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126 books match the query 'Communism' and 9 start with m

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Magical Marxism

Andy Merrifield

Pluto Press, 2011

Following his hugely popular book, The Wisdom of Donkeys, Andy Merrifield breathes new life into the Marxist tradition.

Magical Marxism demands something more of traditional Marxism - something more interesting and liberating. It asks that we imagine a Marxism that moves beyond debates about class, the role of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In escaping the formalist straitjacket of orthodox Marxist critique, Merrifield argues for a reconsideration of Marxism and its potential, applying previously unexplored approaches to Marxist thinking that will reveal vital new modes of political activism and debate.

This book will provoke and inspire in equal measure. It gives us a Marxism for the 21st century, which offers dramatic new possibilities for political engagement.

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Mariátegui and Latin American Marxist Theory

Marc Becker

Ohio University Press, 1993

José Carlos Mariátegui, the Peruvian political theorist of the 1920s, was instrumental in developing an indigenous Latin American revolutionary Marxist theory. He rejected a rigid, orthodox interpretation of Marxism and applied his own creative elements, which he believed could move a society to revolutionary action without the society having to depend upon more traditional economic factors. His interpretation of Peruvian history had a profound effect upon subsequent social movements throughout Latin America.

This volume reviews the essential elements of Mariátegui's thought and important influences on his intellectual development. It demonstrates the role he played in defining a Latin american identity, the nature of his intellectual contribution to the development of indigenous revolutionary movements in Latin America, and the inflluence he had on successful revolutionary movements in Cuba and Nicaragua. An understanding of Mariátegui's thought is fundamental to understanding the nature of revolutionary changes in Latin America.

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Martin Monath

A Jewish Resistance Fighter Amongst Nazi Soldiers

Nathaniel Flakin

Pluto Press, 2019

A dramatisation of Martin Monath's short life (1913-1944) would need little artistic embellishment; his identity shrouded in mystery, and executed by the Gestapo - twice - the historical record reads like a detective novel. Pieced together for the first time by Wladek Flakin, this biography tells the story of the Jewish socialist and editor of Arbeiter und Soldat ('Worker and Soldier'), and his efforts to turn German rank-and-file soldiers against their Nazi officers in occupied France. Born in Berlin in 1913, Martin Monath was a child of war and revolution. In the 1930s he became a leader of the socialist Zionist youth organisation Hashomer Hatzair in Germany. Fleeing from Berlin to Brussels in 1939, he joined the underground Trotskyist party led by Abraham Leon, and soon became a leading member of the Fourth International in Europe. His relocation to Paris in 1943 saw the birth of Arbeiter und Soldat and his work organising illegal cells of German soldiers for a revolutionary struggle against the Nazis. Drawing on extensive archival research, Flakin uses letters, testimonies and unpublished documents to bring Monath's story to life - weaving a tale rich with conviction and betrayal, ideology and espionage.

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Marx's Dream

From Capitalism to Communism

Tom Rockmore

University of Chicago Press, 2018

Two centuries after his birth, Karl Marx is read almost solely through the lens of Marxism, his works examined for how they fit into the doctrine that was developed from them after his death.

With Marx’s Dream, Tom Rockmore offers a much-needed alternative view, distinguishing rigorously between Marx and Marxism. Rockmore breaks with the Marxist view of Marx in three key ways. First, he shows that the concern with the relation of theory to practice—reflected in Marx’s famous claim that philosophers only interpret the world, while the point is to change it—arose as early as Socrates, and has been central to philosophy in its best moments. Second, he seeks to free Marx from his unsolicited Marxist embrace in order to consider his theory on its own merits. And, crucially, Rockmore relies on the normal standards of philosophical debate, without the special pleading to which Marxist accounts too often resort. Marx’s failures as a thinker, Rockmore shows, lie less in his diagnosis of industrial capitalism’s problems than in the suggested remedies, which are often unsound.

Only a philosopher of Rockmore’s stature could tackle a project this substantial, and the results are remarkable: a fresh Marx, unencumbered by doctrine and full of insights that remain salient today.

