Download or read book Marxism and the French Left written by Tony Judt and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in New York by Oxford University Press, 1986.
Download or read book French Intellectuals Against the Left written by Michael Scott Christofferson and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christofferson argues that French anti-totalitarianism was the culmination of direct-democratic critiques of communism & revisions of the revolutionary project after 1956. He offers an alternative interpretation for the denunciation of communism & Marxism by the French intellectual left in the late 1970s.
Download or read book The Long March of the French Left written by Richard William Johnson and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1981 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortly before the French parliamentary elections of 1978, when the Union of the Left broke up in bitter disarray, its supporters and opponents alike were flabbergasted. Years of patient struggle has brought the Left to the very brink of power, making possible at last the eviction of the conservative regime which has grown so comfortable and arrogant during its long tenure in government. How could all this be so abruptly thrown away? Had the Socialists, as the Communists alleged, sabotaged the Union of the Left? Or was it merely that the Communists did not really want to share in power? And what hope could the Left now salvage for the future?
Download or read book Socialism in Provence 1871 1914 written by Tony Judt and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Departing from the usual emphasis on an urban and industrial context for the rise of socialism, Socialism in Provence 1871-1914 offers instead a reinterpretation of the early years of Marxist socialism in France among the peasantry. By focusing on a limited period and a particular region, Judt provides an account both of the character of political behavior in the countryside and of the history of left-wing politics in France.
Download or read book The French Left written by Arthur Hirsh and published by Black Rose Books Ltd.. This book was released on 1982 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Twilight of the Elites written by Christophe Guilluy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A passionate account of how the gulf between France’s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an “American society”—one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on “the periphery.” As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.
Download or read book Why America Needs a Left written by Eli Zaretsky and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.
Download or read book French Politics and Society written by Alistair Cole and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French Politics and Society is the ideal companion for all students of France and French politics with a strong reputation for its lucidity and lively exposition of the French polity. This third edition remains a highly readable text and offers a broad, critical and comprehensive understanding of French politics. The book provides an excellent description of French institutions and ensures readers access to background information through discussing historical developments, political forces, public policy, and the evolution of important aspects of French society. Key updates for the third edition include: extensive updates including the Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies; inclusion of constitutional and state reform coverage since 2008; the French party system and evolution of the French left and right; more on France’s positioning with regards to Brussels and the impact of the European economic crisis. French Politics and Society is essential reading for all undergraduates studying French politics, French studies, European studies or comparative politics.
Download or read book Marxism and the French Left written by Tony Judt and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike most books, which treat labor, Socialist and Communist history separately and view French Marxism as a self-contained philosophical phenomenon, Marxism and the French Left offers a refreshingly different approach to the subject. Judt emphasizes the complex and interwoven themes that unify the topics of his essays to construct a distinctive and original interpretation of French left-wing politics over the past 150 years. “A well-informed and persuasive reinterpretation of the old French Left that is now receding beyond recall, except for historians.”—Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book Blacks In and Out of the Left written by Michael C. Dawson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The radical black left that played a crucial role in twentieth-century struggles for equality and justice has largely disappeared. Michael Dawson investigates the causes and consequences of the decline of black radicalism as a force in American politics and argues that the conventional left has failed to take race sufficiently seriously as a historical force in reshaping American institutions, politics, and civil society. African Americans have been in the vanguard of progressive social movements throughout American history, but they have been written out of many histories of social liberalism. Focusing on the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the Black Power movement, Dawson examines successive failures of socialists and Marxists to enlist sympathetic blacks, and white leftists’ refusal to fight for the cause of racial equality. Angered by the often outright hostility of the Socialist Party and similar social democratic organizations, black leftists separated themselves from these groups and either turned to the hard left or stayed independent. A generation later, the same phenomenon helped fueled the Black Power movement’s turn toward a variety of black nationalist, Maoist, and other radical political groups. The 2008 election of Barack Obama notwithstanding, many African Americans still believe they will not realize the fruits of American prosperity any time soon. This pervasive discontent, Dawson suggests, must be mobilized within the black community into active opposition to the social and economic status quo. Black politics needs to find its way back to its radical roots as a vital component of new American progressive movements.
Download or read book The Long March of the French Left written by R.W. Johnson and published by Springer. This book was released on 1981-03-19 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lula and His Politics of Cunning written by John D. French and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known around the world simply as Lula, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva was born in 1945 to illiterate parents who migrated to industrializing Sao Paulo. He learned to read at ten years of age, left school at fourteen, became a skilled metalworker, rose to union leadership, helped end a military dictatorship—and in 2003 became the thirty-fifth president of Brazil. During his administration, Lula led his country through reforms that lifted tens of millions out of poverty. Here, John D. French, one of the foremost historians of Brazil, provides the first critical biography of the leader whom even his political opponents see as strikingly charismatic, humorous, and endearing. Interweaving an intimate and colorful story of Lula's life—his love for home, soccer, factory floor, and union hall—with an analysis of large-scale forces, French argues that Lula was uniquely equipped to influence the authoritarian structures of power in this developing nation. His cunning capacity to speak with, not at, people and to create shared political meaning was fundamental to his political triumphs. After Lula left office, his opponents convicted and incarcerated him on charges of money laundering and corruption—but his immense army of voters celebrated his recent release from jail, insisting that he is the victim of a right-wing political ambush. The story of Lula is not over.
