On Changing the World: Essays in Marxist Political Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin

by Michael Löwy

Overview

This collection of lively and insightful essays—including several translated into English for the first time—covers a wide range of topics and figures too often neglected by the dominant trends in Marxist literature. Löwy offers a unique exploration of the role of romanticism as one of the key sources of the Marxist critique of capitalist civilization. And he shows how Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, and Walter Benjamin all share an understanding of socialism as the only truly human alternative to the modern forms of exploitation and oppression found in a capitalist society. Similar themes are pursued in the engaging essays on religion, utopia, and other topics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608461899
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	04/09/2013
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Michael Löwy is Research Director in Sociology at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. He is the author of many books, including The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx and, with Olivier Besancenot, Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Preface ix

1 Marxism and Revolutionary Romanticism 1

2 Marxism and Utopian Vision 16

3 Marxism and Religion: The Challenge of Liberation Theology 23

4 Weber against Marx? The Polemic with Historical Materialism in The Protestant Ethic 43

5 Marxists and the National Question 55

6 From the "Logic" of Hegel to the Finland Station in Petrograd 77

7 Rosa Luxemburg's Conception of "Socialism or Barbarism" 91

8 Gramsci and Lukács 103

9 "The Poetry of the Past": Marx and the French Revolution 111

10 The First Revolution of the Twentieth Century 127

11 Marcuse and Benjamin: The Romantic Dimension 133

12 Revolution against "Progress": Walter Benjamin's Romantic Anarchism 143

13 Religion, Utopia, and Countermodernity: The Allegory of the Angel of History in Walter Benjamin 164

14 Fire Alarm: Walter Benjamin's Critique of Technology 175

15 The Revolution Is the Emergency Brake: Walter Benjamin's Political-Ecological Currency 184

16 Capitalism as Religion: Walter Benjamin and Max Weber 190

17 Revolutionary Dialectics against "Tailism": Lukács's Answer to the Criticisms of History and Class Consciousness 202

18 The Marxism of Results and Prospects 209

Editorial Reviews

Only the Stalinist gospel of convenient quotations is dead, not Marxist writing. Michael Löwy illustrates the vitality of the latter. His collection of essays, combining scholarship with passion, impresses by its sweep and scope. It ranges from liberation theology to the problem of ‘progress’ in Walter Benjamin. And, since it tackles such issues as utopia and nationalism, the book is also highly topical.”
—Daniel Singer, author, Deserter from Death

"Michael Löwy is unquestionably a tremendous figure in the decades-long attempt to recover an authentic revolutionary tradition from the wreckage of Stalinism, and these essays are very often powerful examples of this process."
—Dominic Alexander, Counterfire


“Only the Stalinist gospel of convenient quotations is dead, not Marxist writing. Michael Löwy illustrates the vitality of the latter. His collection of essays, combining scholarship with passion, impresses by its sweep and scope. It ranges from liberation theology to the problem of ‘progress’ in Walter Benjamin. And, since it tackles such issues as utopia and nationalism, the book is also highly topical.”
—Daniel Singer, author, Deserter from Death

"Michael Löwy is unquestionably a tremendous figure in the decades-long attempt to recover an authentic revolutionary tradition from the wreckage of Stalinism, and these essays are very often powerful examples of this process."
—Dominic Alexander, Counterfire

From the Publisher