[OPE-L] New Titles in the Historical Materialism Book Series

From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Fri Sep 15 2006 - 08:47:02 EDT


Some of these titles aren't so new and have been called to your
attention previously on OPE-L in the past, but I'am passing on
the following info from Sebastian Budgen
<sebastian@amadeobordiga.u-net.com> anyway.

Note, btw,  that Chris's book is now (?) available in pb.

In solidarity, Jerry



ALL AVAILABLE FROM:
<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=18&pid=10613

The New Dialectic and Marx's Capital

Christopher J. Arthur

. September 2002
. ISBN 90 04 12798 4
. Hardback (viii, 264 pp.)
. List price  EUR 52.- / US$ 70.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 1

This book both argues for, and demonstrates, a new turn to dialectic.
Marx's Capital was clearly influenced by Hegel's dialectical figures:
here, case by case, the significance of these is clarified. More, it is
argued that, instead of the dialectic of the rise and fall of social
systems, what is needed is a method of articulating the dialectical
relations characterising a given social whole. Marx learnt from Hegel
the necessity for a systematic development, and integration, of
categories; for example, the category of 'value' can be fully
comprehended only in the context of the totality of capitalist
relations. These studies thus shed new light on Marx's great work,
while going beyond it in many respects.

This publication has also been published in paperback.

Christopher J. Arthur studied at the Universities of Nottingham and
Oxford. For 25 years he taught Philosophy at the University of Sussex.
He is a leading Marx scholar whose publications include Dialectics of
Labour: Marx and his Relation to Hegel (Blackwell, 1986).




The New Dialectic and Marx's Capital

Christopher J. Arthur

. December 2003
. ISBN 90 04 13643 6
. Paperback (viii, 264 pp.)
. List price  EUR 29.- / US$ 29.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 1

This publication has also been published in hardback.

Christopher J. Arthur studied at the Universities of Nottingham and
Oxford. For 25 years he taught Philosophy at the University of Sussex.
He is a leading Marx scholar whose publications include Dialectics of
Labour: Marx and his Relation to Hegel (Blackwell, 1986).




The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx

Michael Löwy

. December 2002
. ISBN 90 04 12901 4
. Hardback (x, 206 pp.)
. List price  EUR 52.- / US$ 70.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 2

This book proposes a Marxist analysis of young Marx's intellectual
evolution, from left neo-Hegelianism to his new philosophy of praxis.
It distinguishes itself from most other books on the early Marx by its
object - the theory of (proletarian) revolutionary self-emancipation -
and its method: to understand the movement of Marx's political and
philosophical ideas in relation to the most radical currents in the
labour movement of his time (beginning with Chartism and the uprising
of the Silesian weavers in 1844). The central theoretical argument of
the author is that Marx's philosophy of praxis - first formulated in
the Thesis on Feuerbach - is at the same time the founding stone of a
new world view, and the methodological basis for the theory of
revolutionary self-emancipation.

Michael Löwy, Ph.D. (1974) in Human Sciences, Sorbonne, is Research
Director in Sociology at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, Paris. He has published on Marx, Lukács and Walter
Benjamin, as well as (with Robert Sayre) Romanticism Against the Tide
of Modernity (Duke, 2001).




Making History
Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory

Alex Callinicos

. July 2004
. ISBN 90 04 13627 4
. Hardback (liv, 290 pp.)
. List price EUR 52.- / US$ 70.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 3

Making History is about the question - central to social theory - of
how human agents draw their powers from the social structures they are
involved in. Drawing on classical Marxism, analytical philosophy, and a
wide range of historical writing, Alex Callinicos seeks to avoid two
unacceptable extremes: dissolving the subject into an impersonal flux,
as poststructuralists tend to; and treating social structures as the
mere effects of individual action (for example, rational-choice
theory). Among those discussed are Althusser, Anderson, Benjamin,
Brenner, Cohen, Elster, Foucault, Giddens, Habermas, and Mann.
Callinicos has written an extended introduction to this new edition
that reviews developments since Making History was first published in
1987. This republication gives a new generation of readers access to an
important intervention in Marxism and social theory.

Alex Callinicos, D.Phil. (1979) in Philosophy, University of Oxford, is
Professor of Politics at the University of York (UK). He has written
widely about Marxism and social theory. His most recent books are
Social Theory (1999), Equality (2000), Against the Third Way (2001) and
An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto (2003), all published by Polity.




