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Book synopsis

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.

Book details

Book category Books in English Society & social sciences Politics & government Political ideologies

• Full title: Dialectic of Defeat
• Subtitle: Contours of Western Marxism
• Author: Russell Jacoby
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216
• EAN: 9780521520171
• ISBN: 0521520177
• ID: 02033356
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Weight: 332 g
• Dimensions: 229 × 154 × 13 mm
• Date of publishing: 16. May 2002

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