this gap in existing scholarship. Its conceptual ground clearing of the field of Marxist Sociology of Education centres on two problematics well-known in the social sciences: naturalism and the structure-agency relation. Marxist theory from the days of Marx to the present is shown to also be haunted by these problematics. This has resulted in considerable tension around the meaning and nature of, for example, reform, revolution, class determinism and class struggle. With its emergence in the 1970s as a child of Western Marxism, the field continues to be an expression of these tensions that seriously limit its transformative potential. Addressing these issues and offering conceptual clarification in the interests of revolutionary educational practice, Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education provides a new perspective on education which will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners alike.
Between the two world wars, thousands of European antifascists were pushed to act by the political circumstances of the time. In that context, the Spanish Civil War and the armed resistances during the Second World War involved particularly large numbers of transnational fighters. The need to fight fascism wherever it presented itself was undoubtedly the main motivation behind these fighters' decision to mobilise. Despite all this, however, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that some of these volunteers felt they were the last exponents of a tradition of armed volunteering which, in their case, originated in the nineteenth century. The capacity of war volunteering to endure and persist over time has rarely been investigated in historiography. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the radical and transnational tradition of war volunteering connected to Giuseppe Garibaldi's legacy in Southern Europe between the unification of Italy (1861) and the end of the Second World War (1945). This book seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the long-term, interconnected, and radical dimensions of the so called Garibaldinism.
Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.
Across Europe and the world, far right parties have been enjoying greater electoral success than at any time since 1945. Right-wing street movements draw huge supporters and terrorist attacks on Jews and Muslims proliferate. It sometimes seems we are returning to the age of fascism. To explain this disturbing trend, David Renton surveys the history of fascism in Europe from its pre-war origins to the present day, examining Marxist responses to fascism in the age of Hitler and Mussolini, the writings of Trotsky and Gramsci and contemporary theorists. Renton theorises that fascism was driven by the chaotic and unstable balance between reactionary ambitions and the mass character of its support. This approach will arm a new generation of anti-fascists to resist those who seek to re-enact fascism. Rewritten and revised for the twentieth anniversary of its first publication, Renton's classic book synthesises the Marxist theory of fascism and updates it for our own times.
This work explores the question of defining ideology from a Marxist perspective. Advancing beyond the schemas of discussion presented in current Marxist literature, the author offers an account of how the concept of ideology should be defined and what role it plays within historical materialism. Through a close reading of Karl Marx's relevant writings, this volume demonstrates that while there is no coherent, single account of ideology in Marx's work, his materialist framework can be reconstructed in a defensible and 'non-deterministic' way. The definition of ideology presented is then articulated through a close reading of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Efforts are also made to demonstrate that Gramsci's interpretation of historical materialism is indeed consistent and compatible with Marx's. A systematic articulation of a theory of ideology that combines the works of Marx and Gramsci, as well as adding elements of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory and William James's psychology, this volume will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in political economy and Marxist thought.
A Psychoanalytical-Historical Perspective on Capitalism and Politics explores how empathy once shaped the collective unconscious, before being replaced by rampant individualistic drive to power. Mino Vianello uses "radical federalism" to define a new approach to democracy, hoping for an end to the repetition of outdated political and economic ideals to solve the world's democratic crisis. The book brings together a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, including Marxism, history, class, feminism, politics and empathy, to provide a comprehensive and honest history of power from the Enlightenment to the present day. This interdisciplinary study will be key reading for academics and scholars of Jungian studies, politics, sociology, history and economics.
A Psychoanalytical-Historical Perspective on Capitalism and Politics explores how empathy once shaped the collective unconscious, before being replaced by rampant individualistic drive to power. Mino Vianello uses "radical federalism" to define a new approach to democracy, hoping for an end to the repetition of outdated political and economic ideals to solve the world's democratic crisis. The book brings together a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, including Marxism, history, class, feminism, politics and empathy, to provide a comprehensive and honest history of power from the Enlightenment to the present day. This interdisciplinary study will be key reading for academics and scholars of Jungian studies, politics, sociology, history and economics.
This book, first published in 1981, is a study concerned with the leadership and the people of China during the 1942-1962 period. It analyses the attempt made by the CCP to develop new policies of administration in the wartime base areas and the subsequent transformation of these policies after the Communists came to power. The problems of establishing control over China are detailed, as are those associated with adopting the Soviet model. The rejection of that model led to the adoption of the strategy that led to the Great Leap Forward, and its attendant problems are also studied here.
