LITMIR.BIZ

This book which combines the methods and results of both Freud and Marx is by one of the leaders of the West German student left during its most militant phase in the late 1960s. For reasons the author makes clear, the anti-authoritarian movement took more thorough­going and trenchant forms in West Germany than anywhere else. A new sexual morality was not only preached but practised. Is it possible, however – the author asks – that this new emphasis on sexual enlight­enment and liberty can become merely a characteristic of Western capitalism, which serves to activate the market economy, deflect rebellion, and hence contribute to the preservation of the system? In answering this question Reiche explains and develops Marcuse’s widely misunderstood concept of ‘repressive desublimation’. He exposes the artificial and illusory nature of many attempts – in Germany and elsewhere – at ‘sexual liberation’, and shows why it is impossible to overcome sexual oppression and mystification in our society in isolation from the political struggle.

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When this book was first published in English in 1975, the previous forty years had seen the emergence of a new tradition in the philosophy of the sciences, or 'epistemology' in France. The founder of this tradition was Gaston Bachelard. Rather than elaborating from existing philosophy a series of categories to judge science's claims to truth, Bachelard started from the twentieth-century revolution in physics and critically examined existing philosophy on the basis of the achievements of this revolution and the scientific practice it exemplified. This critique of philosophy produced an epistemology radically different from traditional idealism and empiricism. Simultaneously, it opened the way to a new history of the sciences which had been developed by Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault. This critique of empiricism and idealism in the name of science clearly parallels the theses of dialectical materialism. Hence a dialectical-materialist analysis illuminates both the achievements and limitations of the tradition. In this book Dominique Lecourt presents an exposition of Bachelard's epistemological writings and then offers a critique of that epistemology and of the works of Canguilhem and Foucault from a Marxist-Leninist viewpoint. In an introduction written especially for the English edition he compares Bachelard's positions with those of the different, but in some respects analogous, Anglo-Saxon traditions in epistemology descending from the works of Karl Popper, in particular with Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

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The Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko, who died in 1976, symbolizes one of the most notorious yet obscure episodes in the history of the Soviet Union. Emerging from provincial shadows in the Ukraine during the twenties, Lysenko achieved a meteoric career under Stalin's dictatorship, when ever greater claims were officially made for his 'environmentalism'. Overlord and autocrat of all Soviet biology after the Second World War, Lysenko's doctrines were promulgated throughout the international communist movement – from Britain to Japan – as a specifically 'proletarian' science, as opposed to mere bourgeois science. After Stalin's death, Lysenko soon plunged into discredit – although his agricultural recipes were to be approved again by Khruschev. Dominique Lecourt – author of the highly successful study Marxism and Epistemology – poses the question: what was the historical meaning of Lysenko? Was Lysenko no more than a brutal charlatan? Or did his ideas correspond – not to any canon of science – but to wider social forces at work in the USSR? Lecourt's sardonic and perceptive study provides a definitive critique of the follies of 'anti-Mendelian' biology, and a materialist account of the reasons for its triumph in Russia during the rule of Stalin. An important afterword traces the original idea of a proletarian science to its source in Bogdanov. In a major introductory essay, Louis Althusser poses the acute political problems which the history of Lysenko still represents for Communists everywhere, and for the first time directly indicts political repression in the USSR today.

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Nicos Poulantzas’s third major work is a pioneering survey of some of the most fundamental, yet least studied, aspects of the class structure of advanced capitalist societies today. The book starts with a general theoretical essay that for the first time seriously explores the distinction between the “agents” and “positions” of capitalist relations of production, and seeks to avoid the typical errors of either functionalism or historicism. It also provides a polemical reconsideration of the problem of the “nation state” as a political unit today, and its relationship to the internationalization of capital. Finally, and most originally, Poulantzas develops a long and powerful analysis of the much-abused concept of the “petty-bourgeoisie.” In this, he scrupulously distinguishes between the “traditional” categories of petty-bourgeoisie—shopkeepers, artisans, small peasants—and the “new” categories of clerical workers, supervisors, and salaried personnel in modern industry and commerce. At the same time he demonstrates the reasons why a unitary conceptualization of their class position is possible. The difficult question of the definition of “productive” and “unproductive” labor within Marx’s own account of the capitalist mode of production is subjected to a novel and radical reinterpretation. The political oscillations peculiar to each form of petty-bourgeoisie and especially their characteristic reactions to the industrial proletariat, are cogently assessed. Poulantzas ends his work with a reminder that the actions and options of the petty-bourgeoisie are critical to any successful struggle by the working class, which must secure the alliance of important sections of the petty-bourgeoisie if the fateful experience of Chile is not to recur elsewhere tomorrow. Combining empirical and theoretical materials throughout, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism represents a notable achievement in the development of Marxist social science and political thought.

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When Value and Naturalism in Marx was first published in English in 1979, recent controversies in socialist economic theory had been concentrated on the tenability or untenability of Marx's labour theory of value. Marco Lippi's provocative book accepts the Sraffian correction of Marx's account of profits and prices, but goes on to ask the central question: why did Marx identify value with embodied labour-time? The answer, Lippi argues, lies in a strong—though little-discussed—naturalistic strain in Marx's thought. Through a novel analysis of the discussion of circulation costs in Volume Two of Capital, he contends that Marx operated with a concept of 'production in general', as a relationship of man to nature common to all forms of society, in which labour-time appears as the sole real cost. It was this general conception of production, he suggests, that underlay Marx's insistence that profits, interest, rent and faux frais represent no more than a redistribution of a pre-given total—the mass of surplus value, in a system in which total profit equalled total surplus value and total price total value. While Lippi rejects Marx's naturalistic identification of value with embodied labour-time, he claims that the account developed from it of the anarchy of the market, of commodity fetishism, and of the laws of motion of capitalism is in fact logically independent and retains all its empirical validity. Value and Naturalism in Marx,the work of one of the most outstanding younger economists in Italy, reveals the classic economic theory of historical materialism in a quite new light.

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"Poulantzas is a sophisticated Marxist theoretician who straddles the fields of sociology and political science. His book is one of the most thoughtful exercises in Marxist reinterpretation, and has justifiably won him widespread respect among many scholars. Recommended for all self-respecting college libraries as well as for seminars for graduate and more sophisticated seniors." Choice "This is a book which deserves a very wide audience. Of great interest for Americans is the fact that he bridges Marxist and 'Western' social science writings with remarkable acuity. The translation is an excellent job." Journal of Politics "It is Poulantzas' great virtue to have seen so clearly that an adequate Marxist theory of politics must be able to deal with just those phenomena which non-Marxists have regarded as decisive refutations of Marxism. His range of reference is impressive." Times Literary Supplement

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Trotsky and Slavoj Žižek defend revolutionary violence. Written in the white heat of revolutionary Russia’s Civil War, Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism is one of the most potent defenses of revolutionary dictatorship. In his provocative commentary to this new edition the philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that Trotsky’s attack on the illusions of liberal democracy has a vital relevance today.

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Re-launch of the Collected Works of the legendary revolutionary in paperback Among the most influential political and social forces of the twentieth century, modern communism rests firmly on philosophical, political, and economic underpinnings developed by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, later known as Lenin. For anyone who seeks to understand the twentieth century, capitalism, the Russian Revolution, and the role of Communism in the tumultuous political and social movements that have shaped the modern world, the works of Lenin offer unparalleled insight and understanding. Taken together, they represent a balanced cross-section of his revolutionary theories of history, politics, and economics; his tactics for securing and retaining power; and his vision of a new social and economic order. This first volume contains four works (“New Economic Developments in Peasant Life,” “On the So-Called Market Question,” “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats,” “The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book”) written by Lenin in 1893–1894, at the outset of his revolutionary activity, during the first years of the struggle to establish a workers’ revolutionary party in Russia.

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This influential collection explores the pivotal texts and topics in the Marxist tradition. Ranging over questions of social theory, political theory, moral philosophy and literary criticism, it looks at the thought of Marx and Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lenin and Althusser. Included here are Geras’s influential and widely cited treatment of fetishism in Capital, his comprehensive review of debates on Marxism and justice, discussions on political organization, revolutionary mass action and party pluralism, and a novel analysis of the literary power of Trotsky’s writing.

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A bravura exploration of politics and writing in dark times. In The Last Resistance, Jacqueline Rose explores the power of writing to create and transform our political lives. In particular, she examines the role of literature in the Zionist imagination: here, literature is presented as a unique form of dissidence, with the power to expose the unconscious of nations, and often proposing radical alternatives to their dominant pathways and beliefs. While Israel-Palestine is the repeated focus, The Last Resistance also turns to post-apartheid South Africa, to American national fantasy post-9/11, and to key moments for the understanding of Jewish culture and memory. Rose also underscores the importance of psychoanalysis, both historically in relation to the unfolding of world events, and as a tool of political understanding. Examining topics ranging from David Grossman, through W.G. Sebald, Freud, Nadine Gordimer, the concept of evil, and suicide bombers, The Last Resistance offers a unique way of responding to the crises of the times.

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