Download or read book Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy written by Duy Lap Nguyen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the connections between Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history and a Marxian Critique of Political Economy, Duy Lap Nguyen analyses Benjamin's early writings and their development into a distinct understanding of historical materialism. Benjamin's historically materialist conception of history is shown to be characterised by a focus on the religion of capitalism, the mythology of the state, and messianic time. Revealing these factors, Nguyen joins up Benjamin's philosophical critique of the Kantian conception of history, alongside the historical trajectory of capitalism he subscribed to. Influenced by the theory of fascism outlined by German Marxist theorist Karl Korsch, we see how Benjamin's own theory of revolution and redemption in capitalist society developed into a sophisticated critique. Essential to Benjamin's materialist critique was a recognition of the fallibility of the Enlightenment notion of progress, as well as the need to overturn the political and economic catastrophes which enable capitalism and fascism to thrive. In mapping the exact course of Benjamin's critical historical materialism, Nguyen fully explicates the unique contribution he made to western Marxism.
Download or read book Toward the Critique of Violence written by Walter Benjamin and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, "Toward the Critique of Violence," this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory. The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context. With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice—which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion—Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago.
Download or read book Main Currents of Marxism written by Leszek Kołakowski and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005 with total page 1324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The commanding study of Marxism, now in one masterful volume with a new preface and epilogue by the author.
Download or read book The Sociology of Virtue written by John L. Stanley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-06-21 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Georges Sorel's reputation as a proponent of violence has helped to link his ideas to fascist and totalitarian thought. Much of the literature on Sorel as developed this theme, at the expense of what Sorel himself stated as his primary purpose, "the discovery of the historical genesis of morals." How, Sorel asked, in the light of the development of modern industry and the vast powers of the modern state the individual can possess a sense of self-worth and at the same time help to sustain a cultural vitality similar to the great societies of antiquity? How is it possible to avoid the utter resignation and nihilistic relativism of modern existence? In his writings Sorel outlined a sociology of virtue that combined the importance of family love as the basis of community feelings with acceptance of the basis of individual vitality as constant industrial struggle against nature. Sorel's solution is different from Marx's: in place of the ida of transcended alienation, Sorel envisions an agonal striving against nature's unceasing resistance to our efforts. The Feuerbachian unity of nature that, for Marx, had been alienated under capitalism, Sorel regarded as being inherently fragmented by scientific procedures themselves, as well as by the industrial processes that correspond to those scientific procedures. For Sorel, the struggle against nature is the struggle that enables man to overcome himself, to strive against his own inclination to passivity, sloth, and licentiousness. The Marxist concept of totality so necessary to the vision of a communist society is rejected, in favor of a pragmatic, pluralist view of nature that parallels the social pluralism of a regime of workers' syndicates. The primary function of Sorel's famous "myth of the general strike" is to link the workers' constant struggles against capitalist employers to the never-ending struggle against nature. The feelings engendered by such a strubble constitute the true core of socialism; without such feelings, socialism is doomed to the same decay that Sorel and Marx foresaw for capitalist civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.
Download or read book Le Socialisme Et L evolution de L Angleterre Contemporaine 1880 1911 written by Édouard Guyot and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Marx at 200 written by Gilbert Faccarello and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides new vistas on Karl Marx’s political economy, philosophy and politics on the occasion of his 200th birthday. Often using hitherto unknown material from the recently published Marx- Engels Gesamtausgabe (the MEGA2 edition), the contributions throw new light on Marx’s works and activities, the sources he used and the discussions he had, correcting received opinions on his doctrines. The themes dealt with include Marx’s concepts of alienation and commodity fetishism, the labour theory of value and the theory of exploitation, Marx’s studies of capital accumulation and economic growth and his analysis of economic crises and of the labour contract. Novel developments in the reception of his works in France and the UK conclude the volume. This book was originally published as a special issue of The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.
Download or read book Neither Right Nor Left written by Zeev Sternhell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Few books on European history in recent memory have caused such controversy and commotion," wrote Robert Wohl in 1991 in a major review of Neither Right nor Left. Listed by Le Monde as one of the forty most important books published in France during the 1980s, this explosive work asserts that fascism was an important part of the mainstream of European history, not just a temporary development in Germany and Italy but a significant aspect of French culture as well. Neither right nor left, fascism united antibourgeois, antiliberal nationalism, and revolutionary syndicalist thought, each of which joined in reflecting the political culture inherited from eighteenth-century France. From the first, Sternhell's argument generated strong feelings among people who wished to forget the Vichy years, and his themes drew enormous public attention in 1994, as Paul Touvier was condemned for crimes against humanity and a new biography probed President Mitterand's Vichy connections. The author's new preface speaks to the debates of 1994 and reinforces the necessity of acknowledging the past, as President Chirac has recently done on France's behalf.
Download or read book Praxis written by and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 898 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sur le Chemin du Socialisme written by Y. V. Andropov and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sur le Chemin du Socialisme
Download or read book Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis written by Ludwig von Mises and published by VM eBooks. This book was released on 2016-11-24 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socialism is the watchword and the catchword of our day. The socialist idea dominates the modem spirit. The masses approve of it. It expresses the thoughts and feelings of all; it has set its seal upon our time. When history comes to tell our story it will write above the chapter “The Epoch of Socialism.” As yet, it is true, Socialism has not created a society which can be said to represent its ideal. But for more than a generation the policies of civilized nations have been directed towards nothing less than a gradual realization of Socialism.17 In recent years the movement has grown noticeably in vigour and tenacity. Some nations have sought to achieve Socialism, in its fullest sense, at a single stroke. Before our eyes Russian Bolshevism has already accomplished something which, whatever we believe to be its significance, must by the very magnitude of its design be regarded as one of the most remarkable achievements known to world history. Elsewhere no one has yet achieved so much. But with other peoples only the inner contradictions of Socialism itself and the fact that it cannot be completely realized have frustrated socialist triumph. They also have gone as far as they could under the given circumstances. Opposition in principle to Socialism there is none. Today no influential party would dare openly to advocate Private Property in the Means of Production. The word “Capitalism” expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas. In seeking to combat Socialism from the standpoint of their special class interest these opponents—the parties which particularly call themselves “bourgeois” or “peasant”—admit indirectly the validity of all the essentials of socialist thought. For if it is only possible to argue against the socialist programme that it endangers the particular interests of one part of humanity, one has really affirmed Socialism. If one complains that the system of economic and social organization which is based on private property in the means of production does not sufficiently consider the interests of the community, that it serves only the purposes of single strata, and that it limits productivity; and if therefore one demands with the supporters of the various “social-political” and “social-reform” movements, state interference in all fields of economic life, then one has fundamentally accepted the principle of the socialist programme. Or again, if one can only argue against socialism that the imperfections of human nature make its realization impossible, or that it is inexpedient under existing economic conditions to proceed at once to socialization, then one merely confesses that one has capitulated to socialist ideas. The nationalist, too, affirms socialism, and objects only to its Internationalism. He wishes to combine Socialism with the ideas of Imperialism and the struggle against foreign nations. He is a national, not an international socialist; but he, also, approves of the essential principles of Socialism.
Download or read book The Birth of Fascist Ideology written by Zeev Sternhell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When The Birth of Fascist Ideology was first published in 1989 in France and at the beginning of 1993 in Italy, it aroused a storm of response, positive and negative, to Zeev Sternhell's controversial interpretations. In Sternhell's view, fascism was much more than an episode in the history of Italy. He argues here that it possessed a coherent ideology with deep roots in European civilization. Long before fascism became a political force, he maintains, it was a major cultural phenomenon. This important book further asserts that although fascist ideology was grounded in a revolt against the Enlightenment, it was not a reactionary movement. It represented, instead, an ideological alternative to Marxism and liberalism and competed effectively with them by positing a revolt against modernity. Sternhell argues that the conceptual framework of fascism played an important role in its development. Building on radical nationalism and an "antimaterialist" revision of Marxism, fascism sought to destroy the existing political order and to uproot its theoretical and moral foundations. At the same time, its proponents wished to preserve all the achievements of modern technology and the advantages of the market economy. Nevertheless, fascism opposed every "bourgeois" value: universalism, humanism, progress, natural rights, and equality. Thus, as Sternhell shows, the fascists adopted the economic aspect of liberalism but completely denied its philosophical principles and the intellectual and moral heritage of modernity.