This book, first published in 1983, examines the significant economic reforms undergone by China following the death of Mao and the downfall of the Gang of Four. It looks at Chinese economists' conceptions of the necessity for change and compares China's reforms with similar ones carried out by the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There is a detailed analysis of the different sectors of the economy which shows how the reforms were carried out in practice.
A first hand account of a society mobilized from below at a critical time in its history How the Workers' Parliaments Saved the Cuban Revolution brings us to the heart of one of the most precarious and transformational moments in Cuba's evolution. As the Soviet Union fell to pieces in the 1990s, Cuba managed to evade the fate of its primary trading ally. How was this possible, especially as Cuba endured relentless attacks from the capitalist behemoth directly to its north? As the GDP plunged by over a third, and the Cuban people endured brutal food shortages- a time of crisis known as the "Special Period"- the country embarked upon a remarkable collective effort to cope with its dire circumstances and escaped the starvation, disease, death, and violence that often plague poor countries facing similar conditions. Not only did Cuba manage to evade collapse, it maintained its high life expectancy, low infant mortality, and universal access to health and education, preserving many of the gains of the revolution. At the center of this collective effort were lifelong revolutionaries like Pedro Ross, construction worker, literacy educator, and labor activist. As head of Cuba's labor federation throughout the "Special Period," Ross developed a nationwide series of "Labor Parliaments" which turned the country into an immense school of economics and politics. Over a 45-day span in 1993, women's rights activists, farmers' organizations, youth movements, and academic associations came together for tens of thousands of meetings, successfully restored the production cycle, and ultimately revolutionized nearly every aspect of life in Cuba. Singularly positioned to write this seminal account of those days, Ross has given us a rare, moving, on-the-ground account of a society mobilized from below, buttressing the Revolution when it was under maximum stress.
James Klugmann appears as a shadowy figure in the legendary history of the Cambridge spies. As both mentor and friend to Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and others, Klugmann was the man who manipulated promising recruits deemed ripe for conversion to the communist cause. This perception of him was reinforced following the release of his MI5 file and the disclosure of Soviet intelligence files in Moscow, which revealed he played a key part in the recruitment of John Cairncross, the 'fifth man', and had a pivotal war-time role in the Special Operations Executive, helping shift Churchill and the allies to support Tito and the communist partisans in Yugoslavia. In this book, Geoff Andrews reveals Klugmann's story in full for the first time, uncovering the motivations, conflicts and illusions of those drawn into the world of communism - and the sacrifices they made on its behalf.
This book explores the global impact of the Russian Revolution, arguably the most influential revolution of the modern age. It explores how the Revolution influenced political movements on the radical Left and Right across the world and asks whether the Russian Revolution remains relevant today. In Part one, four leading historians debate whether or not the Russian Revolution's legacy endures today. Part two presents examples of how the Revolution inspired political movements across the world, from Latin America and East Asia, to Western Europe and the Soviet Union. The Revolution inspired both sides of the political spectrum-from anarchists, and leftist radicals who fought for a new socialist reality and dreamed of world revolution, to those who on the far Right who tried to stop them. Part three, an interview with the historian S. A. Smith, gives a personal account of how the Revolution influenced a scholar and his work. This volume shows the complexity of the Russian Revolution in today's political world. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Revolutionary Russia.
This classic work on the psychology of socialism carries for this edition a slightly refurbished title. By calling it The Psychology of Marxian Socialism, the work is sharply distinguished from an earlier work of the same title (written at a much earlier time) by Gustave LeBon. This book was written in the post-Bolshevik revolutionary era, at the height of the Weimar democracy in Germany; LeBon's represents a fin de siecle effort, reflecting earlier concerns in socialist theory. De Man's work derives its strength from a close and hard look at how socialism operated in one country. It is probably one of the greatest such efforts in the post-World War I period.
Will capitalism survive forever? Capitalism has always lived in and with crisis. Wars, revolutions, economic depression and repeated recessions, the threat of nuclear annihilation and ecological disaster have all failed to break the dominance of this economic and political system. Challenging the predominance of capitalism in a world fraught with inequalities, this book returns to classical Marxism to reaffirm its relevance. It explores the contradictions within capitalism as well as explains why Marxism has been unable to mount a sustained challenge to capitalism. In order to explore concrete alternatives in a period of increasing capitalist globalisation and crisis, it goes on to present perspectives by which theory and practice might be reunited to building independent political and organisational structures. A search for "something better", this volume will be an engaging read for scholars and researchers of politics, especially political theory and political economy, economics, and sociology.
