{"title":"Perry Anderson","description":"Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions, The Origins of Postmodernity, and The New Old World. He teaches history at UCLA and is on the editorial board of New Left Review.","products":[{"product_id":"in-the-tracks-of-historical-materialism-paperback","title":"In the Tracks of Historical Materialism - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat have been the major changes in the intellectual landscape of the left since the mid seventies? Have they on balance represented an emancipation or a retreat for socialist culture as a whole? \u003ci\u003eIn the Tracks of Historical Materialism\u003c\/i\u003e looks at some of the paradoxes in the evolution of Marxist thought in this period. It starts by considering the remarkable and variegated growth of historical materialism in the Anglo-American world, spreading across a broad field from history to economics, politics to literature, sociology to philosophy. By contrast, the same years have seen a drastic recession of Marxist influences in the Latin cultures where it was traditionally strong--France or Italy. Its main theoretical challengers there proved to be successive forms of structuralism and post-structuralism. The common coordinates of these--tracing the outer bounds of the work of Levi-Strauss or Lacan, Foucault or Derrida--are surveyed and criticized, in the light of the inherent limitations of the language model from which they derived. In Germany, on the other hand, the theoretical scene has been largely dominated by the accumulating work of Habermas, with its roots in the Frankfurt School. Yet Habermas's philosophy also reveals unexpected affinities with the trend of prevalent Parisian concerns, in its unifying emphasis on communication--while at the same time diverging from them in the constancy of its political commitments. The historical background of international class struggles against which these variant fates of Marxism in the west were played out is then explored, with special attention to the interconnection between the destinies of Maoism and Eurocommunism. What, finally, is the nature of the relationship between Marxism as a theory and socialism as a goal? A conclusion reviews the wider issues posed for the labour movement by the rise of the peace movement and the women's movement, and suggests a range of priorities for the further development of Marxist thought in the eighties.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51366348816607,"sku":"9780860917762","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/OGMoK45Yxs9780860917762.webp?v=1789091611"},{"product_id":"lineages-of-the-absolutist-state-paperback","title":"Lineages of the Absolutist State - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eForty years after its original publication, \u003ci\u003eLineages of the Absolutist State\u003c\/i\u003e remains an exemplary achievement in comparative history. Picking up from where its companion volume, \u003ci\u003e Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism\u003c\/i\u003e, left off, \u003ci\u003eLineages\u003c\/i\u003e traces the development of Absolutist states in the early modern period from their roots in European feudalism, and assesses their various trajectories. Why didn't Italy develop into an Absolutist state in the same, indigenous way as the other dominant Western countries, namely Spain, France and England? On the other hand, how did Eastern European countries develop into Absolutist states similar to those of the West, when their social conditions diverged so drastically? Reflecting on examples in Islamic and East Asian history, as well as the Ottoman Empire, Anderson concludes by elucidating the particular role of European development within universal history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51367533871327,"sku":"9781781680100","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/bHT411n71u9781781680100.webp?v=1789109765"},{"product_id":"the-origins-of-postmodernity-paperback","title":"The Origins of Postmodernity - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhere does the idea of the postmodern come from? Who first conceived, and who developed it? How have its meanings changed? What purposes do they serve? These are the questions addressed in \u003ci\u003eThe Origins of Postmodernity\u003c\/i\u003e. The answers take us from Lima to Angkor, to Paris and Munich, to China and the stars. At the center of the story is the figure of Fredric Jameson, theorist supreme of postmodernism. What happens to art, time, politics, in the age of the spectacle? What has ended, and what has begun?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51367721861343,"sku":"9781859842225","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/duVq-sxjcz9781859842225.webp?v=1789113376"},{"product_id":"arguments-within-english-marxism-paperback","title":"Arguments Within English Marxism - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe characteristic form taken by English Marxism since the war has been the study of history. No writer exemplifies its achievements better than Edward Thompson, whose \u003ci\u003eMaking of the English Working Class\u003c\/i\u003e is probably the most influential single work of historical scholarship by a socialist today. An editor of \u003ci\u003eThe New Reasoner\u003c\/i\u003e in 1957-59, a founder of the New Left in 1960, now an eloquent champion of civil rights, Thompson has most recently aroused widespread interest with the appearance of his \u003ci\u003ePoverty of Theory\u003c\/i\u003e, which combines philosophical and political polemic with Louis Althusser, and powerful advocacy of the historian's craft. \u003ci\u003eArguments Within English Marxism\u003c\/i\u003e is an assessment of its central theses that relates them to Thompson's major historical writings themselves. Thus the role of human agency--the part of the conscious choice and active will--in history is discussed through consideration of its treatment in \u003ci\u003eThe Making of the English Working Class\u003c\/i\u003e. The problems of base and superstructure in historical materialism, and of affiliation to values in the past, are reviewed in the light of \u003ci\u003eWhigs and Hunters\u003c\/i\u003e. The claims of utopian imagination are illustrated from the findings of \u003ci\u003eWilliam Morris\u003c\/i\u003e. Questions of socialist strategy are broached in part through the articles now collected in \u003ci\u003eWriting by Candlelight. \u003c\/i\u003eExploring at once differences and convergences between \u003ci\u003eNew Left Review\u003c\/i\u003e and one of its founders, the essay concludes by suggesting the virtues of diversity within a common socialist culture.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368249295071,"sku":"9780860917274","price":28.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/2H0zc1ufs9780860917274.webp?v=1789125107"},{"product_id":"considerations-on-western-marxism-paperback","title":"Considerations on Western Marxism - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis synoptic essay considers the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the East in the early 1920s. It focuses particularly on the work of Lukács, Korsch and Gramsci; Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin; Sartre and Althusser; and Della Volpe and Colletti, together with other figures within Western Marxism from 1920 to 1975. The theoretical production of each of these thinkers is related simultaneously to the practical fate of working-class struggles and to the cultural mutations of bourgeois thought in their time. The philosophical antecedents of the various school within this tradition--Lukácsian, Gramscian, Frankfurt, Sartrean, Althusserian and Della Volpean--are compared, and the specific innovations of their respective systems surveyed. The structural unity of 'Western Marxism', beyond the diversity of its individual thinkers, is then assessed, in a balance-sheet that contrasts its heritage with the tradition of 'classical' Marxism that preceded it, and with the commanding problems which will confront any historical materialism to succeed it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51377643356383,"sku":"9780860917205","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/WmD46m-CyG9780860917205.webp?v=1789236270"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/perry-anderson.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}