Download or read book Philosophical Arabesques written by Nikolai Bukharin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2005-06 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bukharin's Philosophical Arabesques was written while he was imprisoned in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, facing trial on charges of treason, and later awaiting execution after he was found guilty. After the death of Lenin, Bukharin cooperated with Stalin for a time. Once Stalin's supremacy was assured he began eliminating all potential rivals. For Bukharin, the process was to end with his confession before the Soviet court, facing the threat that his young family would be killed along with him if he did not. While awaiting his death, Bukharin wrote prolifically. He considered Philosophical Arabesques as the most important of his prison writings. In its pages, he covers the full range of issues in Marxist philosophy--the sources of knowledge, the nature of truth, freedom and necessity, the relationship of Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. The project constitutes a defense of the genuine legacy of Lenin's Marxism against the use of his memory to legitimate totalitarian power. Consigned to the Kremlin archives for a half-century after Bukharin's execution, this work is now being published for the first time in English. It will be an essential reference work for scholars of Marxism and the Russian revolution and a landmark in the history of prison writing.
Download or read book Marxism and the Philosophy of Science written by Helena Sheehan and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful survey of the history of Marxist philosophy of science Sheehan retraces the development of a Marxist philosophy of science through detailed and highly readable accounts of the debates that shaped it. Skilfully deploying a large cast of characters, Sheehan shows how Marx and Engel’s ideas on the development and structure of natural science had a crucial impact on the work of early twentieth-century natural philosophers, historians of science, and natural scientists. With a new afterword by the author.
Download or read book Philosophical Arabesques written by Nikolai Bukharin and published by . This book was released on 2005-06 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bukharin’s Philosophical Arabesques was written while he was imprisoned in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, facing trial on charges of treason, and later awaiting execution after he was found guilty. After the death of Lenin, Bukharin cooperated with Stalin for a time. Once Stalin's supremacy was assured he began eliminating all potential rivals. For Bukharin, the process was to end with his confession before the Soviet court, facing the threat that his young family would be killed along with him if he did not. While awaiting his death, Bukharin wrote prolifically. He considered Philosophical Arabesques as the most important of his prison writings. In its pages, he covers the full range of issues in Marxist philosophy—the sources of knowledge, the nature of truth, freedom and necessity, the relationship of Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. The project constitutes a defense of the genuine legacy of Lenin's Marxism against the use of his memory to legitimate totalitarian power. Consigned to the Kremlin archives for a half-century after Bukharin’s execution, this work is now being published for the first time in English. It will be an essential reference work for scholars of Marxism and the Russian revolution and a landmark in the history of prison writing.
Download or read book The Return of Nature written by John Bellamy Foster and published by Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2020 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize A fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology Twenty years ago, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature introduced a new understanding of Karl Marx’s revolutionary ecological materialism. More than simply a study of Marx, it commenced an intellectual and social history, encompassing thinkers from Epicurus to Darwin, who developed materialist and ecological ideas. Now, with The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, Foster continues this narrative. In so doing, he uncovers a long history of the efforts to unite questions of social justice and environmental sustainability, and helps us comprehend and counter today’s unprecedented planetary emergencies. The Return of Nature begins with the deaths of Darwin (1882) and Marx (1883) and moves on until the rise of the ecological age in the 1960s and 1970s. Foster explores how socialist analysts and materialist scientists of various stamps, first in Britain, then the United States, from William Morris and Frederick Engels, to Joseph Needham, Rachel Carson, and Stephen J. Gould, sought to develop a dialectical naturalism, rooted in a critique of capitalism. In the process, he delivers a far-reaching and fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology. Ultimately, what this book asks for is nothing short of revolution: a long, ecological revolution, aimed at making peace with the planet while meeting collective human needs.
Download or read book How It All Began written by Nikolai Bukharin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-05 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here at last in English is Nikolai Bukharin's autobiographical novel and final work. Many dissident texts of the Stalin era were saved by chance, by bravery, or by cunning; others were systematically destroyed. Bukharin's work, however, was simultaneously preserved and suppressed within Stalin's personal archives. At once novel, memoir, political apology, and historical document, How It All Began, known in Russia as "the prison novel," adds deeply to our understanding of this vital intellectual and maligned historical figure. The panoramic story, composed under the worst of circumstances, traces the transformation of a sensitive young man into a fiery agitator, and presents a revealing new perspective on the background and causes of the revolution that transformed the face of the twentieth century. Among the millions of victims of the reign of terror in the Soviet Union of the 1930's, Bukharin stands out as a special case. Not yet 30 when the Bolsheviks took power, he was one of the youngest, most popular, and most intellectual members of the Communist Party. In the 1920's and 30's, he defended Lenin's liberal New Economic Policy, claiming that Stalin's policies of forced industrialization constituted a "military-feudal exploitation" of the masses. He also warned of the approaching tide of European fascism and its threat to the new Bolshevik revolution. For his opposition, Bukharin paid with his freedom and his life. He was arrested and spent a year in prison. In what was one of the most infamous "show trials" of the time, Bukharin confessed to being a "counterrevolutionary" while denying any particular crime and was executed in his prison cell on March 15, 1938. While in prison, Bukharin wrote four books, of which this unfinished novel was the last. It traces the development of Nikolai "Kolya" Petrov (closely modeled on Nikolai "Kolya" Bukharin) from his early childhood though to age fifteen. In lyrical and poetic terms it paints a picture of Nikolai's growing political consciousness and ends with his activism on the eve of the failed 1905 revolution. The novel is presented here along with the only surviving letter from Bukharin to his wife during his time in prison, an epistle filled with fear, longing, and hope for his family and his nation. The introduction by Stephen F. Cohen articulates Bukharin's significance in Soviet history and reveals the troubled journey of this novel from Stalin's archives into the light of day.