This book analyzes the dialogue--the partial reciprocal recognition of the legitimacy of both institutions--between the Catholic church and the Communist Party in Italy from the end of World War II to the present. Based on her own research and extensive analysis of the written output of each group, Giammanco explores such questions as: How do both organizations react to social changes and to emerging movements and political groups?; What are the effects of the dialogue on the organizations' struggle for cultural and political hegemony in Italy?; What does the dialogue mean for Italian society and politics in general?; Has there been any attempt to fuse communist and Catholic ideologies? Her conclusions have significant implications for other countries with both a Catholic majority and a tradition of liberation or Marxist ideologies. Giammanco begins with an examination of the relationship between geopolitics and the economy, exploring church and party roles in a socioeconomic context. She then addresses the views and influence of Antonio Gramsci, the dialogue as expressed in church and party documents, and the specific attempts of the Catholic church and the Communist Party to conduct a dialogue while maintaining an acceptable degree of cultural and political influence. Giammanco concludes that the dialogue is not only a symptom of disintegrating tendencies in the cultural hegemony of both the party and the church, but that it has actually acted to hasten that disintegration. More importantly, the uses that the church and the party make of each other and the conflicts that are generated between them create opportunity for growth and social and political change.
Originally published in 1999 Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition is a benchmark critique of Freudian theory in which a dialogue between the Frankfurt School, the Lacanian tradition and post-Lacanian developments in critical and feminist theory is developed. Considering afresh the relations between self and society, Elliot argues for the importance of imagination and the unconscious in understanding issues about the self and self-identity, ideology and power, sexual difference and gender.
Faced with a new crisis of capitalism, many scholars are now looking back to the author whose ideas were too hastily dismissed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the last decade, Marx's Capital has received renewed academic and popular attention. It has been reprinted in new editions throughout the world and the contemporary relevance of its pages is being discussed again. Today, Marx's analyses are arguably resonating even more strongly than they did in his own time and Capital continues to provide an effective framework to understand the nature of capitalism and its transformations. This volume includes the proceedings of the biggest international conference held in the world to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Capital's publication. The book is divided into three parts: I) "Capitalism, Past and Present"; II) "Extending the Critique of Capital"; III) "The Politics of Capital". It contains the contributions of globally renowned scholars from 13 countries and multiple academic disciplines who offer diverse perspectives, and critical insights into the principal contradictions of contemporary capitalism while pointing to alternative economic and social models. Together, they reconsider the most influential historical debates on Capital and provide new interpretations of Marx's magnum opus in light of themes rarely associated with Capital, such as gender, ecology, and non-European societies. The book is an indispensable source for academic communities who are increasingly interested in rediscovering Marx beyond 20th century Marxism. Moreover, it will be of great appeal to students, as well as established scholars interested in critique of capitalism and socialist theory.
"Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries" is a much needed concise yet comprehensive overview of Ernst Bloch's early and later thought. It fills an important gap in research on the history of German thought in the 20th century by reconstructing the contexts of Bloch's philosophy, while focusing on his contemporaries - Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Ernst Bloch's influential ideas include his theory of utopian consciousness, his resolute inclination to merge aesthetics and politics, rehabilitation of hope, and atheistic conception of Christianity. Although Bloch's major early texts, "Spirit of Utopia" and "Traces," have recently been translated into English, and there has been renewed interest in Bloch over the last 15 years, he is still relatively unknown compared to other left German-Jewish intellectuals. Ivan Boldyrev places Bloch's often enigmatic prose within contexts more familiar to English-speaking readers, and outlines the most important messages in Bloch's legacy still relevant today to European intellectual discourse, in particular aesthetics and philosophy of history.
Early in the 20th century, revolutionary socialism was not only gaining momentum but appeared destined to conquer the world. By mid-century, the red flag flew over capitals in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America; by the 1970s over one-third of the world's population lived under socialist regimes. All that has changed. With the 20th century drawing to a close, the political map of the globe looks very different: most socialist states have collapsed, revolutionary movements have been abandoned, and the United States stands as the world's lone superpower. This unique volume examines these changes--the "defeat" of Marxism--and suggests that the present historical juncture is but a temporary setback in the march of the working class. The authors propose that Marxism remains the most useful approach in understanding and explaining contemporary capitalism and its decay, as well as the only path toward the liberation of society from class exploitation.
