Overview
Cultural Writing. Political Science. The purpose of this book is to address a recent claim that socialist theory can be renewed on the basis of 'classical Marxism', the socialist politics of the Second International in the period between the death of Karl Marx and the Russian Revolution of 1917. This claim is approached, with both sympathy and some distance, through a series of biographical chapters that address the lives and arguments of important figures within the movement: Paul Lafargue, Tom Maguire, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and V.I. Lenin.
Synopsis
This in-depth study addresses the recent claim that socialist theory can be renewed on the basis of "classical Marxism," the socialist politics of the Second International in the period between the death of Karl Marx and the Russian Revolution, arguing instead that classical Marxism was in the process of dissolution even before 1914, that the alliance between socialist left and right could be kept together only by pushing the moment of socialist revolution even further into the distance, and that with war and revolution imminent, this balancing act became impossible to sustain. Written with both sympathy and some distance, this accessible text features a series of biographical chapters that consider the lives and arguments of important figures within the movement.
Author Biography: David Renton is the author of Red Shirts and Black, Fascism: Theory and Practice, and Marx on Globalization.