Pavel V. Maksakovsky: The Capitalist Cycle
An Essay on the Marxist Theory of the Cycle

Translated with introduction and commentary by Richard B. Day

. March 2004
. ISBN 90 04 13824 2
. Hardback (xlviii, 152 pp.)
. List price EUR 63.- / US$ 84.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 4

The Capitalist Cycle is a translation of a previously unknown work in
Marxist economic theory. Originally published in 1928, this
rediscovered work is one of the most creative essays witten by a Soviet
economist during the first two decades after the Russian Revolution.
Following the dialectic of Hegel and Marx, Maksakovsky aims to provide
a 'concluding chapter' for Marx's Capital. The book examines economic
methodology and logically reconstructs Marx's analysis into a
comprehensive and dynamic theory of cyclical economic crises. The
introductory essay by Richard B. Day situates Maksakovsky's work within
the Hegelian and Marxist philosophical traditions by emphasizing the
book's dialectical logic as well as its contribution to economic
science.

Richard B. Day, Ph.D. (1970), University of London, is Professor of
Political Economy at the University of Toronto. He has written
extensively on early Soviet debates and translated several books,
including works by N.I. Bukharin and E.A. Preobrazhensky.




The German Revolution, 1917-1923

Pierre Broué, Translated by John Archer. Edited by Ian Birchall and
Brian Pearce. With an Introduction by Eric D. Weitz

. November 2004
. ISBN 90 04 13940 0
. Hardback (xxviii, 996 pp.)
. List price EUR 137.- / US$ 178.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 5

On 12 October 1923, Grigory Zinoviev, president of the Communist
International wrote the following in Pravda:
The German events are developing with the inexorability of fate. The
path which it took the Russian Revolution twelve years to cover, from
1906 to 1917, will have taken the German Revolution five years, from
1918 to 1923. . The proletarian revolution is knocking at Germany's
door; you would have to be blind not to see it. . Very soon, everyone
will see that this autumn of 1923 is a turning-point, not just for the
history of Germany, but for the history of the whole world.
In fact, far from being on the point of triumphing, the German
Revolution was on the verge of an irredeemable disaster which would
soon inflict terrible consequences on Germany and the world.
In this magisterial work, first published 1971 and still unsurpassed,
Pierre Broué meticulously reconstitutes the six decisive years during
which - between 'ultra-leftism' and 'opportunism', 'sectarianism' and
'revisionism', 'activism' and 'passivity' - the German revolutionaries
attempted to begin a new chapter in the history of the proletariat.

Pierre Broué (born 1926) was for many years Professor of Contemporary
History at the Institut d'études politiques in Grenoble. A world
renowned specialist of the communist and international workers'
movements, he is the founder of the Cahiers Léon Trotsky, editor of
Leon Trotsky's writings in French and the author of many publications,
including La Révolution et la guerre en Espagne (with Etienne Témime,
1961), Le Parti bolchévique. Histoire du Parti communiste de l'URSS
(1963), Les Procès de Moscou (1965), La Question chinoise dans
l'Internationale communiste (1965), Le Printemps des peuples commence à
Prague (1969), La Révolution espagnole (1972), L'Assassinat de Trotsky
(1980), Trotsky (1988), Staline et la Révolution. Le cas espagnol
(1993), Rakovsky ou la Révolution dans tous les pays (1996), Histoire
de l'Internationale communiste, 1919-1943 (1997) and Communistes contre
Staline. Massacre d'une generation (2003).




Between Equal Rights
A Marxist Theory of International Law

China Miéville

. November 2004
. ISBN 90 04 13134 5
. Hardback (xii, 380 pp.)
. List price EUR 73.- / US$ 95.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 6

This book critically examines existing theories of international law
and makes the case for an alternative Marxist approach. China Miéville
draws on the pioneering jurisprudence of Evgeny Pashukanis linking law
to commodity exchange, and in turn uses international law to make
better sense of Pashukanis. Miéville argues that despite its advances,
the recent 'New Stream' of radical international legal scholarship,
like the mainstream it opposes, fails to make sense of the legal form
itself. Drawing on Marxist theory and a critical history of
international law from the sixteenth century to the present day,
Miéville seeks to address that failure, and argues that international
law is fundamentally constituted by the violence of imperialism.

China Miéville, Ph.D. (2001) in International Relations, London School
of Economics, is an independent researcher and an award-winning
novelist. He is a member of the editorial board of Historical
Materialism.




