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.

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, 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.

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.

This study is the result of a four-year project led by a team at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Focusing on three East Asian and three East European states - the former Soviet Union, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, China, Vietnam and the People's Democratic Republic of Korea - it looks at why and how communist states reform their foreign policy as they open to the outside world. It also aims to cast light on the broader question of the linkage of domestic and foreign policies and to examine ways in which states can cope with increased international interdependence. The book looks in detail at the different kinds of reforms implemented by European and Asian communists. It attempts to explain why some communist regimes collapsed and why, since the European revolutions of 1989-1991, the rule of communist parties has been confined largely to Asia.

Black Communist women throughout the early to mid-twentieth century fought for and led mass campaigns in the service of building collective power in the fight for liberation. Through concrete materialist analysis of the conditions of Black workers, these women argued that racial and economic equality can only be achieved by overthrowing capitalism. The first collection of its kind, Organize, Fight, Win brings together three decades of Black Communist women's political writings. In doing so, it highlights the link between Communism and Black liberation. Likewise, it makes clear how Black women fundamentally shaped, and were shaped by, Communist praxis in the twentieth century. Organize, Fight, Win includes writings from card-carrying Communists like Dorothy Burnham, Williana Burroughs, Grace P. Campbell, Alice Childress, Marvel Cooke, Esther Cooper Jackson, Thelma Dale Perkins, Vicki Garvin, Yvonne Gregory, Claudia Jones, Maude White Katz, and Louise Thompson Patterson, and writings by those who organized alongside the Communist Party, like Ella Baker, Charlotta Bass, Thyra Edwards, Lorraine Hansberry, and Dorothy Hunton.

First Published in 1992. The present collection of essays brings together the concepts of change and development, by using the concept of evolution to explore various forms of change in the communist and 'post-communist' world. The author's experience of living in the provinces of the Soviet Union later persuaded them of the inappropriateness of at least a rigid application of the concept of totalitarianism. This title will also satiate the further interest of the interaction between 'capitalism' (or liberal democracy) and 'communism', particularly the impact of capitalism's technical innovations on some of communism's basic principles of rule.

This text brings together studies in various aspects of the theory of the capitalist economy. It focuses on major themes of the Marxist tradition that postulate the existence and importance of social relations and structures underlying the esoteric realm of economic categories: prices, profits, wages, etc. The author takes a reappraising, critical look at the concepts of the deep structure - value, explitation, immanent crisis - using the analytical tools of modern economics to improve those concepts. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 explores the essential nature of capitalism, re-examining problems in the theory of value and exploitation. Part 2 tackles the issue of capitalism-specific paths of growth and technical change, putting forward a rigorous theory of biased technical change and non-steady-state growth. Part 3 examines the cyclical character of capitalist growth and the theory of crises. Finally, Part 4 places capitalism in the wider framework of modes of production, considering the theory of precapitalist formations and aspects of the theory and practical experience of socialism. The guiding theme is the combination, or confrontation, of rigorous, quantitative analytical techniques with equally demanding qualitative and political-economic conceptualization. The book's premise is that this interface is essential to a progressive yet distinctively Marxist social theory.

This text brings together studies in various aspects of the theory of the capitalist economy. It focuses on major themes of the Marxist tradition that postulate the existence and importance of social relations and structures underlying the esoteric realm of economic categories: prices, profits, wages, etc. The author takes a reappraising, critical look at the concepts of the deep structure - value, explitation, immanent crisis - using the analytical tools of modern economics to improve those concepts. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 explores the essential nature of capitalism, re-examining problems in the theory of value and exploitation. Part 2 tackles the issue of capitalism-specific paths of growth and technical change, putting forward a rigorous theory of biased technical change and non-steady-state growth. Part 3 examines the cyclical character of capitalist growth and the theory of crises. Finally, Part 4 places capitalism in the wider framework of modes of production, considering the theory of precapitalist formations and aspects of the theory and practical experience of socialism. The guiding theme is the combination, or confrontation, of rigorous, quantitative analytical techniques with equally demanding qualitative and political-economic conceptualization. The book's premise is that this interface is essential to a progressive yet distinctively Marxist social theory.

This book celebrates and seeks to understand the overlooked appearances of hybrid forms in visual culture; artefacts and practices that meld or interweave incongruous elements in innovative ways. And with an emphasis on the material aspects of such entities, the book adopts the term 'mixed form' for them. Focusing on key phenomena in the last half millennium such as the cabinet of curiosities, the broadside ballad and the chapbook as early forms of image-text, the scrapbook, assemblage, and, in digital times, so-called 'mixed reality,' the book argues that while the quality of inconsistency is traditionally dismissed, its expression nevertheless plays a vital role in social life. Crucially, Mixed Forms of Visual Culture relates its phenomena to the emergence of the division of labour under capitalism and addresses the shifting relationships between art and life, when singularity and uniformity are variously valued and dismissed in the two arenas, and at different points in history. Two of the book's chapters take the form of visual essays, with one comprising an anthology of found scrapbook pages and the other offering an analysis of artists' scrapbooks. The book is richly illustrated throughout.

