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Find out moreSee below for a selection of the latest books from Marxism & Communism category. Presented with a red border are the Marxism & Communism books that have been lovingly read and reviewed by the experts at Lovereading. With expert reading recommendations made by people with a passion for books and some unique features Lovereading will help you find great Marxism & Communism books and those from many more genres to read that will keep you inspired and entertained. And it's all free!
Across central and eastern Europe after World War II, the newly established communist regimes promised a drastic social revolution that would transform the world at great pace and pave the way to a socialist future. Although many aspects of this utopian project are well known - such as fast-paced industrialisation, collectivisation and urbanisation - the regimes even sought to transform the ways in which their citizens interacted with each other and the world around them. Using a unique analytical model based on an amalgam of anthropology, sociology, history and extensive archival research, award-winning scholar Roman Krakovsky here considers the Czechoslovakian attempt to 'reinvent the world' - 'time' and 'space' included - in this all-encompassing way. Ranging from WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall, his innovative analysis variously considers the impact of Stakhanovism, the impossible-to-achieve production targets intended to assert socialism's future potential; the attempt to replace Sunday's Christian attributes with socialist ones; and the profound changes brought about to the public and private spheres, including the culture of informing and the ways this was circumvented. Across a wide range of case studies Krakovsky demonstrates both the far-reaching extent of the communist vision and the inherent flaws and contradictions that gradually destabilised it. This in-depth perspective is vital reading for all scholars of twentieth century history and politics.
For nearly half a century East Central Europe was part of the Soviet empire and was subject to its civilizing mission. Despite its colonial status, this part of the world has escaped the attention of most postcolonial critics and remains a blank spot in global studies of postcolonialism. Dariusz Skorczewski is the first Polish scholar to apply postcolonial thought to Polish realities, at the same time modifying the theoretical framework developed by other scholars of postcolonialism. Polish Literature and National Identity reveals how the experiences of foreign domination and the history of empire have shaped contemporary Polish culture and society. The book, newly translated from the Polish, introduces Anglophone audiences to the potential implications of postcolonial studies on an understanding of Poland's unique historical position within Europe. Skorczewski explores transformations of national identity as reflected in Polish literature and critical discourse from Romanticism to the twenty-first century. The narrative thus tackles questions surrounding Poland's postcolonial status in contemporary East Central Europe, a region where globalization and cosmopolitanism clash with resurgent national sentiments and where predictions about a speedy transition to a postnational era now seem premature. DARIUSZ SKORCZEWSKI is associate professor of Polish literature at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.
'Marvellous, precise, poignant writing; the reader is happy to be overwhelmed. The highest talent at work' SEBASTIAN BARRY 'A lyrical exploration of the conflict between gay love and political conformity. Jedrowski is an authentic new international star' EDMUND WHITE You were right when you said that people can't always give us what we want from them. Poland, 1980. Anxious, disillusioned Ludwik Glowacki, soon to graduate university, has been sent along with the rest of his class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together, they spend a dreamlike summer swimming in secluded lakes, reading forbidden books - and falling in love. But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw, and to the harsh realities of life under the Party. Exiled from paradise, Ludwik and Janusz must decide how they will survive; and in their different choices, find themselves torn apart. Swimming in the Dark is an unforgettable debut about youth, love, and loss - and the sacrifices we make to live lives with meaning.
First published in 1997, this volume consists of chapters placed before a series of meetings organised by the Rome-based international School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts (ISODARCO) which reviewed the prospects relating to the countries of the Former Soviet Union and of the other members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. The authors include Western experts, as well as distinguished commentators from Russia itself. Among the latter are Georgi Arbatov, Ruslan Khasbulatov and Alexei Arbatov. An earlier volume of chapters deriving from this same series of meetings was still in print at the time of original publication in 1997, namely Rising Tension in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.
The 1943 battle to free the Soviet Black Sea port of Novorossiisk from German occupation was fought from the beach head of Malaia zemlia, where the young Colonel Leonid Brezhnev saw action. Despite widespread scepticism of the state's appropriation and inflation of this historical event, the heroes of the campaign are still commemorated in Novorossiisk today by an amalgam of memoir, monuments and ritual. Through the prism of this provincial Russian town, Vicky Davis sheds light on the character of Brezhnev as perceived by his people, and on the process of memory for the ordinary Russian citizen. Davis analyses the construction and propagation of the local war myth to link the individual citizens of Novorossiisk with evolving state policy since World War II and examines the resultant social and political connotations. Her compelling new interdisciplinary evidence reveals the complexity of myth and memory, challenging existing assumptions to show that there is still scope for the local community - and even the individual - in memory construction in an authoritarian environment. This book represents a much-needed departure from the study of myth and memory in larger cities of the former Soviet Union, adding nuance to the existing portrait of Brezhnev and demonstrating the continued importance of war memory in Russia today.
In this important contribution to political theory, Massimo Modonesi develops the thesis that a Marxist theory of political action can be developed from the notion of antagonism, defined as a distinctive feature of struggle and of the political experience of insubordination. The author argues this central idea with close reference to the concept of class struggle. He advances a theoretical proposal based on the triad subalternity-antagonism-autonomy, as well as the uneven and combined character of the processes of political subjectification. At the center of this triad, the concept of antagonism stands out as a logical principle and the core of a Marxist theory of political action. At the same time, subalternism reappears frequently, as the counter-pole of antagonistic activation and autonomous practices, and as the root of what Antonio Gramsci calls 'passive revolutions'.
In Marx on Capitalism, James Furner offers a new answer to the fundamental question of Marxism: can a thesis connecting capital, the state and classes with the desirability of socialism be developed from an analysis of the commodity? The Interaction-Recognition-Antinomy Thesis is anchored in a systematic retranslation of Marx's writings. It provides an antinomy-based strategy for grounding the value of social humanity in working-class agency, facilitates a dialectical derivation of political representation, and condemns capitalism as unjust without appeal to rights.
The work of Karl Marx has been taken up by a huge range of American writers, from a wide variety of perspectives. As Harry Harootunian argues in this provocative pamphlet, however, there is an indelible American stamp to this scholarship that unites it across diverse disciplines and schools of thought. Focusing in particular on the post-war years, Harootunian tracks American Marxism's chapters in recent history, tracing the movement from its disengagement with the American Communist Party to how it negotiated the Cold War struggle with Stalinism; from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the momentary triumphalism of Third World liberation movements. He concludes with a look at how the succumbing of much Marxist thought to neoliberal globalism has paved the way for the reappearance of fascist oligarchs. The result for historical practice, cultural studies, and social theory has been, as Harootunian shows, a radical disconnect between abstract analysis and the tangible agendas of social movements and sectarian factionalism.
In this book of essays Neil Davidson examines Marxism's relationship to previously existing traditions (the Enlightenment), as well as the precise boundaries of the Marxist tradition itself. With characteristic clarity and insight, he argues that tradition should not be seen as a set of eternally valid 'lessons', but rather as a set of resources from which revolutionaries can critically draw.
State Capitalism in Russia, first published in 1955, offers a radically different interpretation of what happened in the decades after the Russian Revolution: that Stalin's assault on the gains of the 1917 revolution caused the reemergence of class divisions and capitalist modes of production. This argument about the development of state capitalism became a cornerstone of an anti-Stalinist socialist movement that insisted that socialism must be founded on workers' power and mass democracy.
