Product Description: "An examination of the communist form of government, including its basic ideologies and structure, its best-known leaders throughout history, and countries affected by its system of rule"--

Product Description: Frank Cunningham examines a selection of contested questions of political theory and methodology pertinent to the relationship of democracy and socialism. A central section of the book addresses contemporary debates over the nature of socialism, communitarianism, and philosophical foundationism from the point of view of democratic theory...read more

Product Description: This book, first published in 1986, presents a radical challenge to socialist orthodoxy, subjecting a key component of that orthodoxy – Marxism – to sustained criticism. Les Johnston argues that Marxism cannot provide the foundations for a rigorous socialist theory or an effective socialist politics...read more

Frank Cunningham examines a selection of contested questions of political theory and methodology pertinent to the relationship of democracy and socialism. A central section of the book addresses contemporary debates over the nature of socialism, communitarianism, and philosophical foundationism from the point of view of democratic theory. Within this context, Cunningham also discusses that about Marxism which survives—and that which fails to survive—the collapse of authoritarian socialism. The work concludes by discussing the practical political potentials of the new social movements and by making some prescriptions with respect to global ecological stability.

In Wonder and Exile in the New World, Alex Nava explores the border regions between wonder and exile, particularly in relation to the New World. It traces the preoccupation with the concept of wonder in the history of the Americas, beginning with the first European encounters, goes on to investigate later representations in the Baroque age, and ultimately enters the twentieth century with the emergence of so-called magical realism. In telling the story of wonder in the New World, Nava gives special attention to the part it played in the history of violence and exile, either as a force that supported and reinforced the Conquest or as a voice of resistance and decolonization. Focusing on the work of New World explorers, writers, and poets—and their literary descendants—Nava finds that wonder and exile have been two of the most significant metaphors within Latin American cultural, literary, and religious representations. Beginning with the period of the Conquest, especially with Cabeza de Vaca and Las Casas, continuing through the Baroque with Cervantes and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and moving into the twentieth century with Alejo Carpentier and Miguel Ángel Asturias, Nava produces a historical study of Latin American narrative in which religious and theological perspectives figure prominently.

"The heart of history, for Heidegger, is not a sequence of occurrences but the eruption of significance at critical junctures that bring us into our own by making all being, including our being, into an urgent issue. In emergency, being emerges."―from The Emergency of BeingThe esoteric Contributions to Philosophy, often considered Martin Heidegger's second main work after Being and Time, is crucial to any interpretation of his thought. Here Heidegger proposes that being takes place as "appropriation." Richard Polt's independent-minded account of the Contributions interprets appropriation as an event of emergency that demands to be thought in a "future-subjunctive" mode. Polt explores the roots of appropriation in Heidegger's earlier philosophy; Heidegger's search for a way of thinking suited to appropriation; and the implications of appropriation for time, space, human existence, and beings as a whole. In his concluding chapter, Polt reflects critically on the difficulties of the radically antirationalist and antimodern thought of the Contributions.Polt's original reading neither reduces this challenging text to familiar concepts nor refutes it, but engages it in a confrontation―an encounter that respects a way of thinking by struggling with it. He describes this most private work of Heidegger's philosophy as "a dissonant symphony that imperfectly weaves together its moments into a vast fugue, under the leitmotif of appropriation. This fugue is seeded with possibilities that are waiting for us, its listeners, to develop them. Some are dead ends―viruses that can lead only to a monolithic, monotonous misunderstanding of history. Others are embryonic insights that promise to deepen our thought, and perhaps our lives, if we find the right way to make them our own."

Product Description: Imagine being forced to adopt an ideology that strips you of your political rights and plunges you into a life of despair and unending shortages. After the Second World War, the people of East Germany endured just such an appalling fate when socialism was forced upon them...read more

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Product Description: Sperlich examines the ideological foundations of the socialist regime of the former German Democratic Republic. He provides a detailed analysis of the nature of the GDR's legitimating ideology and of the reasons why the ideology ultimately failed to legitimate the regime...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Re/presenting Class is a collection of essays that develops a poststructuralist Marxian conception of class in order to theorize the complex contemporary economic terrain. Both building upon and reconsidering a tradition that Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff—two of this volume’s editors—began in the late 1980s with their groundbreaking work Knowledge and Class, contributors aim to correct previous research that has largely failed to place class as a central theme in economic analysis...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: To preserve social order the state must administer civil society, with a threefold purpose - the fashioning of the market, the constitution of legal subjectivity and the subsumption of struggle. In Administering Civil Society Mark Neocleous offers a rethinking of the state-civil society distinction through the idea of political administration...read more

Product Description: Post mortems are not the exclusive terrritory of pathology. For over 75 years, the Communist Party ruled over one of the largest countries in the world. And communists won the recent elections in Russia. This book presents a cogent analysis and detailed description of the party structure...read more

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Product Description: Marx: Later Political Writings brings together the most important texts in political philosophy written by Marx after 1848. All are in new translations, and the collection is introduced by the leading Marx scholar Terrell Carver. Unlike other collections, the works are presented complete, according to their earliest edition or manuscript text, and include the Manifesto of the Communist Party, and the little-known Notes on Adolph Wagner...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Frank Cunningham examines a selection of contested questions of political theory and methodology pertinent to the relationship of democracy and socialism. A central section of the book addresses contemporary debates over the nature of socialism, communitarianism, and philosophical foundationism from the point of view of democratic theory...read more

Product Description: This outstanding book deals with the Soviet model as a distinctive pattern of modernity. Its historical background and its institutional structure are thoroughly examined as are its implications for understanding Modernity. The book challenges many of the simple assumptions and judgements made about the Soviet road...read more

The collapse of the Soviet Union would seem to sound the death knell for Marxism as a blueprint for social change. Why has this doctrine--the repository of so many hopes and dreams--failed in its grand ambition to liberate the human race from poverty and oppression? Through a critical and systematic analysis of what Marx and his disciples had to say about democracy, Joseph Femia sheds light on the reasons for this failure. His book explores the bewildering variety of Marxist attitudes to democracy, and relates this diversity to Marxism's inconsistent goals: active political participation and all-embracing central planning, human emancipation and collective submission to the dialectical 'truths' of history. Dr Femia explains why Marxism's internal contradictions have always, in practice, been 'solved' through the imposition of despotic modes of government. Marxism's tragic flaw, he concludes, is its unwillingness to recognize the distinctiveness and independence of the individual.

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Product Description: Communism, or as Ken Jowitt prefers, Leninism, has attracted, repelled, mystified, and terrified millions for nearly a century. In his brilliant, timely, and controversial study, New World Disorder, Jowitt identifies and interprets the extraordinary character of Leninist regimes, their political corruption, extinction, and highly unsettling legacy...read more