Download or read book The Liberation of Paris written by Jean Edward Smith and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prize-winning and bestselling historian Jean Edward Smith tells the “rousing” (Jay Winik, author of 1944) story of the liberation of Paris during World War II—a triumph achieved only through the remarkable efforts of Americans, French, and Germans, racing to save the city from destruction. Following their breakout from Normandy in late June 1944, the Allies swept across northern France in pursuit of the German army. The Allies intended to bypass Paris and cross the Rhine into Germany, ending the war before winter set in. But as they advanced, local forces in Paris began their own liberation, defying the occupying German troops. Charles de Gaulle, the leading figure of the Free French government, urged General Dwight Eisenhower to divert forces to liberate Paris. Eisenhower’s advisers recommended otherwise, but Ike wanted to help position de Gaulle to lead France after the war. And both men were concerned about partisan conflict in Paris that could leave the communists in control of the city and the national government. Neither man knew that the German commandant, Dietrich von Choltitz, convinced that the war was lost, schemed to surrender the city to the Allies intact, defying Hitler’s orders to leave it a burning ruin. In The Liberation of Paris, Jean Edward Smith puts “one of the most moving moments in the history of the Second World War” (Michael Korda) in context, showing how the decision to free the city came at a heavy price: it slowed the Allied momentum and allowed the Germans to regroup. After the war German generals argued that Eisenhower’s decision to enter Paris prolonged the war for another six months. Was Paris worth this price? Smith answers this question in a “brisk new recounting” that is “terse, authoritative, [and] unsentimental” (The Washington Post).
Download or read book The Left Case for Brexit written by Richard Tuck and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal left orthodoxy holds that Brexit is a disastrous coup, orchestrated by the hard right and fuelled by xenophobia, which will break up the Union and turn what’s left of Britain into a neoliberal dystopia. Richard Tuck’s ongoing commentary on the Brexit crisis demolishes this narrative. He argues that by opposing Brexit and throwing its lot in with a liberal constitutional order tailor-made for the interests of global capitalists, the Left has made a major error. It has tied itself into a framework designed to frustrate its own radical policies. Brexit therefore actually represents a golden opportunity for socialists to implement the kind of economic agenda they have long since advocated. Sadly, however, many of them have lost faith in the kind of popular revolution that the majoritarian British constitution is peculiarly well-placed to deliver and have succumbed instead to defeatism and the cultural politics of virtue-signalling. Another approach is, however, still possible. Combining brilliant contemporary political insights with a profound grasp of the ironies of modern history, this book is essential for anyone who wants a clear-sighted assessment of the momentous underlying issues brought to the surface by Brexit.
Download or read book Left Wing Melancholia written by Enzo Traverso and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War but also the rise of a melancholic vision of history as a series of losses. For the political left, the cause lost was communism, and this trauma determined how leftists wrote the next chapter in their political struggle and how they have thought about their past since. Throughout the twentieth century, argues Left-Wing Melancholia, from classical Marxism to psychoanalysis to the advent of critical theory, a culture of defeat and its emotional overlay of melancholy have characterized the leftist understanding of the political in history and in theoretical critique. Drawing on a vast and diverse archive in theory, testimony, and image and on such thinkers as Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and others, the intellectual historian Enzo Traverso explores the varying nature of left melancholy as it has manifested in a feeling of guilt for not sufficiently challenging authority, in a fear of surrendering in disarray and resignation, in mourning the human costs of the past, and in a sense of failure for not realizing utopian aspirations. Yet hidden within this melancholic tradition are the resources for a renewed challenge to prevailing regimes of historicity, a passion that has the power to reignite the dialectic of revolutionary 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 Marx and the French Revolution written by François Furet and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988-12-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his life Karl Marx commented on the French Revolution, but never was able to realize his project of a systematic work on this immense event. This book assembles for the first time all that Marx wrote on this subject. François Furet provides an extended discussion of Marx's thinking on the revolution, and Lucien Calvié situates each of the selections, drawn from existing translations as well as previously untranslated material, in its larger historical context. With his early critique of Hegel, Marx started moving toward his fundamental thesis: that the state is a product of civil society and that the French Revolution was the triumph of bourgeois society. Furet's interpretation follows the evolution of this idea and examines the dilemmas it created for Marx as he considered all the faces the new state assumed over the course of the Revolution: the Jacobin Terror following the constitutional monarchy, Bonaparte's dictatorship following the parliamentary republic. The problem of reconciling his theory with the reality of the Revolution's various manifestations is one of the major difficulties Marx contended with throughout his work. The hesitation, the remorse, and the contradictions of the resulting analyses offer a glimpse of a great thinker struggling with the constraints of his own system. Marx never did elaborate a theory of an autonomous state, but he never stopped wrestling with the challenge to his doctrine posed by late eighteenth-century France, whose changing conditions and successive regimes prompted some of his most intriguing and, until now, unexplored thought.
