The third volume in our series of selected essays by Ernest Mandel is now available. This book collects essays exploring Marxist theory and history. Most of the texts are newly translated. Essays include historical examinations of Rosa Luxemburg’s place in the German workers movement, the development of the bourgeois state, and of the roots of Nazi violence. Other chapters discuss Marx’s notions of progress, alienation and emancipation, Luxemburg’s views on political economy and political strategy. Also included are engagements with Ernst Bloch, analytical Marxism and Althusser, as well as a pioneering essay on Marxism and ecology. Together, the texts in this book demonstrate Mandel’s use of an open Marxism to investigate theoretical and historical problems.
''At long last in English, writings from Ernest Mandel are gathered in a collection doing justice to their author. This third volume provides a vibrant mix: informative, critical-minded, coherent, lucid -- reflecting the best in the revolutionary Marxist tradition. Embracing positive engagement (with Rosa Luxemburg and Ernest Bloch), no less than sharp polemics (with Louis Althusser and Jon Elster), the reader will find explorations of social and historical realities ranging over a wide terrain -- “capitalist growth” generating human alienation and environmental devastation; the class nature and repressive qualities of the state; the rise of right-wing ideologies (Nazism) and reformist illusions (Eurocommunism); the intersecting promise of social science, revolutionary politics, and human emancipation. There is much of value for activists and scholars alike.''
- Paul Le Blanc, author of Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, From Marx to Gramsci, and Marx, Lenin and the Revolutionary Experience.
Hope and Marxism: Selected Theoretical Essays is the third in a series of selected writings by Ernest Mandel. The first volume is Introduction to Marxist Theory and the second is Marxists Against Stalinism (A debate with Chris Harman with a Preface by Paul Le Blanc).
Order the book here.
Contents:
- Introduction
- Althusser corrects Marx
- The causes of alienation
- Rosa Luxemburg and German Social Democracy
- The dialectic of growth
- Rosa Luxemburg and political economy
- We must dream. Anticipation and hope as categories of Historical Materialism
- A critique of Eurocommunism
- On the class nature of the capitalist state
- Emancipation, science and politics in Karl Marx
- How to make no sense of Marx
- The origins of National Socialism. singularity and repeatability of the Nazi crimes