Utopia Ltd.
Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England 1870-1900

Matthew Beaumont

. February 2005
. ISBN 90 04 14296 7
. Hardback (xii, 216 pp.)
. List price  EUR 58.- / US$ 76.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 7
[beeld 22618]

This book uncovers the historical preconditions for the explosive
revival of utopian literature at the nineteenth-century fin de siècle,
and excavates its ideological content. It marks a contribution not only
to the literary and cultural history of the late-Victorian period, and
to the expanding field of utopian studies, but to the development of a
Marxist critique of utopianism. The book is particularly concerned with
three kinds of political utopia or anti-utopia, those of 'state
socialism', feminism, and anti-communism (the characteristic expression
of this last example being the cacotopia). After an extensive
contextual account of the politics of utopia in late-nineteenth century
England, it devotes a chapter to each of these topics before developing
an original reinterpretation of William Morris's seminal Marxist
utopia, News from Nowhere.

Matthew Beaumont, D. Phil. (2000) in English Literature at the
University of Oxford, has been a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford,
for the last three years. He has published a number of articles on
nineteenth-century literature.




The Clash of Globalisations
Neo-Liberalism, the Third Way and Anti-globalisation

Ray Kiely

. March 2005
. ISBN 90 04 14318 1
. Hardback (xii, 324 pp.)
. List price EUR 63.- / US$ 84.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 8

This work addresses the politics of globalisation through an
examination of neo-liberalism, the third way, and anti-capitalist
responses and alternatives. It utilises a Marxist approach, not only to
challenge the claims made by apologists for 'actually existing
globalisation', but to explain, contextualise and problematise the rise
of anti-globalisation politics. Central to the work is a critique of
globalisation theory, neo-liberalism and the third way; an examination
of the role of the state as an agent of globalisation, particularly the
hegemonic US state; a theorisation of the nature of uneven development
in the global order; and an examination of the political implications
of these issues for progressive alternatives to neo-liberal
globalisation.

Ray Kiely, Ph.D. (1991) in Sociology, University of Warwick, is Senior
Lecturer in Development Studies, SOAS, University of London. He has
published widely in the fields of globalisation and development,
including Sociology and Development (UCL Press, 1995) and The Ends of
Globalisation: US Hegemony and the Globalist Project (forthcoming,
2005).




Lenin Rediscovered
What Is to Be Done? in Context

Lars T. Lih

. December 2005
. ISBN 90 04 13120 5
. Hardback (xx, 868 pp.)
. List price  EUR 129.- / US$ 174.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 9

Lenin's What is to Be Done? (1902) has long been seen as the founding
document of a 'party of a new type'. For some, it provided a model of
'vanguard party' that was the essence of Bolshevism, for others it
manifested Lenin's élitist and manipulatory attitude towards the
workers.
This substantial new commentary, based on contemporary Russian- and
German-language sources, provides hitherto unavailable contextual
information that undermines these views and shows how Lenin's argument
rests squarely on an optimistic confidence in the workers'
revolutionary inclinations and on his admiration of German Social
Democracy in particular. Lenin's outlook cannot be understood, Lih
claims here, outside the context of international Social Democracy, the
disputes within Russian Social Democracy and the institutions of the
revolutionary underground.
The new translation focuses attention on hard-to-translate key terms.
This study raises new and unsettling questions about the legacy of
Marx, Bolshevism as a historical force, and the course of Soviet
history, but, most of all, it will revolutionise the conventional
interpretations of Lenin.

About Bread and Authority (1990) (by Lars T. Lih)
'If we could put the desperately ill Russia of today on the
psyciatrist's couch, we would inevitably have to spend a great many
sessions on its earliest childhood. This is what Lars T. Lih has done
in the remarkably insightful study ... A fine work.'
from a one-paragraph anonymous notice in Virginia Quarterly Review,
Winter 1991.
'...a rich and thoroughly researched account of food supply policies in
the tumultuous years between the fall of the tsarist regime and Lenin's
NEP. By using the success of failure of food supply policies as a
barometer of political authority in the face of potential social
breakdown, the book also gives us food for thought in understanding the
problems of contemporary Russia.'
Marcia Weigle, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 1992, vol. 19  Nos.
1-3.
'The jacket of this thoughtful study by Lars T. Lih reproduces a
Russian poster showing the 'bony finger of Hunger' pointing to starving
masses.  [NB: I found this poster in a Russian souvenir shop.]  ...
Lih's discerning and sympathetic analysis enlarges our view of both
past and present.'
Dorothy Atkinson, American Hist. Review, Dec. 1991.

Lars T. Lih, Ph.D. (1984) Princeton, is the editor of Stalin's Letters
to Molotov, the author of Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921, the
chapter on ideology in the forthcoming Cambridge History of Russia and
numerous articles on the Bolsheviks.




Globalisation
A Systematic Marxian Account

Tony Smith

. December 2005
. ISBN 90 04 14727 6
. Hardback (viii, 360 pp.)
. List price  EUR 89.- / US$ 120.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 10

Part One of this book examines the social-state, neoliberal,
catalytic-state, and democratic-cosmopolitan models of globalisation.
Each necessarily tends to function in a manner contradicting essential
claims made by its leading advocates. This "immanent contradiction"
provides a theoretical warrant for moving to a new position, addressing
the shortcomings of the previous framework. The first three chapters of
Part Two are devoted to a Marxian model of capitalist globalisation, in
which the irresolvable contradictions and social antagonisms of the
capitalist global order are explicitly recognised. The final chapter is
devoted to a Marxian model of socialist globalisation, in which those
contradictions and antagonisms are overcome, bringing the systematic
dialectic of globalisation to a close.

Tony Smith, Ph.D. (1980) in Philosophy, Stony Brook State University of
New York, is currently Professor of Philosophy of Iowa State
University. He has published extensively in the field of Marxian social
theory, including The Logic of Marx's 'Capital' and Technology and
Capital in the Age of Lean Production  (SUNY Press 1990, 2000).




Marxism and Ecological Economics
Toward a Red and Green Political Economy

Paul Burkett

. March 2006
. ISBN 90 04 14810 8
. Hardback (x, 358 pp.)
. List price EUR 69.- / US$ 89.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 11

This book undertakes the first general assessment of ecological
economics from a Marxist point of view, and shows how Marxist political
economy can make a substantial contribution to ecological economics.
The analysis is developed in terms of four basic issues: (1) nature and
economic value; (2) the treatment of nature as capital; (3) the
significance of the entropy law for economic systems; (4) the concept
of sustainable development.  In each case, it is shown that Marxism can
help ecological economics fulfill its commitments to
multi-disciplinarity, methodological pluralism, and historical
openness.  In this way, a foundation is constructed for a substantive
dialogue between Marxists and ecological economists.

Paul Burkett, Ph.D. (1984) in Economics, Syracuse University, is
Professor of Economics at Indiana State University, Terre Haute. His
publications on Marxism and ecology include Marx and Nature: A Red and
Green Perspective (St. Martin's Press, 1999) and many articles in
scholarly journals.




A Marxist Philosophy of Language

Jean-Jacques Lecercle. Translated by Gregory Elliott

. August 2006
. ISBN 90 04 14751 9
. Hardback (210 pp.)
. List price EUR 109.- / US$ 147.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 12

The purpose of this book is to give a precise meaning to the formula:
English is the language of imperialism. Understanding that statement
involves a critique of the dominant views of language, both in the
field of linguistics (the book has a chapter criticising Chomsky's
research programme) and of the philosophy of language (the book has a
chapter assessing Habermas's philosophy of communicative action).
The book aims at constructing a Marxist philosophy of language,
embodying a view of language as a social, historical, material and
political phenomenon. Since there has never been a strong tradition of
thinking about language in Marxism, the book provides an overview of
the question of Marxism in language (from Stalin's pamphlet to
Voloshinov's book, taking in an essay by Pasolini), and it seeks to
construct a number of concepts for a Marxist philosophy of language.
The book belongs to the tradition of Marxist critique of dominant
ideologies. It should be particularly useful to those who, in the
fields of language study, literature and communication studies, have
decided that language is not merely an instrument of communication.

Jean-Jacques Lecercle was educated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in
Paris. From 1999 to 2002 he was Research Professor in the English
department at the University of Cardiff, and he is currently Professor
of English at the University of Nanterre. He is the author of
Interpretation as Pragmatics (Macmillan 1999), Deleuze and Language
(Palgrave 2002) and The Force of Language (with Denise Riley, Macmillan
2004).




Althusser
The Detour of Theory

Gregory Elliott

. August 2006
. ISBN 90 04 15337 3
. Hardback (xxiv + 425  pp.)
. List price EUR 89.- / US$ 116.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 13
[beeld 24041]

First published in 1987, Althusser, The Detour of Theory was widely
received as the fullest account of its subject to date. Drawing on a
wide range of hitherto untranslated material, it examined the political
and intellectual contexts of Althusser's 'return to Marx' in the
mid-1960s; analysed the novel character of the Marxism developed in his
major works; charted their author's subsequent evolution, from his
self-criticism to the proclamation of a 'crisis of Marxism'; and
concluded with a balance-sheet of Althusser's contribution to
historical materialism.
For this second edition, Gregory Elliott has added a substantial
postscript in which he surveys the posthumous edition of the French
philosopher's work published in the 1990s, from the early writings of
the 1940s through to the late texts of the 1980s, relating the unknown
Althusser revealed by them to the familiar figure of For Marx and
Reading Capital, together with a comprehensive bibliography of
Althusser's oeuvre.

Gregory Elliott was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he
completed his D.Phil. on Louis Althusser in 1985. An independent
translator and writer, his books include Perry Anderson: The Merciless
Laboratory of History (1998). His most recent translation is Luc
Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's The New Spirit of Capitalism(2006).




Exploring Marx's Capital: Philosophical, Economic and Political
Dimensions
Philosophical, Economic and Political Dimensions

Jacques Bidet. Translated by David Fernbach. Preface to the English
Edition by Alex Callinicos

. January 2007
. ISBN 90 04 14937 6
. Hardback (400)
. List price EUR 129.- / US$ 168.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 14

This book, originally published in French under the title Que faire du
Capital?, offers a new interpretation of Marx's great work. It shows
how the novelty and lasting interest of Marx's theory arises from the
fact that, as against the project of a 'pure' economics, it is
formulated in concepts that have simultaneously an economic and a
political aspect, neither of these being separable from the other.

Jacques Bidet conducts an unprecedented investigation of Marx's work in
the spirit of the history of science, exploring it as a process of
theoretical development. Traditional exegesis reads the successive
drafts of Capital as if they were complementary and mutually
illuminated one another. In actual fact, like any scientist, Marx only
wrote a new version in order to correct the previous one. He started
from ideas borrowed from Ricardo and Hegel, and between one draft and
the next it is possible to see these being eliminated and restructured.
This labour, moreover, was never fully completed.

The author thus re-assesses Marx's entire system in its set of
constitutive categories: value, market, labour-power, classes, working
class, exploitation, production, fetishism, ideology. He seeks to pin
down the difficulties that these encountered, and the analytical and
critical value they still have today.

Bidet attaches the greatest importance to Marx's order of exposition,
which assigns each concept its place in the overall system, and makes
the validity of the construction depend on the pertinence of its
initial presuppositions. This is particularly the case with the
relationship between market mechanism and capitalism - and thus also
between the market and socialism.


Jacques Bidet is Professor at the University of Paris-X, holding the
chair of Political Philosophy and Theories of Society. His other
publications include Théorie de la modernité (1990), John Rawls et la
théorie de la justice (1995), Théorie générale, Théorie du droit, de
l'économie et de la politique (1999) and (with Jean-Marc Lachaud)
Habermas: Une politique délibérative (1998).




Impersonal Power. History and Theory of the Bourgeois State
History and Theory of the Bourgeois State

Heide Gerstenberger. Translated by David Fernbach

. March 2007
. ISBN 90 04 13027 6
. Hardback (904)
. List price EUR 154.- / US$ 199.-
. Historical Materialism Book Series, 15

The point of departure of Heide Gerstenberger's path-breaking work is a
critique of structural-functionalist theory of the state, in both its
modernisation theory and materialist variants. Prof. Gerstenberger
opposes to these a historical-theoretical explanation that proceeds
from the long-term structuring effect of concrete social practice. This
is elucidated by detailed investigation of the development of bourgeois
state power in the two key examples of England and France. The
different complexions that the bourgeois state assumed are presented as
the results of processes of social and cultural formation, and thus
irreducible to a simple function of capitalism. This approach
culminates in the thesis that the bourgeois form of capitalist state
power arose only where capitalist societies developed out of already
rationalised structures of the Ancien Régime type.


Prof. Heide Gerstenberger has held since 1974 the chair of 'Theory of
the Bourgeois State and Society' at the University of Bremen. Her
publications include Der revolutionäre Konservatismus and Zur
politischen Ökonomie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Die historischen
Bedingungen ihrer Konstitution in den USA.


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