Written with droll wit and lyrical elegance, this visionary book challenges the chorus of resignation—the notion that there is no alternative, that profit is the best relationship between people, and that the market guarantees democracy. Daniel Singer insists that a more free and egalitarian society can be won, and he predicts that the new millennium will be an age of confrontation, not consensus, with Western Europe as a probable first battlefield. | more…
First published in London in 1848, the Communist Manifesto is one of the most important books of all time: a document which helped to define the emerging socialist movement, altered the course of world history, and is universally acknowledged to be a cornerstone of modern social thought. | more…
Samir Amin, one of the most influential economists today, has produced another groundbreaking work. Spectres of Capitalism cuts through the current intellectual fashions that assume a global capitalist triumph, taking the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Marx and Engels’s classic tract, the Communist Manifesto, to focus upon the aspirations of the destitute millions of the post-Cold War era. | more…
Are we now in an age of “postmodernity”? Even as some on the right have proclaimed the “end of history” or the final triumph of capitalism, we are told by some left intellectuals that the “modern” epoch has ended, that the “Enlightenment project” is dead, that all the old verities and ideologies have lost their relevance, that the old principles of rationality no longer apply, and so on. Yet what is striking about the current diagnosis of postmodernity is that it has so much in common with older pronouncements of death, both radical and reactionary versions. What has ended, apparently, is not so much another, different epoch but the same one all over again. | more…
Ernst Fischer has crafted a brief, clear, and faithful exposition of Marx's main premises, with particular emphasis on historical context. This new edition of the English translation of Was Marx wirklich sagte (1968) includes new contributions by John Bellamy Foster that sharpen Fischer's focus for today's readers. Also included are a biographical chronology, extracts from major works of Marx, and “Marx's Method,” a valuable essay by the political economist Paul Sweezy. | more…
Since the 1994 uprisings in the Mexican state of Chiapas, the spokesman of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a masked rebel who calls himself Subcomandante Marcos, has become a symbol of revolt in the post-cold war era. Here are the words of Marcos—letters, stories for children, military communiqués, demands, poems, descriptions of colonial exploitation, travelogues, history lessons, spoofs of magic realism, subtle jokes, and inspiring anecdotes—which recast Mexican politics and revived rebel imaginations everywhere. They look backward to the traditions of Indian resistance and the dominant ideals of the Mexican revolution; they look forward to political strategies, styles, and theories that challenge the dominance of capitalism. The wit, anger, irony, and eloquence of these letters and communiqués document how history is being made after “the end of history.” | more…
This pathbreaking collection of essays recasts the prevailing conceptions of the historical roots and role of the U.S. Communist Party and its social setting. The contributors focus on the movement that formed around the party and the popular culture it expressed, particularly in the period from 1930 to 1960. They look at the impact of the part and its followers in the areas of education, literature, and the arts, in the African-American community, and on the women’s and labor movements. | more…
The poor and forgotten nations of the world can blame their downward spiral on an emerging world order that Samir Amin in this brilliant essay calls the “empire of chaos.” Comprised of the United States, Japan, and Germany, and backed by a weakened USSR and the comprador classes of the third world, this is an empire that will stop at nothing in its campaign to protect and expand its capitalist markets. | more…
West, professor of religion and director of the Afro-American studies program at Princeton University, shows that not only was ethics an integral part of the development of Marx’s own thinking throughout his career, but that this crucial concern has been obscured by such leading and influential interpreters as Engels, Kautsky, Lukács, and others who diverted Marx’s theory into narrow forms of positivism, economism, and Hegelianism. | more…
In this successor volume to the widely read Dynamics of Global Crisis, the authors engage in a provocative discussion of the history and contemporary dilemmas facing the movements that are variously described as antisystemic, social, or popular. The authors believe that these movements, which have for the past 150 years protested and organized against the multiple injustices of the existing system, are the key locus of social transformation. | more…
Much of Karl Marx’s most important work came out of his critique of other thinkers, including many socialists who differed significantly in their conceptions of socialism. The fourth volume in Hal Draper’s series looks at these critiques to illuminate what Marx’s socialism was, as well as what it was not. Some of these debates are well-known elements in Marx’s work, such as his writings on the anarchists Proudhon and Bakunin. Others are less familiar, such as the writings on “Bismarckian socialism” and “Boulangism,” but promise to become better known and understood with Draper’s exposition. He also discusses the more general ideological tendencies of “utopian” and “sentimental” socialisms, which took various forms and were ingredients in many different socialist movements. | more…
To understand the complex phenomenon of fascism and its success in Germany requires an integrated analysis of the economic, class, and power dimensions that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the ascension to power of the Nazi party. The contributors to this volume, including a number of scholars from East and West Germany whose works appear in English for the first time, collectively construct such an analysis. | more…