Marxism Rle Marxism

This book, first published in 1961 and revised in 1964, is both a critical study of a body of thought and an historical account of how Marxist theory arose from the context of European history in the 19th century. It traces the development of socialist thought from the French to the Russian Revolutions and attempts to show in what manner the political and intellectual problems of Central Europe between 1848 and 1948 came to dominate the theory and practice of that Marxist movement which formed the crucial link between the two revolutions. The author takes the view that Marxism is a movement and a body of doctrine which belongs essentially to the 19th century, which came to an end with the First World War and the Russian Revolution, and that its impact as a doctrine has now been absorbed.

This book, first published in 1977, presents for the first time a serious and systematic assessment of Marx primarily as a philosopher. It considers all major aspects of Marx’s theory – its methodology, its ontological dimensions, its approaches to the descriptions of history and of societies and their economic structures, its alleged predictions and its vision of the future – as well as some of its intellectual antecedents and twentieth-century heirs. The presentation of Marx’s ideas attempts to be at once faithful to them, as distinguished from their reinterpretations by later ‘Marxists’, and yet novel in form and language. From this unique standpoint, the book aims to bring the student of philosophy and of political ideas to a closer understanding of the intellectual foundations of Marx’s Capital and his writings in collaboration with Engels.

This book introduces the student to the various phenomenological and humanistic Marxist perspectives as they are being applied to education and provides an account of the strengths and weaknesses of these perspectives, drawing on a variety of disciplines in order to explain the controversies described. The opening chapters deal with the phenomenological perspective in the sociology of education, discussing its adoption of a phenomenological model of man, its use of anthropological studies, the importance of classroom studies, and its rejection of the ‘liberal’ philosophy of education. The aim is to show the significance of these ideas for education, with a discussion of the concept of alienation and schooling, developments in Marxism such as the focus on the mode of production and the labour process, and the political economy of education.

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty Four that ‘If there is hope, it lies in the proles.’ A century earlier Marx was unequivocal: the future belonged to the proletariat. Today such confidence might seem misplaced. The proletariat has not yet fulfilled Marx’s expectations, and seems unlikely ever to do so. How could Marx have entertained the notion that the proletariat would emancipate humanity from capitalism and from class rule itself? This book, first published in 1988, attempts an explanation by examining the sources and development of Marx’s concept of the proletariat. It contends that this was not only a crucial element in Marx’s theory but a significant departure in socialist thought. By examining this concept in detail the book uncovers a major contradiction in Marxian thought: although the proletariat is assigned a momentous task it is chiefly depicted as the class of suffering which is why, historically, it has preferred security to enterprise.

Marxism presents an authoritative, analytic survey of the course of Marxism, from its origins in the late eighteenth century through the post-World War II period. A classic of political history, this work is the culminating achievement of one of the leading historians of socialism.

The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, first published in 1962 and corrected and revised for a 1972 edition, examines carefully and critically the origin, precise nature and subsequent role of Marx’s ethical beliefs. Drawing freely on Marx’s still largely untranslated philosophical works and drafts the author elicits the ethical presuppositions with which Marx began. He then examines the intellectual development that made Marx a Communist and seeks to clarify the place of Marx’s ethic in his mature, ‘materialist’ work. Professor Kamenka distinguishes sharply between the critical, ethical views of Marx and the inept, conventional applications of his doctrine by Engels. He appraises the ‘ethics’ of the Communist Party and traces the development of the moral and legal theory in the Soviet Union. He concludes by subjecting Marxism as a whole to a radical, ethical and philosophical criticism for which Marx himself laid some of the foundations.

In what is the first sustained analysis of Marx’s attitude to the puzzle of the individual in history and society, this book, first published in 1990, challenges received views on the importance of class analysis and the place of a theory of human nature in Marx’s thought. The radical possibilities of individual agency in society are explored within a Marxian framework, and without recourse to the current fashions of methodological individualism or rational choice theory. In the context of the apparent antagonism between collectivist and individualist approaches to political explanation and social change, the author establishes that a ‘New Individual’, of singular importance for the understanding of contemporary society, can be identified. For the first time, the Grundrisse provides the basis of a major analysis of Marx’s thoughts on the individual. By illustrating the nature of the connections between collective existence and individual experience, Ian Forbes makes an important contribution towards the revitalization of socialist thought. He also develops a valuable counterpoint to rational actor models of politics and liberal theories of justice alike, by establishing the importance of a political theory that values human agency as much as it understands social and historical processes.

This study, first published in 1983, explores the connections between Marx’s philosophy and his empirical analysis of society and state, by showing the different meanings of many of Marx’s concepts as their role in his theory changes and the theory itself develops. Beginning with an examination of Marx’s search for a sound epistemological basis on which to build a social theory, Dr Barbalet then gives an analysis of the way in which Marx continually modifies the concepts he uses, and continues with an examination of the different functions they are given in different theoretical settings. Various nuances of Marx’s thought, often obscured by the simplistic ‘early-late’ dichotomy, are revealed by Dr Barbalet’s close attention to the progressive transformation of Marx’s concepts and by his scrupulous analysis of them in not only their textual but also their theoretical context. Finally, the book examines the manner in which Marx’s construction of social theory, by its very nature, means that some material is replaced by other theoretical fabric as the theoretical structure itself is in different ways dismantled and reorganised, as Marx’s thought evolves and develops.