A Short History of Socialism

Name: A Short History of Socialism
Brand: Fontana/Collins
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

By George Lichtheim

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Description

Here we get epigraphic stress on the importance of the particular social reality of the 1848 bourgeois revolution...expanded chiefly with snippets from Hobsbawn et al. One could forgive the fatigued recapitulation of the pre-Marxist period, given Lichtheim's Origins of Socialism; but the whole book is flaccidly incoherent in its ramblings from Marxist theory to early Russian socialism, British & continental leftist alignments since 1848, Soviet Communism & the contemporary left. Lichtheim is vulnerable on many points, from value theory to Trotskyism. Judged by its intention to provide general background & signposts for further study, the book's manner is both randomly over-detailed & simplistic. The student needs to have read, say, Lichtheim's Marxism (also a far better book} in order to begin to understand comments like "Liebknecht was a Kantian, not a Marxist, in philosophy." Lichtheim sometimes dismisses or begs just the questions which need further study, e.g. the German Communists' failure in the early '30's. Both specialists & students will suffer from the lack of a distinct, developed thesis about the Social Democrats.

Product details

Binding:

Paperback

Publication Date:

1980

Publisher:

Fontana/Collins

Languages:

Published: English

ISBN10:

0006336175

Weight:

181 g

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