A crown jewel of New Left historiography, this overview of U.S. Marxism was hailed on its first publication for its nuanced storytelling, balance and incredible sweep. Brimming over with archival finds and buoyed by the recollections of witnesses and participants in the radical movements of decades past, Marxism in the United States includes fascinating accounts of the immigrant socialism of the nineteenth century, the formation of the CPUSA in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of American communism and of the hugely influential Popular Front in the 1920s and ʹ30s, the crisis and split of the ʹ50s, and the revival of Marxism in the ʹ60s and ʹ70s. -- Publisher description.
Setting / LocationGlobal
Story Era1920s Jazz Age
Protagonist / CoreMarxism in the United States Lead Character
This synoptic essay considers the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the East in the early 1920s. It focuses particularly on the work of Lukács, Korsch and Gramsci; Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin; Sartre and Althusser; and Della Volpe and Colletti, together with other figures within Western Marxism from 1920 to 1975. The theoretical production of each of these thinkers is related simultaneously to the practical fate of working-class struggles and to the cultural mutations of bourgeois thought in their time. The philosophical antecedents of the various school within this tradition - Lukácsian, Gramscian, Frankfurt, Sartrean, Althusserian and Della Volpean - are compared, and the specific innovations of their respective systems surveyed. The structural unity of 'Western Marxism', beyond the diversity of its individual thinkers, is then assessed, in a balance-sheet that contrasts its heritage with the tradition of 'classical' Marxism that preceded it, and with the commanding problems which will confront any historical materialism to succeed it. (Source: Verso Books)
Es ist kein Geschichts-Buch: Die Fragen, die die Studenten- und Jugendrevolte Ende der 60er Jahre an unsere Gesellschaft, an Politik und Moral, an die deutsche Vergangenheit stellte, erst geduldig, dann militant, sind bis heute nicht wirklich beantwortet. Was hat die radikalen Frager in diesen Jahren der Unruhe bewegt? Wovon träumten sie, die aus dem öd-konservativen Konsens der Adenauer-ära aufgebrochen waren? Und welche Rolle hatten dabei jene Theoretiker wie Ernst Bloch, Helmut Gollwitzer, Herbert Marcuse, die intellektuellen Mentoren der Revolte, die sich auch praktisch solidarisierten? Die Revolte markierte einen einschneidenden Wendepunkt in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik. Aber was ist geblieben von den Anstößen, den Impulsen, den zuweilen provokativen Aktionen? War alles sinnlos? Sind wir wieder in den 60ern angelangt, haben wir uns nur einmal im Kreis gedreht in dieser Republik, in der nun der „Enkel Adenauers“ regiert? Und ist vielleicht auch der Traum von einem freiheitlichen Sozialismus, den viele damals träumten, ausgeträumt? Oder gar enttäuscht durch die Revolte, denunziert durch ihre Protestmethoden, die (auch) im Terror endeten? Oder lebt die Revolte vielleicht doch in vielen Formen von demokratischem Widerstand und in neuen sozialen Bewegungen? Rudi Dutschke — den einen moralisches Vorbild und Freiheitskämpfer, den anderen demagogischer Prediger von Gewalt — starb am 24. Dezember 1979, erst 39 Jahre alt, an den Spätfolgen des Revolverattentats von Ostern 1968, „So ist die Revolte Trauma und Traum, Geschichte und Gegenwart. Noch vor dem Tod einiger ihrer Väten (Bloch, Marcuse, Sartre) starben, oft gewaltsam, viele ihrer Söhne und Töchter, in den USA, in Westeuropa, in vielen Ländern der Welt. Die Revolte, die Träume, Entwürfe, Utopien konnten nicht erschossen werden. Trost für Trauernde kann das nicht sein. Eine Spur Hoffnung vielleicht — für den nächsten Versuch. Die Revolte war ein Aufbruch, sich selbst, eine neue Welt und die Wahrheit zu suchen. Unbedingt, provozierend, mit der ganzen Existenz. Und die Wahrheit ist konkret, hat einmal jemand gesagt, auch nicht in einer Nacht zu finden. „Wo die Revolte konkret wurde, hat sie sie gefunden.“ (Jürgen Miermeister) Die vorliegenden Texte, Essays über drei „Väter der Revolte“ (Bloch, Gollwitzer, Marcuse), einige Briefe an sie (und von ihnen) sowie Interviews mit Rudi Dutschke aus den 60er und 70er Jahren, wurden ergänzt durch Reden und Schriften der „antiautoritiren Autoritäten“, durch Dokumente der Zeit (oft des Hasses der Zeit) und durch eine auf den neuesten Stand gebrachte Bibliographie. Dieses Buch zeigt Rudi Dutschke in seiner Vielseitigkeit: den politischen Menschen, von christlicher Ethik her kommend, den Agitator und Rhetoriker, den kritisch-selbstkritischen Theoretiker — und nicht zuletzt wird er hier sichtbar als einer, der zuhören und vermitteln, lernen und weitergeben konnte; als einer, dem Liebe und Leidenschaft für Menschen eigen waren: „Sich selbst zu verändern, glaubwürdig zu werden, Menschen zu überzeugen und den verschiedensten Formen von Ausbeutung und Terror entgegenzuwirken, das mag in manchen Augenblicken ungeheuer schwer erscheinen. Und dennoch gibt es dazu keine Alternative.“ (Rudi Dutschke, 1977)
The conclusions reached in The Ideal Real are not the same as those reached by most commentary on Beckett's works. Most Beckett criticism seeks falsely to over-simplify or align Beckett's point of view with existentialism, the absurd, or the pessimistic nihilism underlying much postmodern thought. Beckett, though one of the century's leading intellects, was also an intuitive who realized the Western empirical mind was an out-dated program that had long ceased to be of any help in understanding the human situation. The "disintegration" of mind and body felt by his characters reflects the disastrous effect of the continued imposition of that "reason-ridden" consciousness. At the same time it opens the door to a new possibility. . The Beckett heroes, whose experiences are discussed in this book, were conditioned by a "humanistic" education much like Beckett's; but they come to find that the self they were taught to see as their own is nonexistent. Having nothing in their acquired personality to cope with this crisis, Murphy, Molloy, Moran, Malone, and all that follow find themselves dying to their old self, to everything a Western liberal education could think of as self. Early on, Beckett saw clues to the situation in the work of Jung, the "mind doctor" who represented the opposite of the empirical tradition. Jung, like the esoteric schools, saw a potential human whose development was sometimes delayed or prevented by the very system the claimed to "educate" and "civilize" the personality. The existence of this potential self has been doubted by many modern thinkers, but Beckett's stories show "a soul denied in vain" since it is the enabler of all speech, whether apparently denying or affirming. No knowledge can be considered apart from the knower. In The Ideal Real, Paul Davies argues that Beckett saw this potential self emerging in the world of imagination and symbol, especially in this age where language alone has come to be seen as the vehicle of education and the determiner of identity. He renders in prose the collapse of the illusive world of self to which the European cult of personality devoted three centuries, and witnesses its annihilation in the death before death - the white light of contemporary physics, the "void" of Zen - from which all trace of personality has fallen. From the 1920s to Beckett's last year, this study follows all the stages his fiction writing went through in order to face this matter uncompromisingly. The perspective taken by Davies sees the postmodern critical climate as an inadequate and reductive context within which to contemplate and comment on works of art. It seeks to recognize that creative imagination is a vital aspect of all mental activity that is not doomed to the inferno of Beckett's lost world.
"John Reed and the Writing of Revolution examines Reed's writing from a different critical perspective - one informed by a theoretical and practical understanding of literary nonfiction. In both politics and writing, John Reed defied fashion. In his short career, Reed transcended the traditional creative arts of fiction, poetry, and drama in favor of deeply researched histories composed with the cadence of fiction and the power of fact. Reed thereby alienated literary critics who had idealized timeless artistry against the rough-and-tumble world of historical details and political implications.". "Working from a close investigation of rare articles, manuscripts, and the Reed papers at Harvard as well as from Reed's published work, Daniel W. Lehman offers the first detailed literary study of the man who followed Pancho Villa into battle; wrote literary profiles of such characters as Henry Ford, William Jennings Bryan, and Billy Sunday; explicated the Byzantine factionalism of Eastern Europe; and witnessed the storming of the Winter Palace and the birth of Soviet Russia."--BOOK JACKET.
Marxism in the United States by Paul Buhle | Literally Just Books