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Marx

The Alternative to Capitalism

Kieran Allen

Pluto Press, 2017

If we are serious about finding a different way to run the post-credit crunch society, we must start by introducing alternatives to undergraduates. Kieran Allen begins the task with an accessible and comprehensive look at the ideas of Karl Marx.

Dispensing with the dryness of traditional explanations of Marx, Allen shows how Marx's ideas apply to modern society. The first section briefly outlines Marx's life and the development of his work, then goes on to clearly explain his key theories, including historical materialism and surplus value. The second section examines alternatives to capitalism, the concept of 'anti-capitalism' and provides concrete, contemporary examples of Marx’s theories being put into practice in today's world.

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Matanza

Thomas P. Anderson

Northwestern University Press, 1995

This authoritative account of the matanza narrates the circumstances leading up to the 1932 communist revolt in El Salvador, a pivotal event in Central American history. It investigates the proximate and underlying causes of the conflict and follows the progression of the rebellion and subsequent slaughter (matanza) of thousands of peasants, even those merely suspected of participating in the uprising. It provides a vivid, detailed chronicle of the revolt in various Salvadoran towns as well as the social aspects, battles, military engagements, and innumerable casualties.

In light of the scarcity of first-hand information and primary sources, Anderson makes remarkable use of interviews and oral histories to develop this invaluable and searing record of injustice.

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Menace of Our Time

The Long War Against American Communism

Aaron J. Leonard

Rutgers University Press, 2025

A survey of the far-reaching measures the U.S. government brought to bear against the CPUSA, from poison-pen letters to the Red Scare and beyond.

Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and ending only with the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the U.S. government and major elements in the wider society waged an unrelenting campaign to suppress and criminalize domestic communism. This long-overdue book details the longest and most extensive repressive operation ever undertaken by U.S. authorities against a domestic political organization that, however problematic, was largely operating within the scope of constitutionally mandated freedoms. Beyond that, this is the story of how systemic measures against U.S. communists—in contrast to the vaunted claims of American political freedom—defined the political landscape of the last century.

Menace of Our Time tracks the suppression efforts aimed at the group, including the state laws of the twenties that imprisoned the fledgling communist leadership; the tactics used by police and local authorities against communists as they fought for unions, racial equality, and the unemployed; the trials and imprisonment of communist leaders mid-century; the extra-legal efforts of the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the sixties; and the ongoing, relentless surveillance by the FBI that followed. In examining the far-reaching measures the government brought to bear against the Communist Party USA, Aaron J. Leonard provides a clearer picture of the mechanics of social and political repression that abound in the society we still inhabit.

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Messiah of the New Technique

John Howard Lawson, Communism, and American Theatre, 1923-1937

Jonathan L. Chambers

Southern Illinois University Press, 2006

Messiah of the New Technique: John Howard Lawson, Communism, and American Theatre, 1923–1937 is a critical and political biography and a cultural and social history that focuses on Lawson’s career in the theatre. Using a materialist methodology, Jonathan L. Chambers emphasizes the evolution and interplay of the playwright’s artistic vision and political ideology, considering his art as both a documentation of this evolution and a product of the socio-political and cultural matrix in which he was immersed.

Spanning the playwright’s career, the volume details Lawson’s early indoctrination in and commitment to the avant-garde, his use and development of various nonrealistic playwriting techniques, his subtle though unfocused attacks on bourgeois society, and the varied critical responses he received. Chambers addresses Lawson’s involvement with the New Playwrights’ Theatre and his participation in the protests surrounding the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, which stimulated his growing commitment to left-wing politics and radical causes.

Chambers also analyzes the social and cultural factors that shaped Lawson’s growing interest in revolutionary politics, his tutelage in Marxism under Edmund Wilson, and his tenure as president of the Screen Writers Guild. He also covers the final phase of Lawson’s playwriting career, which reveals the playwright’s internal struggle. That struggle, suggests Chambers, pitted Lawson’s view of aesthetics against his political ideology and is reflected in his scripts and theoretical writings.

Messiah of the New Technique provides a wealth of new material about both the playwright and the period, offering a critical synopsis of the artist’s career, addressing his often vehement rebuttals to his critics, and summarizing both his political activism and his creative and critical endeavors in the last forty years of his life.

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