Looking to an increasingly perilous and inequitable future, many progressive activists and scholars are seriously questioning the capacity of global capitalism to guarantee the conditions for human well-being and sustainability in the 21st century. This development inspires the central inquiry of Marxist Phoenix: Will the intensifying contradictions and multiple crises of contemporary capitalism incite the emergence of a mass socialist workers' movement committed not merely to the "reform" of capitalism but to its overthrow? This collection of new and previously published essays, articles, and book chapters written over the last two decades makes the case for the indispensability of the Marxist-socialist project to the emancipation of humanity from material insecurity and ever-worsening social antagonism. Only a global workers' movement committed to the fundamental tenets of Marxism--a triumphant Marxist Phoenix rising from the ashes of the multiple defeats of the 20th century--can open the road to real social progress. Interdisciplinary, rigorous, and critically engaged with many currents in contemporary academic discourse, this volume is a timely contribution to the rebirth of a Marxist socialism that is at once scientific, emancipatory, and internationalist in its commitments.

The essays selected for this volume show how radical and Marxist criminology has established itself as an influential critique since it emerged in the late 1960s. Unlike orthodox criminology which emphasizes individual level explanations of criminal behavior, radical and Marxist criminology emphasizes power inequality and structures, especially those related to class, as key factors in crime, law and justice. This collection of essays draws attention to the way in which structural forces shape and influence both individual and institutional (for example, governmental) behavior; highlights neglected crime (corporate, governmental, state-corporate and environmental) which causes more extensive damage than the street crimes examined by orthodox criminology; and discusses the ways in which law and criminal justice processes reinforce power structures and contribute to class control.

The Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism is an international and interdisciplinary volume which aims to provide a thorough and precise panorama of recent developments in Marxist theory in the US, Europe, Asia and beyond. Drawing on the work of thirty of the most authoritative scholars, the Companion spans all the humanities and social sciences, with particular emphasis on philosophy. The work is divided into three parts: 'General Trends', which provides a broad intellectual and historical context; 'Currents', which tracks the trajectories of twenty specific currents or disciplinary fields; and 'Figures', which examines in detail the work of fifteen key actors of Marxist or para-Marxist theory (Adorno, Althusser, Badiou, Benjamin, Bhaskar, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Gramsci, Habermas, Jameson, Lefebvre, Uno, Williams). The Companion is set to be unsurpassed for many years, in breadth and depth, as the definitive guide to contemporary Marxism.

In this updated and expanded edition of Invisible Leviathan, Murray E.G. Smith critically explores and makes significant contributions to the debate surrounding Karl Marx’s ‘capitalist law of value’ and its corollary, the law of the falling rate of profit. A powerful case is presented that capitalism has exhausted its potential to contribute to human progress. Humanity confronts a fateful choice: to allow this obsolescent system – which necessarily measures ‘wealth’ in terms of ‘abstract social labour’ and money profit – to destroy human civilisation; or to make the leap toward a global, egalitarian-socialist society in which the satisfaction of human need is the starting-point and the all-round development of each and every human individual the goal of the socio-economic life process. First printed in 1994 as Invisible Leviathan: The Marxist Critique of Market Despotism Beyond Postmodernism by University of Toronto Press. This second and revised edition includes a new Foreword by Michael Roberts, and a Preface to the Second Edition.

Twenty-first-century capitalism has little more to offer than a menu of despair: pandemics, deepening inequality, worsening depression, runaway climate change, intensifying authoritarianism and escalating militarism. Twilight Capitalism offers a wide-ranging analysis of the origins, implications and scope of the “combined” social crisis of 2020 and beyond. A compelling case is made that Karl Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism, along with his program of class-struggle socialism, is essential to understanding and addressing the most important social, economic and ecological problems of our time.