Download or read book Praxis Edition Internationale written by and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Anarchism written by Daniel Guerin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the ablest leaders and writers of the French New Left describes the two realms of "anarchism"--Its intellectual substance, and its actual practice through the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian Factory Councils, and finally its role in workers' self-management in modern Yugoslavia and Algeria. One sees in "anarchism" a close kinship to libertarianism of the right, with its horror of state bureaucracy and hostility toward bourgeois (liberal) democracy. Noam Chomsky, perhaps Guerin's American political counterpart, has written a concise and effective introduction which will add to the book's campus appeal. An important contemporary definition of New Left aims and their possible directions in the future." -- from back cover
Download or read book Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right written by Karl Marx and published by Livraria Press. This book was released on 2024-05-09 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new translation of Marx's 1844 "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume III in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. In "Towards the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" Marx's argument is that Hegel's political philosophy is an abstraction that fails to take into account the concrete reality of human existence and the class struggles that shape it. He contends that in order to understand the state, civil society, and the concept of alienation, one must take into account the economic relations that underlie it and the material conditions of society. The central argument of Marx's critique is that the state is not a neutral arbiter of justice, but is rather an instrument of class warefare and exploitation. This is a mimicry of Feuerbach’s argument nearly word-for-word. Marx's critique serves to demonstrate the importance of a historical and materialist perspective in understanding the nature of human freedom and morality. It serves as a precursor to his later theories of historical materialism and dialectical materialism, which continue to be influential in the modern world. Marx's critique in this work centers around the idea that Hegel's philosophy is an abstraction that fails to take into account the concrete reality of human existence and the class struggles that shape it.
Download or read book From Georges Sorel written by Georges Sorel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prophet of social decadence, the theorist of violence and advocate of the general strike, the critic who stood Marx on his head, Georges Sorel was one of the foremost writers of this century to write extensively on the great importance of the moral aspects of social movements. His reconstruction of socialist ethics established him as one of the most remarkable critics of Marxist thought, and his writings in many aspects anticipated contemporary interpretations. From Georges Sorel, the first of two volumes of Sorel's work, presents his major contributions to social thought articles on Marxism, religion, syndicalism, social myths, the philosophy of history and science, as well as a large and newly translated segment of "Reflections on Violence." In his introduction, John Stanley disputes the frequently encountered view of Sorel as a reactionary or extreme rightist, and emphasizes Sorel's attempt to provide Western society with a morality based on labor, struggle, and family life.
Download or read book Capitalism Socialism Ecology written by André Gorz and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major new book, Andre Gorz expands on the political implications of his prescient and influential Paths to Paradise and Critique of Economic Reason. Against the background of technological developments which have transformed the nature of work and the structure of the workforce, Gorz explores the new political agendas facing both left and right. Each is in disarray: the right, torn between the demands of capital and the 'traditional values' of its supporters, can only offer illusory solutions, while the left either capitulates to these or remains tempted by regressive, 'fundamentalist' projects inappropriate to complex modern societies. Identifying the grave risks posed by a dual society with a hyperactive minority of full-time workers confronting a silenced majority who are, at best, precariously employed, Gorz proposes a new definition of a key social conflict within Western societies in terms of the distribution of work and the form and content of non-working time. Taking into account changing cultural attitudes to work, he re-examines socialism's historical project-which, he contends, has always properly been to lay down the rules and limits within which economic raitonality may be permitted to function, not to create some statist, productivist countersystem. Above all, he offers a vital fresh perspective for the left, whose objective, in his view, must be to extend the sphere to autonomous human activity, and increase the possibilities for individual self-fulfilment.
