While Alexis de Tocqueville described America as the 'absolute democracy, ' Karl Marx saw the nation as a 'defiled republic' so long as it permitted the enslavement of blacks. In this insightful political history, Nimtz argues that Marx and his partner, Frederick Engels, had a far more acute and insightful reading of American democracy than Tocqueville because they recognized that the overthrow of slavery and the cessation of racial oppression were central to its realization. Nimtz's account contrasts both the writings and the civil action of Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, noting that Marx and Engels actively mobilized the German-American community in opposition to the slavocracy prior to the Civil War, and that Marx heavily supported the Union cause. This potent and insightful investigation into the approaches of two major thinkers provides fresh insight into past and present debates about race and democracy in America

While Alexis de Tocqueville described America as the 'absolute democracy,' Karl Marx saw the nation as a 'defiled republic' so long as it permitted the enslavement of blacks. In this insightful political history, Nimtz argues that Marx and his partner, Frederick Engels, had a far more acute and insightful reading of American democracy than Tocqueville because they recognized that the overthrow of slavery and the cessation of racial oppression were central to its realization. Nimtz's account contrasts both the writings and the civil action of Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, noting that Marx and Engels actively mobilized the German-American community in opposition to the slavocracy prior to the Civil War, and that Marx heavily supported the Union cause. This potent and insightful investigation into the approaches of two major thinkers provides fresh insight into past and present debates about race and democracy in America.

Why socialism has failed to play a significant role in the United States - the most developed capitalist industrial society and hence, ostensibly, fertile ground for socialism - has been a critical question of American history and political development. This study surveys the various explanations for this phenomenon of American political exceptionalism.

For some, the idea of a color-blind constitution signals a commonsense ideal of equality and a new "post-racial" American era. For others, it supplies a narrow constitutional vision, which serves to disqualify many of the tools needed to combat persistent racial inequality in the United States. Rather than taking a position either for or against color-blindness, Mark Golub takes issue with the blindness/consciousness dichotomy itself. This book demonstrates how color-blind constitutionalism conceals its own race-conscious political commitments in defense of existing racial hierarchy, and renders the pursuit of racial justice as a constitutionally impermissible goal.

As a young militant in the 26th of July Movement, Esteban Morales Domínguez participated in the overthrow of the Batista regime and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. The revolutionaries, he understood, sought to establish a more just and egalitarian society. But Morales Dominguez, an Afro-Cuban, knew that the complicated question of race could not be ignored, or simply willed away in a post-revolutionary context. Today, he is one of Cuba’s most prominent Afro-Cuban intellectuals and its leading authority on the race question. Available for the first time in English, the essays collected here describe the problem of racial inequality in Cuba, provide evidence of its existence, constructively criticize efforts by the Cuban political leadership to end discrimination, and point to a possible way forward. Morales Dominguez surveys the major advancements in race relations that occurred as a result of the revolution, but does not ignore continuing signs of inequality and discrimination. Instead, he argues that the revolution must be an ongoing process and that to truly transform society it must continue to confront the question of race in Cuba.

'Why are you making this about race?' This question is repeated daily in public and in the media. Calling someone racist in these times of mounting white supremacy seems to be a worse insult than racism itself. In our supposedly post-racial society, surely it’s time to stop talking about race? This powerful refutation is a call to notice not just when and how race still matters but when, how and why it is said not to matter. Race critical scholar Alana Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight. Weaving together international examples, she eviscerates misconceptions such as reverse racism and the newfound acceptability of 'race realism', bursts the 'I’m not racist, but' justification, complicates the common criticisms of identity politics and warns against using concerns about antisemitism as a proxy for antiracism. Dominant voices in society suggest we are talking too much about race. Lentin shows why we actually need to talk about it more and how in doing so we can act to make it matter less.

This book explores the time in which Lenin initiated his use of the electorate, beginning with the Marxist roots of his politics, from his leadership of Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the First and Second State Dumas to Russia's first experiment in representative democracy from 1906 to 1907.

Reinhardt treats the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt as exemplary sources for an expansion of political possibility. These writers indicate where and how the new spaces can be brought into being, and they reveal acts of making space as some of the prime moments of politics. Reinhardt's extended readings of these writers, who have never previously been treated together, are quite unlike the familiar understandings of their thought. "Taking liberties," he brings the literary and political sensibility usually associated with postmodernism to a sympathetic if critical encounter with eminently modern thinkers. The result is a strong and idiosyncratic book, accessible and stylish, which mixes acute readings of canonical thinkers with more practical applications and illustrations. Reinhardt combines attention to textual detail and nuance with concern for contemporary politics, discussing in an unusually inventive example the AIDS activist group ACT UP.

Cedric Robinson – political theorist, historian, and activist – was one of the greatest black radical thinkers of the twentieth century. In this powerful work, the first major book to tell his story, Joshua Myers shows how Robinson’s work interrogated the foundations of western political thought, modern capitalism, and changing meanings of race. Tracing the course of Robinson’s journey from his early days as an agitator in the 1960s to his publication of such seminal works as Black Marxism, Myers frames Robinson’s mission as aiming to understand and practice opposition to “the terms of order.” In so doing, Robinson excavated the Black Radical tradition as a form of resistance that imagined that life on wholly different terms was possible. In the era of Black Lives Matter, that resistance is as necessary as ever, and Robinson’s contribution only gains in importance. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to learn more about it.