Marxisms in the 21st Century: Crisis, critique and struggle (Democratic Marxisms) - Softcover

 
9781868147533: Marxisms in the 21st Century: Crisis, critique and struggle (Democratic Marxisms)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1868147533 ISBN 13: 9781868147533
Verlag: Wits University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

The current resurgence of Marxism is based on new sources of inspiration and creativity from movements that seek democratic, egalitarian and ecological alternatives to capitalism. The Marxism of many of these movements is neither dogmatic nor prescriptive, but rather, open, searching, utopian. It revolves around four primary factors: the importance of democracy for an emancipatory project; the ecological limits of capitalism; the crisis of global capitalism; and the learning of lessons from the failures of Marxist-inspired experiments. Marxisms in the Twenty-First Century challenges vanguardist Marxism featured in South Africa and beyond. Featuring leading thinkers from the Left, the book offers provocative ideas on interpreting our current world and serves as an excellent introduction to new ways of thinking about Marxism to students and scholars in the field. Many anti-capitalist traditions and themes - including democracy, globalisation, feminism, critique and ecology inform and shape the contributions in this volume.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Michelle Williams is an editor and an associate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her books include Labour in the Global South: Challenges and Alternatives for Workers; The Roots of Participatory Democracy: Democratic Communists in South Africa and Kerala, India; and South Africa and India: Shaping the Global South.

Vishwas Satgar is an associate professor of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the editor of the Democratic Marxism series, and is the principal investigator for the Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene project and a democratic eco-socialist.



Jacklyn Cock is a professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and a research associate of the university’s Society, Work and Politics Institute.



Ashwin Desai is professor of Sociology based at the Centre for Sociological Research, University of Johannesburg.

Daryl Glaser is associate professor in the department of Political Studies at Wits University.

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Marxisms in the 21st Century

Crisis, Critique & Struggle

By Michelle Williams, Vishwas Satgar

Wits University Press

Copyright © 2013 Wits University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86814-753-3

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, iv, 
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS, vi, 
INTRODUCTION Michelle Williams, 1, 
PART ONE: DEMOCRATISING AND GLOBALISING MARXISM, 15, 
CHAPTER 1: Marxism and democracy: Liberal, vanguard or direct? Michelle Williams, 16, 
CHAPTER 2: Marxism after Polanyi Michael Burawoy, 34, 
CHAPTER 3: Transnationalising Gramscian Marxism Vishwas Satgar, 53, 
PART TWO: MARXISM AND LEFT POLITICS, 83, 
CHAPTER 4: Notes on critique Ahmed Veriava, 84, 
CHAPTER 5: Marxism and feminism: 'Unhappy marriage' or creative partnership? Jacklyn Cock and Meg Luxton, 116, 
CHAPTER 6: Marx and the eco-logic of fossil capitalism Devan pillay, 143, 
PART THREE: CRISES OF MARXISM IN AFRICA AND POSSIBILITIES FOR THE FUTURE, 167, 
CHAPTER 7: Retrospect: Seven theses about Africa's Marxist regimes Daryl Glaser, 168, 
CHAPTER 8: Socialism and southern Africa John S. Saul, 196, 
CHAPTER 9: Uneven and combined Marxism within South Africa's urban social movements Patrick Bond, Ashwin Desai and Trevor Ngwane, 220, 
CHAPTER 10: Critical reflections on the crisis and limits of ANC 'Marxism' 260 Mazibuko K. Jara, 260, 
CONCLUSION Vishwas Satgar, 281, 
CONTRIBUTORS, 287, 
INDEX, 289,


CHAPTER 1

Marxism and Democracy: Liberal, Vanguard or Direct?

Michelle Williams


One of the most contentious and neglected issues in Marxism is the content, role and place of democracy in transformative visions and practices. For some, Marxism is antithetical to democracy; for others, vanguard democracy represents the pinnacle of Marxism, and still others pay little attention to democracy at all. Marxism has gone through different phases, each phase with its unique social base and foundational ideas. At the time of the Second and Third Internationals, Marxism's social base was largely in working-class movements and parties, but shifted from the 1950s onwards to intellectuals overwhelmingly located in universities. This growth of and engagement with Marxism among intellectuals was in part due to the phenomenal growth and influence of university education (Hobsbawm 2011: 360). After reaching the peak of its influence in the academy during the 1970s, Marxism weakened through the course of the 1990s. In the late 1990s, however, a renewed interest in Marxism emerged among multi-class movements, middle-and working-class activists and intellectuals. These diverse social strata do not necessarily converge in their understandings of history, or their views of the causes and consequences of the dynamics of capitalism, but rather, share in their belief that 'another world is possible'.

This is the context within which I focus this chapter on literature – both liberal and Marxist – that has explicitly engaged the issue of democracy. Because Marxist influence over the last half-century has largely emanated from intellectuals located within universities, I focus on the various ways in which liberal and Marxist scholars have placed democracy against and within Marxism. While democracy is a contested concept that often incorporates very different notions of social change and control, with various actors and processes, twentieth-century liberals and Marxists tended to focus on representative and vanguard democracy respectively, largely ignoring the importance of direct and participatory democracy. Bertrand Russell (1946: 1

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Verlag
Wits University Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1868147533
ISBN 13 
9781868147533
Einband
Tapa blanda
Anzahl der Seiten
306
Herausgeber
Willaims Michelle, Satgar Vishwas
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar