"The ideas of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy have been enlightening in every era, the author contends, and our current historical situation of free-market extremes suggests that reading Marx may be more important now than ever. Hobsbawm begins with a consideration of how we should think about Marxism in the post-communist era, observing that the features we most associate with Soviet and related regimes--command economies, intrusive bureaucratic structures, and an economic and political condition of permanent was--are neither derived from Marx's ideas nor unique to socialist states. Further chapters discuss pre-Marxian socialists and Marx's radical break with them, Marx's political milieu, and the influence of his writings on the anti-fascist decades, the Cold War, and the post--Cold War period. Sweeping, provocative, and full of brilliant insights, How to Change the World challenges us to reconsider Marx and reassess his significance in the history of ideas."--Publisher's website.

Marx made extremely creative use of dialectical method to analyze the origins, operation, and direction of capitalism. Unfortunately, his promised book on method was never written, so that readers wishing to understand and evaluate Marx's theories, or to revise or use them, have had to proceed without a clear grasp of the dialectic in which the theories are framed. The result has been more disagreement over "what Marx really meant" than over the writings of any other major thinker. In putting Marx's philosophy of internal relations and his use of the process of abstraction--two little-studied aspects of dialectics--at the center of this account, Ollman provides a version of Marx's method that is at once systematic, scholarly, clear and eminently useful. Ollman not only sheds important new light on what Marx really meant in his varied theoretical pronouncements, but in carefully laying out the steps in Marx's method makes it possible for a reader to put the dialectic to work in his or her own research. He also convincingly argues the case for why social scientists and humanists as well as philosophers should want to do so.--

Is Marxism really dead, or can it play a positive role in creating a just and fulfilling society? This study responds to these questions with a penetrating assessment of Marxism from its origins to the present day. Roger Gottlieb provides an incisive overview of the content, strengths and weaknesses of Marx's own work, and demonstrates how the socialist and communist movements between 1880 and 1935 betrayed the original vision of Marxism. He argues that theory was "reborn" in Western Marxism and socialist-feminism, and offers lucid accounts of their theories of social structure, oppression and revolution. The concluding chapters focus on important contemporary concerns: Marxist theories of present-day capitalism; current debates between Marxism and other radical perspectives, including postmodernism; and Marxism's confrontation with socially engaged spirituality. This study provides a thoughtful dialogue on the meaning of Marxism in the modern world.

This outstanding and original volume offers a critical examination of a number of developments which in recent years have undermined the idea of socialism and eroded its electoral appeal. Among these developments are the collapse of Communist regimes, the fragmentation of the constituencies upon which earlier socialist advances had depended, changes in the organization and the dynamics of capitalism and a dearth of agencies committed to the socialist project. The book also takes up and seeks to rebut older objections to socialism, such as the notion that it is inevitably totalitarian, that it is based on too optimistic a view of human nature and that it fails to take account of the tendency of power to accumulate in the hands of minorities. The book argues that a social order dominated by the logic of capital and competition cannot, despite all the positive claims made on its behalf, produce the conditions which make true citizenship and community possible. By contrast, socialism offers an attractive and feasible programme for the realization of those ideals. Miliband argues that socialism cannot be seen as an answer to all the ills which have plagued humankind. Socialism, in his view, has to be understood as part of an age-old struggle for a more just society, and he believes that, seen in this light, socialism remains not only desirable but also perfectly possible. Moreover, he believes, socialism will, in time, come to command a majority support which its advancement requires. Socialism has to be seen as a permanent striving for the achievement of democracy, egalitarianism and the creation of an economy under democratic control.

This is a posthumous collection of essays in political philosophy by G.A. Cohen. Part I asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize. Part II considers the relationship between freedom and property. Part III reflects upon ideal theory and political practice

Mandel's essays are a spirited affirmation of internationalism, macropolitics, political economy, and class analysis. Unashamedly committed to progress, he rightly refused to ignore capitalism's myriad victims or to scrap what Marxism and Leninism offer to the struggle for emancipation; such spirited engagement is a remarkable and welcome achievement.

In this vivid memoir, Silviu Brucan traces half a century of East European history, bringing to life the drama of a generation caught between the 1944 communist revolution and the 1989 anticommunist revolution. Brucan himself was at the heart of political power from World War II through the formation of a new government after the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu. After participating in the antifascist underground movement in World War II, he became acting editor of Romania's leading communist daily. He served as Romania's ambassador to the United States and then as its ambassador to the United Nations. He later grew disenchanted with the Ceausescu regime, becoming a prime mobilizer of popular support for reform and subsequently one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front. Brucan's insider position gave him a unique perspective on the inner workings of the Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu regimes as well as of the political machinations of Soviet and other East European leaders. He reveals for the first time the details - available nowhere else - of secret meetings between communist leaders: the 1944 conspiracy with King Michael against the German occupation; the extraordinary 1945 meeting between Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator decided that Georghiu-Dej and not Ana Pauker should lead the Romanian Communist Party; the secret mission assigned to Gheorghiu-Dej by Nikita Khrushchev during the 1956 revolution to install Janos Kadar as leader of the communist party; the 1958 Khrushchev-Gheorghiu-Dej meeting after a bear hunt in the Carpathians, which appeared to be a chat between two canny old peasants but concluded with Khrushchev's decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Romania; and Ceausescu's astute maneuver to seize power while Gheorghiu-Dej was on his deathbed. Brucan then recounts the real story behind the 1989 revolution, which was rooted in earlier plots to overthrow Ceausescu. He traces his own memorable transformation from staunch communist to outspoken critic of the regime, weaving his own story within the larger framework of his country's transformation and hopes for the future.

First Published in 1926, Towards Socialism or Capitalism? considers how the socialised economy of Soviet Russia, isolated in a capitalist world after Lenin's death, faced acute dangers. Trotsky and the Left Opposition alone fought the Stalinist degeneration of the state and party apparatus which threatened to open the door to capitalist restoration. The three articles in this book, written between 1925 and 1932, discuss the fundamental problems of the Soviet economy from the New Economic Policy to forced collectivization. Published here in one volume, they are indispensable steps in the development of Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union, laid down in 1936 in 'The Revolution Betrayed'.