Marx's theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat has for too long been unrecognized as the core of Marxist political theory. In this provocative book, John Ehrenberg offers a persuasive analysis of this controversial theory and argues that it can no longer be displaced or ignored as the viable democratic center of Marxist political thought.
Marx, Engels and Lenin considered the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the revolutionary transition to a classless and democratic society. This book traces the development of the theory from Marxism's origin in the 1840s to Lenin's death in 1924, and establishes the connections between the work of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Ehrenberg also offers insightful observations about contemporary socialism's theoretical and political crises.
"The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" challenges the current fad of relegating Marxism to the dust-bin of history and illuminates important theoretical issues in liberal political theory, Marxism, and the recent stateof Communism.

The popularization of basic legal knowledge is an important and contested technique of state governance in China today. Its roots reach back to the early years of Chinese Communist Party rule. Legal Lessons tells the story of how the party-state attempted to mobilize ordinary citizens to learn laws during the early years of the Mao period (1949-1976) and in the decade after Mao's death. Examining case studies such as the dissemination of the 1950 Marriage Law and successive constitutions since 1954 in Beijing and Shanghai, Jennifer Altehenger traces the dissemination of legal knowledge at different levels of state and society. Archival records, internal publications, periodicals, advice manuals, memoirs, and colorful propaganda materials reveal how official attempts to determine and promote "correct" understandings of laws intersected with people's interpretations of written laws and with their experiences of laws in practice. They also show how diverse groups-including party-state leadership, legal experts, publishers, writers, artists, and local officials, along with ordinary people-helped to define the meaning of laws in China's socialist society. Placing mass legal education and law propaganda at the center of analysis, Legal Lessons offers a new perspective on the sociocultural and political history of law in socialist China.

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.

One woman's national, political, ethnic, social, and personal identities impart an extraordinary perspective on the histories of Europe, Polish Jews, Communism, activism, and survival during the twentieth century. Tonia Lechtman was a Jew, a loving mother and wife, a Polish patriot, a committed Communist, and a Holocaust survivor. Throughout her life these identities brought her to multiple countries--Poland, Palestine, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel--during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmic decades of the twentieth century. In most of those places, she lived on the margins of society while working to promote Communism and trying to create a safe space for her small children. Born in Lodz in 1918, Lechtman became fascinated with Communism in her early youth. In 1935, to avoid the consequences of her political activism during an increasingly anti-Semitic and hostile political environment, the family moved to Palestine, where Tonia met her future husband, Sioma. In 1937, the couple traveled to Spain to participate in the Spanish Civil War. After discovering she was pregnant, Lechtman relocated to France while Sioma joined the International Brigades. She spent the Second World War in Europe, traveling with two small children between France, Germany, and Switzerland, at times only miraculously avoiding arrest and being transported east to Nazi camps. After the war, she returned to Poland, where she planned to (re)build Communist Poland. However, soon after her arrival she was imprisoned for six years. In 1971, under pressure from her children, Lechtman emigrated from Poland to Israel, where she died in 1996. In writing Lechtman's biography, Anna Muller has consulted a rich collection of primary source material, including archival documentation, private documents and photographs, interviews from different periods of Lechtman's life, and personal correspondence. Despite this intimacy, Muller also acknowledges key historiographical questions arising from the lacunae of lost materials, the selective preservation of others, and her own interpretive work translating a life into a life story.

Memoirs of the Chinese author, Chen Xeuzhao, who was branded a rightist by the communist authorities. The book tells of her suffering during the Cultural Revolution.

This autobiographical novella was written in 1980 by one of China's leading dissidents, who was released from jail in late October 1990 again after being imprisoned as a pro-democracy activist in the wake of the Tiananmen incident of spring 1989. Wang recounts three episodes of extreme hardship in his life: incarceration in a Guomindang jail during the 1930s for his communist activism, on the run from Japanese troops during the 1940s in a bleak part of Shandong Province, and imprisonment as a "rightist" in Shanghai during the 1960s cultural revolution. The central theme of the three stories is extreme deprivation and "Hunger".

This autobiographical novella was written in 1980 by one of China's leading dissidents, who was released from jail in late October 1990 again after being imprisoned as a pro-democracy activist in the wake of the Tiananmen incident of spring 1989. Wang recounts three episodes of extreme hardship in his life: incarceration in a Guomindang jail during the 1930s for his communist activism, on the run from Japanese troops during the 1940s in a bleak part of Shandong Province, and imprisonment as a "rightist" in Shanghai during the 1960s cultural revolution. The central theme of the three stories is extreme deprivation and "Hunger".

Over the past several years observers have become aware of what might be called the "expansionary logic" of the reform debate in the Soviet Union. Punctuated by periods of reaction and retreat, successive phases of reform momentum have brought to the fore ideas and proposals that only months before had been considered too radically unorthodox for prudent discussion. In this account, Murray Yanowitch traces the dynamic evolution of reform thinking and the emergence of liberal and social-democratic schools of thought on several pivotal issues. He shows how the contemporary debate over a recurrent theme - workplace democracy - escalated into demands for democratization of the society and political pluralism, and how similarly time-honoured discussions of the problem of economic inequality took unexpected turns, leading to reconsideration of notions of social justice, attacks on privilege, and, ultimately, demands for destatization and property reform. The cumulative impact of these developments, Yanowitch shows, has not only delegitimated the monopoly of the Communist party but has destroyed the sacral character of Marxism-Leninism itself.

Over the past several years observers have become aware of what might be called the "expansionary logic" of the reform debate in the Soviet Union. Punctuated by periods of reaction and retreat, successive phases of reform momentum have brought to the fore ideas and proposals that only months before had been considered too radically unorthodox for prudent discussion. In this account, Murray Yanowitch traces the dynamic evolution of reform thinking and the emergence of liberal and social-democratic schools of thought on several pivotal issues. He shows how the contemporary debate over a recurrent theme - workplace democracy - escalated into demands for democratization of the society and political pluralism, and how similarly time-honoured discussions of the problem of economic inequality took unexpected turns, leading to reconsideration of notions of social justice, attacks on privilege, and, ultimately, demands for destatization and property reform. The cumulative impact of these developments, Yanowitch shows, has not only delegitimated the monopoly of the Communist party but has destroyed the sacral character of Marxism-Leninism itself.

The epic story of an enormous Soviet apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman's Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine's gripping narrative tells the chilling true story of an enormous Moscow apartment building where Soviet leaders and their families lived until hundreds of these Bolshevik true believers were led, one by one, to prison or to their deaths in Stalin's purges. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews with survivors, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, this epic story weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.

In this book, Sean Homer addresses Slavoj Zizek's work in a specific political conjuncture, his political interventions in the Balkans. The charge of inconsistency and contradiction is frequently levelled at Zizek's politics, a charge he openly embraces in the name of "pragmatism." Homer argues that his interventions in the Balkans expose the dangers of this pragmatism for the renewal of the Leftist politics that he calls for. The book assesses Zizek's political interventions in so far as they advance his self-proclaimed "ruthlessly radical" aims about changing the world. Homer argues the Balkans can be seen as Zizek's symptom, that element which does not fit into the system, but speaks its truth and reveals what the system cannot acknowledge about itself. In Part II Homer explores Zizek's radicalism through his critique of Alain Badiou, arguing that Badiou's "affirmationism" provides a firmer grounding for the renewal of the left than Zizek's negative gesture analyzed in Part I. What distinguishes Zizek from the majority of the contemporary Left today is his valorization of violence; Homer tackles this issue head-on in relation to political violence in Greece. Finally, Homer defends the utopian impulse on the radical left against its Lacanian critics.

The last two decades have seen Marxism's academic renascence. In fields as diverse as law, literary criticism, history, and philosophy, Marxism once again captivates no small number of scholars. In part, this reassessment is driven by the efforts of a group of philosophers and economists to reconstruct Marx from the ground up on a more rigorous basis. The work of these "Analytical Marxists" -- who include G.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, and John Roemer -- is given a sustained examination and critique in David Gordon's Resurrecting Marx.

The charge of the Analytical Marxists that capitalism is inherently exploitative and unjust is the primary subject of Gordon's book. Gordon takes issue with that contention; he argues that the Analytical Marxists' withering criticism of classical Marxism is essentially correct, but that they fail to replace it with a superior theoretical edifice. Gordon also analyzes the Analytical Marxists' reformulation of the Marxian notion of exploitation, the implications of their rejection of the labor theory of value, their differences over what rights people have, and their arguments for the compatibility of markets with socialism.

An analysis of the Chinese Communist Party from the time of Deng Xiaoping's return to power in 1978 to his resignation from his last major party post in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis, this work traces the evolution of Deng's grand strategy to create unity and stability so that he could launch his ambitious programme to modernize China by the year 2000. The author examines the impact of Deng's goal on the events of spring 1989.

From longtime labor organizer Jane McAlevey, a vital call-to-arms in favor of unions, a key force capable of defending our democracy For decades, racism, corporate greed, and a skewed political system have been eating away at the social and political fabric of the United States. Yet as McAlevey reminds us, there is one weapon whose effectiveness has been proven repeatedly throughout U.S. history: unions. In A Collective Bargain, longtime labor organizer, environmental activist, and political campaigner Jane McAlevey makes the case that unions are a key institution capable of taking effective action against today's super-rich corporate class. Since the 1930s, when unions flourished under New Deal protections, corporations have waged a stealthy and ruthless war against the labor movement. And they've been winning. Until today. Because, as McAlevey shows, unions are making a comeback. Want to reverse the nation's mounting wealth gap? Put an end to sexual harassment in the workplace? End racial disparities on the job? Negotiate climate justice? Bring back unions. As McAlevey travels from Pennsylvania hospitals, where nurses are building a new kind of patient-centered unionism, to Silicon Valley, where tech workers have turned to old-fashioned collective action, to the battle being waged by America's teachers, readers have a ringside seat at the struggles that will shape our country-and our future.