Category: Marxism

By Robert Heynen

In Degeneration and Revolution: Radical Cultural Politics and the physique in Weimar Germany Robert Heynen explores the influence of conceptions of degeneration, exemplified by means of eugenics and social hygiene, at the social, cultural, and political historical past of the left in Germany, 1914–33. Hygienic practices of physically law have been vital to the extension of recent capitalist social kinfolk, and profoundly formed Weimar culture.

Heynen’s cutting edge interdisciplinary method attracts on Marxist and different serious traditions to check the politics of degeneration and socialist, communist, and anarchist responses. Drawing on key Weimar theorists and addressing creative and cultural events starting from Dada to worker-produced media, this ebook demanding situations us to reconsider traditional understandings of left tradition and politics, and of Weimar tradition extra more often than not.

By Neil Davidson

As soon as of critical value to left historians and activists alike, lately the idea that of the “bourgeois revolution” has are available for sustained feedback from either marxists and conservatives. during this accomplished rejoinder, Neil Davidson seeks to reply to the query “how innovative have been the bourgeois revolutions” via systematically studying the technique taken via quite a lot of thinkers to explaining the reasons, results, and content material of the French, English, Dutch, and different revolutions. via a ways attaining learn and complete research, Davidson demonstrates that what's at stake is way from a stale factor for the heritage books – realizing those struggles of the previous supply a ways achieving classes for today's radicals.

“I used to be frankly pole-axed via this awesome ebook. Davidson resets the total debate at the personality of revolutions: bourgeois, democratic and socialist. He’s sending me, at the very least, again to the library.” —Mike Davis, writer of Planet of Slums

“This is, easily, the best e-book of its kind.” —Tony McKenna, Marx and Philosophy evaluation of Books

“What should still our perception of a bourgeois revolution be, whether it is to enlighten instead of to lie to? Neil Davidson’s instructive and provocative solution is given via a background either one of a collection of strategies and of these social settings within which they discovered application.His booklet is a powerful contribution either to the heritage of principles and to political philosophy.” —Alasdair MacIntyre, writer, After Virtue

“There are books that are of such style that upon interpreting them, one instantly is familiar with one is facing a destiny vintage. one of these ebook is Neil Davidson’s How progressive have been The Bourgeois Revolutions?” —Matthijs Krul

“Neil Davidson wends his manner in the course of the jagged terrain of a variety of Marxist writings and debates to distil their classes in what's definitely the main thorough dialogue of the topic so far. If the ambiguity on the center of the bourgeois revolutions was once that the emergence of the trendy bourgeois country had little to do with the enterprise of the bourgeoisie, then Davidson’s learn is by means of some distance the main nuanced and illuminating dialogue of this complicated truth. a super and interesting booklet, wide-ranging and lucidly written.” —Jairus Banaji, writer, Theory as History

“[This] is a huge paintings. Neil Davidson has given us what's simply the main entire account but of the ‘life and times’ of the concept that of ‘bourgeois revolution’ … this might were sufficient. even though, Davidson has additionally supplied us with a cultured set of theoretical instruments for realizing the customarily complicated interactions among political revolutions which overturn kingdom associations and social revolutions which contain a extra thorough-going transformation of social relations.” —Colin Moores, writer The Making of Bourgeois Europe

“Davidson’s e-book is certainly one of tremendous and ambitious erudition. His wisdom of the background of Marxist idea and historiography is as specified because it is entire, and needs to be essentially unrivalled. The unending, complicated debates that signify the Marxist culture are distilled with readability and illumination.” —Jeremy Jennings, Times Literary Supplement

“This magisterial ebook is destined to be a key reference aspect in destiny debates on not just the transition from feudalism to capitalism, however the that means of socialism within the twenty first century. Davidson interweaves an in depth highbrow historical past of theories of revolution with a vibrant retelling of a large number of transformative social struggles.” —Tad Tietze, Green Left Weekly

“This is a booklet within the grand style...In addressing the query set by means of his name, Neil Davidson without difficulty monitors analytical intelligence and erudition infrequent between historians of any persuasion. And the reader do away with through the sheer dimension of the e-book could be reassured by means of Neil’s effortless, fluent type, plentifully interlarded with humour. If there have been any doubts approximately Neil’s calibre as a Marxist historian after his books on Scottish heritage (which looms huge during this paintings as well—no it is easy to come clear of it with no figuring out it used to be written via a Scot), and his a number of articles, those have now been removed.” —Alex Callinicos, International Socialism