Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology

by Nikolai Bukharin

Overview

First published in English in 1926, this work by Nikolai Bukharin, a highly influential Marxist and Soviet Politician who would later become one of the most famous victims of Stalin’s show trials, expands upon Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism.

Offering a Marxist interpretation of sociology, this reissue is important not only from a sociological and economic perspective, but is also extremely valuable as a socio-historical document of contemporary thought in the Soviet Union in the years following the Bolshevik revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781922491404
Publisher:	Critical Editions
Publication date:	10/23/2021
Series:	Critical Editions
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, philosopher, economist, and author. Bukharin was an important Bolshevik revolutionary, and spent six years with Lenin and Trotsky in exile. He wrote prolifically on the subject of revolutionary theory. Initially a supporter of Joseph Stalin after Vladimir Lenin's death, he came to oppose a large number of Stalin's policies and was one of Stalin's most prominent victims during the 'Moscow Trials' and purges of the Old Bolsheviks in the late 1930s.

Table of Contents

1. Cause and Purpose in the Social Sciences (Causation and Teleology) 2. Determinism and Indeterminism (Necessity and Free Will) 3. Dialectic Materialism 4. Society 5. The Equilibrium Between Society and Nature 6. The Equilibrium Between the Elements of Society 7. Disturbance and Readjustment of Social Equilibrium 8. The Classes and the Class Struggle

Editorial Reviews

'The enduring body of Bukharin's works cast a lurid light over the Soviet regime which has emerged since the death of Stalin' - The New York Times

'One of the true geniuses of the Russian Revolution" - Kevin Murphy, Jacobin

'Bukharin's analysis is still in advance of much contemporary discussion ... Without a development of his arguments, albeit a critical one, the modern world cannot be understood.' - Michael Haynes, Nikolai Bukharin and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

'Bukharin is not only the party's most valuable and greatest theoretician but he is also rightfully considered the favorite of the whole party." - Vladimir Lenin, Last Testament: Letters to the Congress

'It is Bukharin's ghost, the indelible memory of his post-Marxian philosophy and his remarkable prevision of the Nazi-Soviet rapprochement and the inevitable deterioration of Stalin's Russia into proto-Fascism, which remains to haunt the Communist world.' - The New York Times

'Bukharin, like Leon Trotsky, embodied the internationalist traditions of Soviet Communism before its descent into Stalinist chauvinism.' - Dr. Stephen F. Cohen

'History would have turned out differently if Nikolai Bukharin, a key figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and his more progressive ideas had been at the center of Soviet society.' - The Washington Post

'Bukharin's unique importance in the history of Soviet Russia lies in the fact that he alone offered for that country a way forward radically opposed to the one adopted by Stalin.' Professor Leonard Schapiro, The New York Review of Books

From the Publisher