Marxism In A Lost Century

Marxism in a Lost Century retells the history of the radical left during the twentieth century through the words and deeds of Paul Mattick. Three biographical themes receive special attention -- the self-taught nature of left-wing activity, Mattick’s publishing endeavors, and the nexus of men, politics, and friendship.

This book outlines and assesses the Marxist tradition as it developed in the twentieth century, and considers its place and standing as we move into the twenty-first century. It is divided into three parts examining Marxism historically, geographically and thematically: Part 1 analyzes early Marxism in Russia and Europe as it developed after the death of Marx. Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Kautsky, Bernstein and the school of thought associated with them are all examined Part 2 deals with thinkers, debates and movements that followed the early Marxism focused on in part one, and includes chapters on Marxism in Europe, the Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and Latin America Part 3 is concerned with more contemporary debates in relation to Marxism and its standing and role today. The chapters in this section consider various themes including the relationship between theory and practice in Marxism, democratic procedure and liberties, Marxism as an economic critique of capitalism and Marxist methodology. Twentieth Century Marxism is not an introspective discussion of Marxism that would be of interest only to a limited number of specialists. Rather, it provides a thoughtful and stimulating contribution to debates about the role of Marxism today and its future direction.

This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.

A new beginning for Marxism might just be on the horizon of a landscape despoiled by Soviet Communism and a now wobbling world capitalism. In this text Berman brings together various discussions of work on Marx and Marxism.

Old Gods, New Enigmas is the highly-anticipated book by the best-selling author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums. Mike Davis spent years working factory jobs and sitting behind the wheel of an eighteen wheeler before his profile as one of the world's leading urbanists emerged with the publication of his sober, if dystopian survey of Los Angeles. Since then, he's developed a reputation not only for his caustic analysis of ecological catastrophe and colonial history, but as a stylist without peer. Old Gods, New Enigmas is Davis's book-length engagement with Karl Marx, marking the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth and exploring Davis's thinking on history, labor, capitalism, and revolution - themes ever present the early work from this leading radical thinker. This will be his first book on Marxism itself. In a time of ubiquitous disgust with political and economic elites, explores the question of revolutionary agency-what social forces and conditions do we need to transform the current order?-and the situation of the world's working classes from the US to Europe to China. Even the most preliminary tasks are daunting. A new theory of revolution needs to return to the big issues in classical socialist thought, such as clarifying "proletarian agency", before turning to the urgent questions of our time: global warming, the social and economic gutting of the rustbelt, and the city's demographic eclipse of the countryside. What does revolution look like after the end of history?

Georg Lukács’s philosophy of praxis, penned between 1918 and 1928, remains a revolutionary and apocryphal presence within Marxism. His History and Class Consciousness has inspired a century of rapture and reprobation, perhaps, as Gillian Rose suggested, because of its ‘invitation to hermeneutic anarchy’. In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López radicalises Lukács’s famous return to Hegel by reassembling his 1920s philosophy as a conceptual-historical totality. This speculative reading defends Lukács while proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique. While Lukács’s concept of praxis approaches the shape of Hegel’s Absolute, it tragically fails to bear its weight. However, as López argues, Lukács’s failure was productive: it raises crucial political, methodological and philosophical questions for Marxism, offering to redeem a lost century.

“If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are troubled as to why, how and by whom political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good intellectual reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wishing to act with others, to ‘do something,’ you already have much in common with the writers of the three essays in this book.” — Adrienne Rich With a preface by Adrienne Rich, Manifesto presents the radical vision of four famous young rebels: Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Che Guevara’s Socialism and Humanity.