This collection of Colletti's (1924-2001) principal Marxist essays will be welcomed by non-Italian readers. Colletti's concern as a Marxist was twofold: to interpret Marxism as profoundly and as flexibly as possible; and to investigate the relationships between Marx's thought and that of a number of other thinkers as widely separated in time as Rousseau and Marcuse. His thought ranges widely through philosophy, history, sociology, politics, and economics, without pausing at boundaries. Colletti's work from his Marxist period attempted to place the work of Marx in a line of descent that de-emphasizes Hegel, while giving a novel focus to the relationship between Marxism and Kant.

This is the first of Lucio Colletti's books to be translated into English, in which he considers the scientific character of Marxism. In contrast to the pre-occupation with Hegel and his contribution to the formation of Marx's thought, Colletti goes back on the one hand to the founders of political economy and on the other to Rousseau. In Rousseau's critique of 'civil society' Colletti isolates a crucial watershed in the development of a counter-theory to modern bourgeois society. The second of Colletti's central concerns is with the unity of Marxism. For him it is an integral science of history and of society which denies the pretensions of bourgeois sociology to any scientific status. His attack is concentrated on Max Weber and his epigone Karl Mannheim, but has wider implications for sociology in general. This is followed by a devastating critique of Bernstein's evolutionist 'revision' of Marx. From Rousseau to Lenin also contains a polemical study of Marcuse's 'neo-romantic utopianism', and the masterly statements of the contemporary relevance of Lenin's State and Revolution and Marx's Capital to the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism.

This book sets out to demonstrate how Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles Fourier paved the way for Marxism while, at the same time, analysing the gulf which separates them from Marx and Engels. It breaks new ground in as much as no existing study has treated simultaneously the influence of both Rousseau and Fourier on Marx.

Focusing primarily on the municipal level but also presenting material on the national and provincial elected bodies and the newer people's councils and workers' parliaments, Roman (behavioral and social sciences, City U. of New York) offers a theoretical, historical, and contemporary analysis. He finds theoretical foundations in Rousseau, Marx, and Lenin and historical precedents in the Paris Commune, the 1905 and 1917 Soviets, and the Soviet Union before and after Stalin. His coverage extends from the various experiments after the triumph of the revolution in 1959 through effects of the 1992 Constitution and election law, to the present. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR