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For Marx (Verso Classics, 1)

Louis Althusser

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Editorial Review:

The publication of "For Marx" in 1965 established Louis Althusser as an original and controversial Marxist philosopher. It contains Althusser's polemic revaluation of Marx's early works, his essay on "Contradiction and Overdetermination" and other articles on philosophy, ideology and aesthetics. Other works by Louis Althusser include "Reading Capital", "Montesquieu", "Rousseau and Marx" and "Essays in Ideology". The book has come to be regarded as the founding text of the school of "structuralism Marxism" which was presided over by the enigmatic figure of Louis Althusser. Structuralism constituted an intellectual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and radically transformed the way philosophy, political and social theory, history, science and aesthetics were discussed and thought about. The book was a key contribution to that process and it fundamentally recast the way in which many people understood Marx and Marxism. The book contains the classic statements of Althusser's analysis of the young Marx and the importance of Feuerbach during this formative period, of his thesis of the "epistemological break" between the early and the late Marx, and of his conception of dialectics, contradiction and "overdetermination". Also included is a study of the materialist theatre of Bertolazzi and Brecht and the critique of humanist readings of Marxism. Since his death in 1990, Althusser's legacy has come under renewed examination, and it is increasingly recognized that the influence of his ideas has been wider and deeper than previously thought.

Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent

Ernest Freeberg

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In 1920, socialist leader Eugene V. Debs ran for president while serving a ten-year jail term for speaking against America’s role in World War I. Though many called Debs a traitor, others praised him as a prisoner of conscience, a martyr to the cause of free speech. Nearly a million Americans agreed, voting for a man whom the government had branded an enemy to his country.

In a beautifully crafted narrative, Ernest Freeberg shows that the campaign to send Debs from an Atlanta jailhouse to the White House was part of a wider national debate over the right to free speech in wartime. Debs was one of thousands of Americans arrested for speaking his mind during the war, while government censors were silencing dozens of newspapers and magazines. When peace was restored, however, a nationwide protest was unleashed against the government’s repression, demanding amnesty for Debs and his fellow political prisoners. Led by a coalition of the country’s most important intellectuals, writers, and labor leaders, this protest not only liberated Debs, but also launched the American Civil Liberties Union and changed the course of free speech in wartime.

The Debs case illuminates our own struggle to define the boundaries of permissible dissent as we continue to balance the right of free speech with the demands of national security. In this memorable story of democracy on trial, Freeberg excavates an extraordinary episode in the history of one of America’s most prized ideals.

(20080303)

German Ideology, Part 1 and Selections from Parts 2 and 3 (German Ideology & Selections from Pts 2 & 3)

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

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The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century

Samir Amin, James Membrez

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The World We Wish to See presents a sweeping view of twentieth-century political history and a stirring appeal to take political organization seriously. Amin offers provocative analysis of contemporary resistance to neoliberalism, while boldly calling for a new global movement, an internationalism of peoples, to challenge the current order and fashion a better world.

Throughout the last century, great revolutions, the communist and socialist Internationals, and national liberation movements presented a serious challenge to global capital. Neoliberalism and the U.S. drive for military hegemony have given rise to new political and social movements and new attempts at international organization, such as the World Social Forum. Amin maps these oppositional formations, new and old, critically assessing their potential and limitations for the revolutionary project today.

Included in this volume is the full text of the Bamako Appeal, described as a Communist Manifesto for our age, and Amin s provocative new essay Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism.

Amin s masterful analysis offers new ground for realizing the world we wish to see.

Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines (Oxford World's Classics)

Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Henry Neville

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With the publication of Utopia (1516), Thomas More provided a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society, a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization, and a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential, it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinson's 1556 translation from More's original Latin together with letters and illustrations that accompanied early editions of Utopia.

This edition also includes two other, hitherto less accessible, utopian narratives. New Atlantis (1627) offers a fictional illustration of Francis Bacon's visionary ideal of the role that science should play in the modern society. Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668), a precursor of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, engages with some of the sexual, racial, and colonialist anxieties of the end of the early modern period. Bringing together these three New World texts, and situating them in wider Renaissance context, this edition-- including letters, maps, alphabets that accompanied early editions--illustrates the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination, as well as the different purposes to which it could be put.

Che Guevara on Global Justice

Ernesto Che Guevara, Ernesto "Che" Guevara

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"And if someone says we are just romantics, inveterate idealists, thinking the impossible, that the masses of people cannot become almost perfect human beings, we will have to answer a thousand and one times: Yes, it can be done; we are confident that humanity as a whole can advance." (CHE GUEVARA)Is there an alternative to the neoliberal globalization that is ravaging our planet?These classic works by Ernesto Che Guevara present a radical view of a different world in which human solidarity and understanding replace aggressive capitalist competition and exploitation.Included here are Che's essay, "Socialism and Man in Cuba," his controversial speech in Algiers in 1965, and his final message to Tricontinental, in which he calls for the creation of "Two, Three, Many Vietnams."Che Guevara was born in Argentina and traveled throughout Latin America before joining the Cuban revolutionary movement that toppled the Batista dictatorship in 1959. Although best known for his writings on guerrilla warfare, this book shows Che as a profound thinker with a radical world view that still strikes a chord with young rebels in every country today.

Post-Scarcity Anarchism

Murray Bookchin

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indispensable 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

This landmark of collection of essays is, along with Paul Goodman's "Drawing the Line", perhaps the finest American contribution to Anarchist thought in the latter part of the 20th Century. Bookchin draws on a tremendous wealth of experience as a revolutionary (he got his start as a Communist Party agitator at age 8), and careful study of radical history, ecology, and technology, to put forward the claim that society has for the first time entered onto the threshold of the `post-scarcity' era, an era in which there is sufficient material wealth to provide for the subsistence of all people everywhere. Under these circusmstances, Bookchin argues, the culture of domination and exploitation that grew under conditions of scarcity, want, and competition, can finally give way to an anarchist culture of freedom, localism, community, direct democracy, and human scale.

The introduction, and title essay, lay out the particulars of the above argument. The essay "The Forms of Freedom" presents a fascinating capsule history of the spontaneous formation of directly democratic structures of government--factory councils and neighborhood committees-- in revolutionary situations in Paris, Petrograd, Barcelona, and elsewhere, and examines their precursors in the ancient Greeke `polis'. The widely read polemic "Listen, Marxist!", launches a crushing attack on the ideology of the Leninist vanguard groups of the sixties, pointing out the flaws and problems with applying Marx's ideas mechanically to 20th century conditions, and laying bare the inexorable failures of Leninist revolutionaries to deliver on their hollow promises of liberation. Other essays examine ecology and anarchism, technology, and the Paris uprisings of 1968.

A tremendously insightful and important collection which is highly instructive for today's social movements.

Editorial Review:

In this series of essays, Murray Bookchin balances his ecological and anarchist vision with the promising opportunities of a "post-scarcity" era. Technological advances during the 20th century have expanded production in the pursuit of corporate profit at the expense of human need and ecological sustainability. New possibilities for human freedom must combine an ecological outlook with the dissolution of hierarchical social relations, capitalism and canonical political orientation. Bookchin's utopian vision, rooted in the realities of contemporary society, remains refreshingly pragmatic. "Book-chin makes a trenchant analysis of modern society and offers a pointed, provocative discussion of the ecological crisis."-Library Journal

Murray Bookchin has been an active voice in the ecology and anarchist movements for more than 40 years.

Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left

Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Not my favorite book 1 out of 5 stars.
32 of 40 people found this review helpful.

I have many criticisms to make about this book, but I will limit myself to the following points. Although Zizek makes an effort to be understood, Laclau and Butler compete for showing who is more obscure and pedantic. In spite all the apparent erudition of the authors, or rather because of it, the issue of hegemony is not well-focused. Certainly Gramsci was quite concerned about providing a philosophical dimension to his social reflection, but Laclau, Butler and, to a lesser extend Zizek, bury the social reflection under tons of excessive philosophical references. The lack of sociological dimension is particularly noticeable regarding Laclau's discussion of contigency. The blending of Kant, Hegel, Lacan, Saussure, to mention the main characters, is simply theoretical over-killing. It will take an article to show how shaky the theoretical connetion between hegemony and universalism is. It is my impression that Gramsci would not recognize his work in this academic potpourri. I bought the book, read carefully from cover to cover, and I strongly dislike it.

Editorial Review:

What is the contemporary legacy of Gramsci's notion of Hegemony? How can universality be reformulated now that its spurious versions have been so thoroughly criticized? In this ground-breaking project, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism- versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a globalized economy, and the relative merits of post-structumalism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory. While the rigour and intelligence with which these writers approach their work is formidable, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality benefits additionally from their clear sense of energy and enjoyment in a revealing and often unpredictable exchange.

Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Louis Althusser

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No figure among the western Marxist theoreticians has loomed larger in the postwar period than Louis Althusser. A rebel against the Catholic tradition in which he was raised, Althusser studied philosophy and later joined both the faculty of the Ecole normal superieure and the French Communist Party in 1948. Viewed as a "structuralist Marxist," Althusser was as much admired for his independence of intellect as he was for his rigorous defense of Marx. The latter was best illustrated in For Marx (1965), and Reading Capital (1968). These works, along with Lenin and Philosophy (1971) had an enormous influence on the New Left of the 1960s and continues to influence modern Marxist scholarship.

This classic work, which to date has sold more than 30,000 copies, covers the range of Louis Althusser's interests and contributions in philosophy, economics, psychology, aesthetics, and political science.

Marx, in Althusser's view, was subject in his earlier writings to the ruling ideology of his day. Thus for Althusser, the interpretation of Marx involves a repudiation of all efforts to draw from Marx's early writings a view of Marx as a "humanist" and "historicist."

Lenin and Philosophy also contains Althusser's essay on Lenin's study of Hegel; a major essay on the state, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," "Freud and Lacan: A letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre," and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract." The book opens with a 1968 interview in which Althusser discusses his personal, political, and intellectual history.

The German Ideology, including Theses on Feuerbach (Great Books in Philosophy)

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great work, poor edition 2 out of 5 stars.
19 of 20 people found this review helpful.

I highly recommend The German Ideology, but wish to warn buyers of this edition (Prometheus). The quality of the print in this edition is very low, the font is difficult to read, and the spacing is very tight. Perhaps most frustrating, however, is that the text is marked with numbers for footnotes that have no actual corresponding footnotes. I have written to the publisher three times about this issue and have received no response or explanation. The name of the translator is also suspiciously absent, and there is no introduction to the work--something that in this case would be very helpful. On the positive side, I think this edition provides the complete German Ideology, but Book One is really all that is necessary or ever referenced, and this can be found in other editions.

Editorial Review:

Nearly two years before his powerful Communist Manifesto, Marx (1818-1883) co-wrote "The German Ideology" in 1845 with friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels expounding a new political worldview, including positions on materialism, labour, production, alienation, the expansion of capitalism, class conflict, revolution, and eventually communism. They chart the course of 'true' socialism based on Hegel's dialectic, while criticising the ideas of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx expanded his criticism of the latter in his now famous Theses on Feuerbach, found after Marx's death and published by Engels in 1888. "Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy", also found among the posthumous papers of Marx, is a fragment of an introduction to his main works. Combining these three works, this volume is essential for an understanding of Marxism.