Few figures of interwar Germany were as influential as Leopold Schwarzschild, the brilliant editor of the liberal magazine 'Das Tage-Buch'. In the uncertain years of the Weimar Republic, Schwarzschild became famous for his perceptive political analyses and critique of the economic policies of successive governments in the twilight of Germany's first experiment with democracy. When he was forced to emigrate in 1933, following Hitler's rise to power, he pursued his analysis of developments in Germany from Paris, where he resumed publication of his journal under the new name 'Das Neue Tage-Buch', while also mounting a furious attack on the European powers taken by surprise by the Nazi ascendancy. 'One thing is already beyond question today...', he wrote in the spring of 1933, '...part of the new era is an unremitting descent into some kind of military conflagration'. Winston Churchill, a great admirer of Schwarzschild, made one of his later books required reading for the War Cabinet, yet his campaigning journalism has never before appeared in English. In bringing his writings to an English-speaking readership, Chronicle of a Downfall will restore Leopold Schwarzschild to his rightful place as one of the most poignant chroniclers of the fall of German democracy and the descent of Europe into World War II.

Thirteen essays by acknowledged economic experts explore the rapid changes in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, with discussions on political and economic freedom, monetary control and privatization, labor markets and social safety nets, and taxation and crime.

This timely book tells the fascinating story of how Zionists colonizers planned and established nearly 700 agricultural settlements, towns, and cities from the 1880s to the present. This extraordinary activity of planners, architects, social scientists, military personnel, politicians, and settlers is inextricably linked to multiple contexts: Jewish and Zionist history, the Arab/Jewish conflict, and the diffusion of European ideas to non-European worlds. S. Ilan Troen demonstrates how professionals and settlers continually innovated plans for both rural and urban frontiers in response to the competing demands of social and political ideologies and the need to achieve productivity, economic independence, and security in a hostile environment. In the 1930s, security became the primary challenge, shaping and even distorting patterns of growth. Not until the 1993 Oslo Accords, with prospects of compromise and accommodation, did planners again imagine Israel as a normal state, developing like other modern societies. Troen concludes that if Palestinian Arabs become reconciled to a Jewish state, Israel will reassign priority to the social and economic development of the country and region.

This passionate, pitiless analysis of post-Soviet Russia should be read by all interested in that country's present and future. Library Journal"It is a sorry tale, told with passion and competence." The IndependentRussia has undergone more seismic changes over the last 100 years than almost any other country. The 1917 Revolution, the rapid industrialisation of the 1930s, the following devastation of the Second World War, and the present return to Capitalism has seen the deep impoverishment of the entire population. The key questions which Kagarlitsky addresses are how to understand these changes, and how to characterise the complex process of reform, revolution and counter revolution. In a country with such a turbulent and violent political history, what path should development take, and what lies ahead? Looking in detail at the nature of Russian society and politics since 1990, Kagarlitsky offers an introductory political analysis of the major political and economic developments that have taken place under President Yeltsin, and the legacy he bequeathed so unexpectedly to his successor Putin. He focuses on the role of the media in post-Soviet Russia, corporate structures and their influence on social conflict, the formation of the oligarchy and the role of the left in modern Russia. This is a valuable source for anyone requiring a basic understanding of post-Soviet Russia and a clear historical guide for all students of contemporary Russian history.

Text: English, German (translation)

Born in 1879, Eugen Varga became the most prominent Marxist economist in the Soviet Union, referred to as 'Stalin's economist.' As the official theorist of the early USSR, Varga was easily one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, yet his ideas are largely unknown in the West. By selecting and translating--often for the first time--some of his most important works, this volume aims to correct the record. Selected Political and Economic Writings offers a wide and representative selection of his works, dating from his entry into the Hungarian Communist Party in 1919 through to his criticisms of John Maynard Keynes in the 1950s. It also includes the entire text of his Economic Problems of the Proletarian Dictatorship, cited by Lenin as the best work on the collapse of the revolutionary government in Hungary. A detailed critical introduction by Varga's biographer, André Mommen, supplies valuable background detail on the circumstances of Varga's work, contextualising it in relation to political events and the development of orthodox economic theory in the USSR.