'Briggs tackles head-on the zone of conflict that Marx never quite got to, though not for lack of ambition. How do nation-states both manage and contest the military-industrial surges of global capitalism? Arguing the novel thesis that Stalin did good work for capitalism, offering its defenders an open goal to score against Marxism, Removing the Stalin Stain presents a clearly argued and outward-facing Marxist analysis of contemporary politics.' Terrell Carver, Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol, UK Can Marxism emerge from the long shadow cast by Stalinism, and challenge capitalism? There is undoubtedly a growing interest in Marxism and socialism. Opinion polls show a majority that regard socialism as a real option. It is against this reality, and as a contribution to growing debates, that this book has been written. Marxism, as an ideological force and instituted to lead the charge against capitalism, has been poorly served in the past century. Many of its core messages have been obscured. William Briggs gives a rousing defence of Marxism, calling for a return of the working class to the centre of potential struggle. Briggs seeks to heal the damage done to Marxism, in the name of Marxism, over generations past.

This book analyses contemporary capitalism from Brazil and from the Marxian critique of political economy, particularly; the co-dependency of wealth and poverty and of civilization and barbarism; the current tendency towards capital over-accumulation and the specific form assumed by the capitalist crisis in recent decades; the financialisation process of capital accumulation, its effects on the world of labour; and the place that the state assumes in this broad process. Current trends toward increasing social inequality, impoverishment of large sections of the population, precariousness of labour and rising unemployment, environmental destruction, the spread of austerity policies and the suppression of social policies, the rise of the far right (together with the strengthening of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, political and religious fanaticism and all manner of intolerance, etc.), low economic growth, the primacy of the financial dimension of capital accumulation, all need to be understood in their multiple and complex articulations, as fundamental and inherent elements of contemporary capitalism, associating empirical analysis with conceptual construction. Because they are strictly contradictory processes, a dialectical approach is required that reclaims the Marxian legacy, and aims to contribute to updating it, seeking to bring new and relevant elements to the Marxist debate, based on a specific interpretation of Marx's work, and as an immediate empirical basis the Brazilian reality.

Do philosophers have a responsibility to their society that is distinct from their responsibility to it as citizens? This edited volume explores both what type of contribution philosophy can make and what type of reasoning is appropriate when addressing public matters now. These questions are posed by leading international scholars working in the fields of moral and political philosophy. Each contribution also investigates the central issue of how to combine critical, rational analysis with a commitment to politically relevant public engagement. The contributions to this volume analyse issues raised in practical ethics, including abortion, embryology, and assisted suicide. They consider the role of ethical commitment in the philosophical analysis of contemporary political issues, and engage with matters of public policy such as poverty, the arts, meaningful work, as well as the evidence base for policy. They also examine the normative legitimacy of power, including the use of violence.

Drawing on previously unknown or unassimilated sources, Donald C. Hodges here presents an entirely new interpretation of the politics and philosophy of Augusto C. Sandino, the intellectual progenitor of Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution. The first part of the book investigates the political sources of Sandino's thought in the works of Babeuf, Buonarroti, Blanqui, Proudhon, Bakunin, Most, Malatesta, Kropotkin, Ricardo Flores Magón, and Lenin—a mixed legacy of pre-Marxist and non-Marxist authoritarian and libertarian communists. The second half of the study scrutinizes the philosophy of nature and history that Sandino made his own. Hodges delves deeply into this philosophy as the supreme and final expression of Sandino's communism and traces its sources in the Gnostic and millenarian occult undergrounds. This results in a rich study of the ways in which Sandino's revolutionary communism and communist spirituality intersect—a spiritual politics that Hodges presents as more realistic than the communism of Karl Marx. While accepting the current wisdom that Sandino was a Nicaraguan liberal and social reformer, Hodges also makes a persuasive case that Sandino was first and foremost a communist, although neither of the Marxist nor anarchist variety. He argues that Sandino's eclectic communist spirituality was more of an asset than a liability for understanding the human condition, and that his spiritual politics promises to be more relevant than Marxism-Leninism for the twenty-first century. Indeed, Hodges believes that Sandino's holistic communism embraces both deep ecology and feminist spirituality—a finding that is sure to generate lively and productive debate.