Download or read book A New German Idealism written by Adrian Johnston and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2012, philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek published what arguably is his magnum opus, the one-thousand-page tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. A sizable sequel appeared in 2014, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. In these two books, Žižek returns to the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel in order to forge a new materialism for the twenty-first century. Žižek’s reinvention of Hegelian dialectics explores perennial and contemporary concerns: humanity’s relations with nature, the place of human freedom, the limits of rationality, the roles of spirituality and religion, and the prospects for radical sociopolitical change. In A New German Idealism, Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil. Johnston, a leading authority on and interlocutor of Žižek, assesses the recent return to Hegel against the backdrop of Kantian and post-Kantian German idealism. He also presents alternate reconstructions of Hegel’s positions that differ in important respects from Žižek’s version of dialectical materialism. In particular, Johnston criticizes Žižek’s deviations from the secular naturalism and Enlightenment optimism of his chosen sources of inspiration: not only Hegel, but Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud too. In response, Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive and leftist materialism capable of preserving and advancing the core legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions central to Žižek.
Download or read book Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism written by Adrian Johnston and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adrian Johnston’s trilogy Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism aims to forge a thoroughly materialist yet antireductive theory of subjectivity. In this second volume, A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston focuses on the philosophy of nature required for such a theory. This volume is guided by a fundamental question: How must nature be rethought so that human minds and freedom do not appear to be either impossible or inexplicable within it? Asked differently: How must the natural world itself be structured such that sapient subjects in all their distinctive peculiarities emerged from and continue to exist within this world? In A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston develops his transcendental materialist account of nature through engaging with and weaving together five main sources of inspiration: Hegelian philosophy, Marxist materialism, Freudian-Lacanian metapsychology, Anglo-American analytic neo-Hegelianism, and evolutionary theory and neurobiology. Johnston argues that these seemingly (but not really) strange bedfellows should be brought together so as to construct a contemporary ontology of nature. Through this ontology, nonnatural human subjects can be seen to arise in an immanent, bottom-up fashion from nature itself.
Download or read book Marx s Ecology written by John Bellamy Foster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Progress requires the conquest of nature. Or does it? This startling new account overturns conventional interpretations of Marx and in the process outlines a more rational approach to the current environmental crisis. Marx, it is often assumed, cared only about industrial growth and the development of economic forces. John Bellamy Foster examines Marx's neglected writings on capitalist agriculture and soil ecology, philosophical naturalism, and evolutionary theory. He shows that Marx, known as a powerful critic of capitalist society, was also deeply concerned with the changing human relationship to nature. Marx's Ecology covers many other thinkers, including Epicurus, Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Ludwig Feuerbach, P. J. Proudhon, and William Paley. By reconstructing a materialist conception of nature and society, Marx's Ecology challenges the spiritualism prevalent in the modern Green movement, pointing toward a method that offers more lasting and sustainable solutions to the ecological crisis.
Download or read book The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky written by Douglas Greene and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text offers an authoritative historiography of German socialist theorist Karl Kautsky and his impact on debates about the Russian Revolution and the contemporary left. Known as the “Pope of Marxism,” Douglas Greene examines the totality of Kautsky’s political career and dissects the fundamental opportunism and passive radicalism that defined his Marxism. He later examines the most substantive Marxist critics of Kautsky, namely Rosa Luxemburg, V. I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, while offering a critical assessment of the work produced by scholars and activists, Lars Lih, Eric Blanc, and Mike Mcnair, seeking to revive Kautsky. The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky is an important addition to scholarship on the subject and a valuable resource for those interested in the Russian Revolution, German politics, socialism, Marxism, and contemporary left-wing debates.
Download or read book Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-14 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education showcases the explanatory power of Marxist educational theory and practice.