In September 1791, two years after the Revolution, French Jews were granted full rights of citizenship. Scholarship has traditionally focused on this turning point of emancipation while often overlooking much of what came before. In Rites and Passages, Jay R. Berkovitz argues that no serious treatment of Jewish emancipation can ignore the cultural history of the Jews during the ancien régime. It was during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that several lasting paradigms emerged within the Jewish community—including the distinction between rural and urban communities, the formation of a strong lay leadership, heightened divisions between popular and elite religion, and the strain between local and regional identities. Each of these developments reflected the growing tension between tradition and modernity before the tumultuous events of the French Revolution.Rites and Passages emphasizes the resilience of religious tradition during periods of social and political turbulence. Viewing French Jewish history through the lens of ritual, Berkovitz describes the struggles of the French Jewish minority to maintain its cultural distinctiveness while also participating in the larger social and economic matrix. In the ancien régime, ritual systems were a formative element in the traditional worldview and served as a crucial repository of memories and values. After the Revolution, ritual signaled changes in the way Jews related to the state, French society, and French culture. In the cities especially, ritual assumed a performative function that dramatized the epoch-making changes of the day. The terms and concepts of the Jewish religious tradition thus remained central to the discourse of modernization and played a powerful role in helping French Jews interpret the diverse meanings and implications of emancipation. Introducing new and previously unused primary sources, Rites and Passages offers a fresh perspective on the dynamic relationship between tradition and modernity.

Draft Of The Thesis Of The International Left Opposition On The Russian Question.

"Translated from the original Russian, this book analyzes the economic development of leading European empires and the United States of America. The author exposes the myths of the spontaneous emergence of the market economy and the role of government as a disincentive towards private initiative, when for centuries the state power has been carrying out a "coercing to the market" with all its strength. This book presents a somewhat epic depiction of the development of Western hegemonic powers within the capitalist world system, from the struggles of the late Middle Ages to the rise and crisis of the American Empire. It both develops and questions some of the traditional assumptions of the world-system theory, arguing that it was very much the political form of the state that shaped capitalism as we know it and that, though the existence of a hegemonic power results from the logic of the system, hegemony is often missing in reality.A major work of historical Marxist theory, this book is essential reading for students of international political economy, globalisation and the crisis of capitalism. This book is also ideal for students of politics, history, economics and international relations"--

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter iv the nature of the russian revolution vThe Russian revolution seemingly mocked the specific forecasts of Marx and Engels as it defied the generally accepted Marxian law of social evolution./. It was neither preceded nor supplemented by a general working class revolution in the West. It did not spring from the village community. That institution had been rapidly and steadily declining until 1917. It did not succeed an outworn_capitalist-system.' CapitalismoccupTeoTa comparatively insignificant part in the economic life of Russia. The Russian reyolution owes morp to the unusual conditions created by the war tnartto thYliormal "course of the country's economic or political development."" Thejnain factors of its success were: / 1. The sudden collapse of the whole organization of national life. A 2. The utter demoralization of the bureaucracy. y3. A weak and unorganized bourgeoisie, y 4. An impoverished, war-weary, rebellious and desperate population. 5. An overwhelmingly large and land-hungry peasantry. 6. Millions of workers and peasants organized into an army and suddenly freed from military discipline--a liberated and armed people available for revolutionary service. 7. Spontaneously created but relatively strong and well-knit organizations of industrial workers in the large cities, who represented the only active and cohesive social force of the country. 8. A small but resolute group of Socialists trained in European theories of Socialism and ready to assume and to exercise leadership. The early Socialist movement of Russia has been characterized as the 'lilleyitimate chil(Lof-Asiatic-R-ttssia and European Capitalism " jfFrom the point of view of the conventional Marxian historian the Russian revolution may be described as the...