Unlearning Marx

Why the Soviet Failure Was a Triumph for Marx

von Steve Paxton

184 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

The theories of Karl Marx and the practical existence of the Soviet Union are inseparable in the public imagination, but for all the wrong reasons. This book provides detailed analyses of both Marx’s theory of history and the course of Russian and Soviet development and delivers a new and insightful approach to the relationship between the two. Most analyses of the Soviet Union, from any perspective, focus on trying to explain the failure to establish socialism, giving too much weight to the political pronouncements of the regime. But, for Marx, this approach to historical explanation is back-to-front, it's the political tail wagging the economic dog. When we move our focus from the stated aims of building socialism, and look at what actually happened in Russia from emancipation in the 1860s, through the Soviet era to the 1990s, we can clearly see the patterns which Marx identified as the essential features of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. As such, the Soviet experiment forms an important part of Russia’s transition from feudalism to capitalism and provides an excellent example of the underlying forces at play in the course of historical development. Unlearning Marx will surprise Marx’s admirers and his detractors alike, and not only shed new light on Marxism's relationship with the Soviet Union, but on his ongoing relationship with our world.

• Themen: Gesellschaft und Sozialwissenschaften Politik und Staat Politische Ideologien und Bewegungen Sozialismus, Mitte-links
• ISBN: 9781789045413
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 01.02.2021
• Größe: 216 x 141 mm
• Verlag: Zer0 Books