Download or read book Less Than Nothing written by Slavoj Zizek and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 2423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the last two centuries, Western philosophy has developed in the shadow of Hegel, an influence each new thinker struggles to escape. As a consequence, Hegel's absolute idealism has become the bogeyman of philosophy, obscuring the fact that he is the defining philosopher of the historical transition to modernity, a period with which our own times share startling similarities. Today, as global capitalism comes apart at the seams, we are entering a new period of transition. In Less Than Nothing, the product of a career-long focus on the part of its author, Slavoj Zizek argues it is imperative we not simply return to Hegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more Hegelian than the master himself. Such an approach not only enables Zizek to diagnose our present condition, but also to engage in a critical dialogue with the key strands of contemporary thought-Heidegger, Badiou, speculative realism, quantum physics, and cognitive sciences. Modernity will begin and end with Hegel.
Download or read book The Heart of the Matter written by David Bakhurst and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-04-24 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Heart of the Matter explores the legacies of Ilyenkov and Vygotsky, two Russian thinkers who marshalled their passion for truth, enlightenment and independent thought to understand the human mind, not for the sake of knowledge alone, but to help create the conditions in which human flourishing can become a reality for all. The book renders their theories intelligible against the dramatic social and historical background in which they lived and worked, bringing their ideas into dialogue with themes and thinkers in Western philosophy to reveal how they illuminate philosophical issues of enduring significance.
Download or read book What Was Bolshevism written by Lars T. Lih and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the Bolsheviks see themselves? What grand narrative gave meaning to their revolutionary aspirations? The leading Western expert on Bolshevism, Lars T. Lih, answers these questions in the first-ever study of the Bolshevik outlook from Lenin to perestroika. Sharply focused case studies allow individual leaders – Lenin, Stalin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Zinoviev – to come alive and speak in their own voices, with surprising results that challenge conventional narratives left and right. What Was Bolshevism? uses novels, plays, literary criticism, photographs, statues, poetry, history textbooks, songs, and film to paint an indispensable self-portrait of Soviet civilization.
Download or read book Marxism written by Amiya Bagchi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique re-conceptualization of Marxism in bringing together leading scholars across disciplines — history, philosophy, economics, politics, sociology, and literary and culture studies — into one comprehensive corpus. It demonstrates the engaging relevance of the perspectives and techniques of the analyses adopted by Karl Marx, Frederich Engels and contemporary Marxists, and will be immensely useful to scholars and researchers across social sciences as well as general readers interested in Marxism.
Download or read book Mythology Madness and Laughter written by Markus Gabriel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism explores some long neglected but crucial themes in German idealism. Markus Gabriel, one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary philosophy, and Slavoj Žižek, the celebrated contemporary philosopher and cultural critic, show how these themes impact on the problematic relations between being and appearance, reflection and the absolute, insight and ideology, contingency and necessity, subjectivity, truth, habit and freedom. Engaging with three central figures of the German idealist movement, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, Gabriel, and Žižek, who here shows himself to be one of the most erudite and important scholars of German idealism, ask how is it possible for Being to appear in reflection without falling back into traditional metaphysics. By applying idealistic theories of reflection and concrete subjectivity, including the problem of madness and everydayness in Hegel, this hugely important book aims to reinvigorate a philosophy of finitude and contingency, topics at the forefront of contemporary European philosophy. MARKUS GABRIEL is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, NY. He has published a number of books and journal articles in German, including Der Mensch im Mythos (De Gruyter, 2006), and Das Absolute und die Welt in Schellings Freiheitsschrift (Bonn University Press, 2006).
Download or read book Marxism in Dark Times written by Sobhanlal Datta Gupta and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering an alternative exploration of the subject, ‘Marxism in Dark Times’ anchors its investigation of Marxism in the conceptual spheres of humanism, democracy and pluralism. Its essays question the stereotyped, positivist notion of the theory as practised by the exponents of official Marxism, highlight the legacy of the suppressed voices in the Marxist tradition, and provide new insights into reading Marxism in the twenty-first century—affording new perspectives on Antonio Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, Nikolai Bukharin, David Ryazanov and the Frankfurt School. They seek to review the phenomenon of ‘Perestroika,’ explore the new historiography on Comintern, and examine the relation between Marxism and postmodernism. With its wide-ranging provision of materials—some translated here into English from German and Russian for the first time—this collection offers a pioneering English assessment of some of the most debatable issues in contemporary Marxism.
Download or read book Law s Task written by Louis E. Wolcher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the ultimate task of law? This deceptively simple question guides this volume towards a radically original philosophical interpretation of law and justice. Weaving together the philosophical, jurisprudential and ethical problems suggested by five general terms - thinking, human suffering, legal meaning, time and tragedy - the book places the idea of law's ultimate task in the context of what actually happens when people seek to do justice and enforce legal rights in a world that is inflected by the desperation and suffering of the many. It traces the rule of law all the way down to its most fundamental level: the existence of universal human suffering and how it is that law-doers inflict or tolerate that suffering.
