Dialectic of defeat : contours of Western Marxism

Resource Information

The work Dialectic of defeat : contours of Western Marxism represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Dialectic of defeat : contours of Western Marxism

Title remainder

contours of Western Marxism

Statement of responsibility

Russell Jacoby

Creator

• Jacoby, Russell

Subject

• Communism -- History
• Communism and philosophy
• Marx, Karl, 1818-1883
• Marx, Karl, 1818-1883.

Language

eng

Summary

Observing that for both revolutionaries and capitalists, nothing succeeds like success, Russell Jacoby asks us to reexamine a loser of Marxism: the unorthodox Marxism of Western Europe. The author begins with a polemical attack on 'conformist' or orthodox Marxism, in which he includes structuralist schools. He argues that a cult of success and science drained this Marxism of its critical impulse and that the successes of the Russian and Chinese revolutions encouraged a mechanical and fruitless mimicry. He then turns to a Western alternative that neither succumbed to the spell of success nor obliterated the individual in the name of science. In the nineteenth century, this Western Marxism already diverged from Russian Marxism in its interpretation of Hegel and its evaluation of Engels' orthodox Marxism. The author follows the evolution of this minority tradition and its opposition to authoritarian forms of political theory and practice

Cataloging source

UkCbUP

Index

index present

LC call number

HX36

LC item number

.J22 1981eb

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries