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What is to be Done?
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What is to be Done?
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book is ideal for students and scholars of political theory, Marxism, and contemporary leftist movements, as well as readers interested in revolutionary history and political strategy.
Originally published in French as Que Faire? in 2018 by PUF.
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Description
What is to be Done? This was the question asked by Lenin in 1901 when he was having doubts about the revolutionary capabilities of the Russian working class. 77 years later, Louis Althusser asked the same question. Faced with the tidal wave of May '68 and the recurrent hostility of the Communist Party towards the protests, he wanted to offer readers a succinct guide for the revolution to come.
Lively, brilliant and engaged, this short text is wholly oriented towards one objective: to organise the working class struggle. Althusser provides a sharp critique of Antonio Gramsci's writings and of Eurocommunism, which seduced various Marxists at the time.
But this book is above all the opportunity for Althusser to state what he had not succeeded in articulating elsewhere: what concrete conditions would need to be satisfied before the revolution could take place. Left unfinished, it is published here in English for the first time.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Marx & Philosophy Review of Books praises the text as a vital component of Althusser's political theory, highlighting its critical analysis of the concept of hegemony and its importance in debates on class domination and political strategy.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781509538614
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 25 September 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Polity Press
Contributors:
- Translated by G. M. Goshgarian
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 10.0mm
Width: 137.0mm
Height: 213.0mm
Weight: 159g
Pages: 120
About the Author
Louis Althusser (1918-1990) was a leading Marxist philosopher and an influential figure in the French Communist Party. He taught philosophy for many years at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and his many books include History and Imperialism, For Marx, Reading Capital (with Étienne Balibar and others) and Lenin and Philosophy.
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How to Be a Marxist in Philosophy
In How to Be a Marxist in Philosophy, one of the most famous Marxist philosophers of the 20th century shares his concept of what it means to function fruitfully as a political thinker within the discipline and environs of philosophy. This is the first English translation of Althusser's provocative and often controversial guide to being a true Marxist philosopher. Althusser...Paperback$5299Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Lessons on Rousseau
Althusser delivered these lectures on Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality at the École normale supérieure in Paris in 1972. They are fascinating for two reasons. First, they gave rise to a new generation of Rousseau scholars, attentive not just to Rousseau’s ideas, but also to those of his concepts that were buried beneath metaphors or fictional situations and...Paperback$3299Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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"We do not publish our own drafts, that is, our own mistakes, but we do sometimes publish other people's," Louis Althusser once observed of Marx's early writings. Among his own posthumously released drafts, one, at least, is incontestably neither mistake nor out-take: the text of his lecture course on Machiavelli, originally delivered at the École Normale Supérieure in 1972, intermittently...Paperback$5500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
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