Dissident Marxism, by David Renton
Published by Zed Books in 2004, 277 pages. Paperback (N2135)
Brand New Book
The years towards the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century have witnessed the birth of a new politics - anti-capitalist, libertarian and anti-war. Its advocates reject the single-issue politics of the 1980s and 1990s, preferring to see the system as a totality, a world ripe for revolutionary change. But where do contemporary dissidents come from?
Here, David Renton argues that the roots of the modern anti-capitalist movement can be found in the life and work of an earlier generation of socialist revolutionaries who shared a commitment to socialism from below: the Soviet poet Mayakovsky, the Marxist philosopher Karl Korsch, historians Edward Thompson and Dona Torr, Georges Henein, Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Walter Rodney, Samir Amin and others. He explores their lives and thinking, and asks if the new anti-capitalist movement may give birth to another such left-wing generation. Chapters include:
- Dissident Marxism 1917-1989
- Mayakovsky, Kollontai, Lunacharsky, Serge: Questioning the Soviet Path
- Karl Korsch: Marxism and Philosophy
- Georges Henein: Surrealism and Socialism
- Dona Torr, E. P. Thompson: Socialist History
- Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy and Monopoly Capital
- Walter Rodney, African Socialist
- Harry Braverman: Work and Resistance
- Samir Amin: Theorising Underdevelopment
- David Widgery: The Poetics of Propaganda
- The Dissident Tradition
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