Usage of the political keyword 'propaganda' by the Chinese Communist Party has changed and expanded over time. These changes have been masked by strong continuities spanning periods in the history of the People's Republic of China from the Mao Zedong era (1949-76) to the new era of Xi Jinping (2012-present). Redefining Propaganda in Modern China builds on the work of earlier scholars to revisit the central issue of how propaganda has been understood within the Communist Party system. What did propaganda mean across successive eras? What were its institutions and functions? What were its main techniques and themes? What can we learn about popular consciousness as a result? In answering these questions, the contributors to this volume draw on a range of historical, cultural studies, propa ganda studies and comparative politics approaches. Their work captures the sweep of propaganda - its appearance in everyday life, as well as during extraordinary moments of mobilization (and demobilization), and its systematic continuities and discontinuities from the perspective of policy-makers, bureaucratic function aries and artists. More localized and granular case studies are balanced against deep readings and cross-cutting interpretive essays, which place the history of the People's Republic of China within broader temporal and comparative frames. Addressing a vital aspect of Chinese Communist Party authority, this book is meant to provide a timely and comprehensive update on what propaganda has meant ideologically, operationally, aesthetically and in terms of social experience.
Encompassing five continents and twenty centuries, this book puts ruler personality cults on the crossroads of disciplines rarely, if ever, juxtaposed before: among its authors are historians, linguists, media scholars, political scientists and communication sociologists from Europe, the United States and New Zealand. However, this breadth and versatility are not goals in themselves. Rather, they are the means to work out an integrated approach to personality cults, capable of overcoming both the dominance of much-discussed 20th century poster examples (Bolshevism-Nazism-Fascism) and the lack of interest in the related practices of leader adoration in religious and cultural contexts. Instead of reiterating the understandable but unfruitful fixation on rulers as the cults' focal points, the authors focus on communicative patterns and interactional chains linking rulers with their subjects: in this light, the adoration of political figures is seen as a collective enterprise impossible without active, if often tacit, collaboration between rulers and their constituencies.
This book examines the communist movement in the Arab world from the time of the Russian revolution until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It traces the interaction of the world communist movement which was characterized by an uncritical acceptance of Marxism-Leninism, and local communists, who moved from initial dependence on Moscow to a position more adapted to local circumstances and sensitivities that could be characterized as a distinctive 'Arab communism'. It goes on to trace the impact of 'Arab communism' on a range of issues in the region, arguing that the role of Arab communist parties was highly significant, and disproportionate to the relatively small numbers of communists in the countries concerned.
After being widely rejected in the late 20th century the work of Karl Marx is now being reassessed by many theorists and activists. "Karl Marx, Anthropologist" explores how this most influential of modern thinkers is still highly relevant for Anthropology today. Marx was profoundly influenced by critical Enlightenment thought. He believed that humans were social individuals that simultaneously satisfied and forged their needs in the contexts of historically particular social relations and created cultures. Marx continually refined the empirical, philosophical, and practical dimensions of his anthropology throughout his lifetime. Assessing key concepts, from the differences between class-based and classless societies to the roles of exploitation, alienation and domination in the making of social individuals, "Karl Marx, Anthropologist" is an essential guide to Marx's anthropological thought for the 21st century
Every political movement creates its own historical memory. The communist movement, though originally oriented towards the future, was no exception: The theory of human history constitutes a substantial part of Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels's writings, and the movement inspired by them very soon developed its own strong historical identity, combining the Marxist theory of history with the movement's victorious milestones such as the October Revolution and later the Great Patriotic War, which served as communist legitimization myths throughout almost the entire twentieth century. During the Stalinist period, however, the movements history became strongly reinterpreted to suit Joseph Stalin's political goals. After 1956, this reinterpretation lost most of its legitimating power and instead began to be a burden. The (unwanted) memory of Stalinism and subsequent examples of violence (the Gulag, Katyn, the 1956 Budapest uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring) contributed to the crisis of Eastern European state socialism in the late 1980s and led to attempts at reformulating or even rejecting communist self-identity. This book's first section analyzes the post-1989 memory of communism and state socialism and the self-identity of the Eastern and Western European left. The second section examines the state-socialist and post-socialist memorial landscapes in the former German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. The final section concentrates on the narratives the movement established, when in power, about its own past, with the examples of the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. |
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