The theory of imperialism is usually associated with some of the 'big names' in the history of European Marxism, such as Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Rudolf Hilferding and Nikolai Bukharin, alongside whom the English Progressive John Hobson is usually mentioned. However, little is known about the development of Marxist theory on this subject besides the books of these figures. This volume assembles for the first time the main documents of the international debate on imperialism that took place in the Second International during the period 1898-1916. It assesses the contributions of the individual...

The proceedings of the last Comintern congress in which Lenin participated, now at last available in English, reveals a Communist world movement grappling to reconcile the goal of unifying workers and colonial people in struggle with that of pressing forward to socialist revolution. The principle of national parties' autonomy strains against calls for more stringent centralisation. Debates range over the birth of Fascism, decay of the Versailles Treaty system, the rise of colonial revolution, and women's emancipation. Newly translated and richly annotated, the stenographic transcript of the...

Criticism of Earth thoroughly reassesses Marx and Engels's engagement with theology, drawing on largely ignored texts. Thus, alongside 'opium of the people', Hegel's philosophy of law, and the Feuerbach theses, other works are also central. These include Marx's early pieces on theology, continual transformations of fetishism, and lengthy treatments of Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. Engels too is given serious attention, since he moved beyond Marx in appreciating theology's revolutionary possibilities. Engels's Calvinism is discussed, his treatments of biblical criticism and theology, and...

This, the first book-length study devoted exclusively to Marx's perspectives on gender and the family, offers a fresh look at this topic in light of twenty-first century concerns. Although Marx's writings sometimes exhibit sexism, especially through the naturalization of certain female social functions, his work often transcends these. Brown studies those writings on gender, as well as his 1879-1882 notebooks on precapitalist societies and gender, some of them still unpublished in any language. The author argues that although Marx never fully developed these ideas, he gave important...

In a series of probing analytical essays, John Marot tracks the development of Bolshevism through the prism of pre-1917 intra-Russian Social Democratic controversies in politics and philosophy. For 1917, the author presents a critique of social historical interpretation of the Russian Revolution. Turning to NEP Russia, the author applies Robert Brenner's analysis of pre-capitalist modes of production and concludes that neither Bukharin nor Trotsky's NEP-premised programs of economic transformation and advance toward socialism were feasible. At the same time, he rejects the view that Stalinism...

In Gramsci's Political Thought, Carlos Nelson Coutinho offers an analysis of the evolution of the political thought of Antonio Gramsci. Focusing on central concepts of the Prison Notebooks and relating them to the history of modern political ideas, the book also demonstrates that Gramsci's ideas continue to be relevant resources for understanding the controversies of our present time. Written by a leading Brazilian Marxist theorist, Gramsci's Political Thought provides one of the most succinct and theoretically focused introductions to the thought of Antonio Gramsci...

In contrast to the traditional view that Marx's work is restricted to a critique of capitalism and does not contain a detailed or coherent conception of its alternative, this book shows, through an analysis of his published and unpublished writings, that Marx was committed to a specific concept of a post-capitalist society that informed his critique of value production, alienated labor and capitalist accumulation. Instead of focusing on the present with only a passing reference to the future, Marx's emphasis on capitalism's tendency towards dissolution is rooted in a specific conception of...

Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading contemporary political theorist who has elaborated an innovative approach to the history of political thought, the 'social history of political theory'. She has been described as the founder, together with the historian Robert Brenner, of 'Political Marxism', a distinct version of historical materialism which has inspired a research program that spans a number of academic disciplines. Organized thematically, this Reader brings together selections from Wood's groundbreaking scholarship, published over three decades, providing an overview of her original...

The book rethinks the central categories of Marx's work beyond any philosophy of history, providing a critical analysis of his political and theoretical development from his early writings, to the elaboration of the critique of political economy and his final anthropological studies on pre-individualistic and communist forms. The study aims to integrate the paradigm of the spatialisation of time with that of the temporalisation of space, showing how capital places diverse temporalities into hierarchies that incessantly produce and reproduce new forms of class struggle. An adequate...

Nearly thirty years after its initial publication, Marxism and the Oppression of Women remains an essential contribution to the development of an integrative theory of gender oppression under capitalism. Lise Vogel revisits classical Marxian texts, tracking analyses of "the woman question" in socialist theory and drawing on central theoretical categories of Marx's Capital to open up an original theorisation of gender and the social production and reproduction of material life. Included in this edition are Vogel's article, "Domestic Labor Revisited" (originally published in...