Rosa Luxemburg: On Revolution

Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

Book launch for Volume IV of the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Political Writings 2, “On Revolution” (1906–1909)

Sunday, 15 January, 13:00 EST / 19:00 CET

Hosted by Verso Books and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Socialist icon Rosa Luxemburg stands out as one of the most prolific and steadfast advocates of a revolutionary but nevertheless democratic approach to political strategy in the classical socialist movement. The latest, 600-page volume of her Complete Works, published by Verso Books with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, stands as a testament to this fact.

Money and Capital

A Critique of Monetary Thought, the Dollar and Post-Capitalism

By Laurent Baronian

https://www.routledge.com/Money-and-Capital-A-Critique-of-Monetary-Thought-the-Dollar-and-Post-Capitalism/Baronian/p/book/9781032424255

This book renews the Marxian theory of the general equivalent by highlighting the contradiction between the social functions of money (unit of account, means of circulation) and its private functions (store of value, accumulation). It draws a clear distinction between the monetary base and the commodity base of money and thus avoids the confusion between money and credit on the one hand, and money and capital on the other, which are found in other heterodox monetary theories. It accounts for the new forms of monetary constraints weighing on the banking systems under and inconvertible fiat money standard, the class relationships underlying the interventions of monetary authorities and governments, and presents a definition of the state which emphasises its mode of intervention on the collective and social conditions of capitalisms which are money and labour power. The emphasis on the contradiction between these two types of monetary functions gives a more fundamental account of the conflict between the international role and the national origin of the dollar than the Triffin dilemma, which has been constantly overcome or deferred by the US since 1960. The author explains this evolution by demonstrating how, from the 1950s onwards, the dollar began a process of acquiring relative autonomy from the US economy. By focusing on the role and international functions of the dollar, he offers a fresh look at the 2008 crisis and its consequences for the international monetary system, but also for a possible post-capitalist financial system – which post-revolutionary Russia experimented with in the form of the NEP, and whose contemporary implementation is foreshadowed by the rise of digital central bank currencies. The book thereby provides a necessary update to the tools and concepts inherited from Marx for analysing and understanding money, capital and the state.

NEW BOOKS

VERSO

Paths of Revolution

Selected Essays

by Adolfo Gilly

Edited by Tony Wood

Link: https://www.versobooks.com/books/4087-paths-of-revolution

The farmers braved the barricade

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | November 29, 2022

To loot, or to advance economy, farmers are encountered. Role in economy makes farmers an important question in countries. This sub-continent too can’t ignore the question.

Amit Bhaduri examines aspects related to recently concluded farmers’ movement in India in his The Emerging Face of Transformative Politics in India Farmers’ Movement (Aakar Books, Delhi, India, 2022, www.aakarbooks.com). The Emerging Face … stands with a backdrop: The unprecedented farmers’ movement in India, which had its center of gravity near the capital city New Delhi. The book, with 11 articles, according to Amit Bhaduri, “was written primarily in a campaign mode as the farmers’ movement went through various phases of ups and downs.” This statement tells about the book and its author, a teacher who worked in renowned universities around the world, and an economist.

Woke Capitalism – How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy

Carl Rhodes

Bristol, Bristol University Press, 2021. x+230 pp., € 26.10 pb.
ISBN 978-1529211672

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer

Carl Rhodes’ latest book about ‘Woke Capitalism’ is asking us to ‘be alert’, i.e., woke to capitalism. The title of the book is transferring the African-American term ‘woke’ meaning to be alert about racism and racial prejudice – to capitalism. Yet, woke capitalism is a particular form of capitalism. To illuminate this and how woke capitalism sets up corporate morality – a contradictory term or tautology – is indeed ‘sabotaging democracy’ (the book’s sub-title), Rhodes offers thirteen highly readable and often rather entertaining chapters. The book begins with ‘The Problem of Woke Capitalism’ and ends with ‘Getting Woke about Woke Capitalism’.

Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics

Sylvana Tomaselli

Princeton University Press, 2021, 248pp., £25.00 hb, £17.99 pb
ISBN 9780691241753

Reviewed by Steph Marston

Mary Wollstonecraft has the perfect biography for an enduring feminist heroine: an independent woman earning her living through combative political writings, whose work was alternately praised or denigrated, depending on whether her gender was evident; a passionate woman disregarding social conventions in her relationships with men and steadfast in her friendships with other women; an adventurous woman who went to live in France during the revolution and who travelled in Scandinavia, subsequently publishing a collection of letters so eloquent that they inspired the Romantic poets. Her professional activities and personal choices may appear to cast her as a woman ahead of her times, as familiar to twenty-first century readers as our contemporaries.

The Communist Women’s Movement, 1920-1922

Proceedings, Resolutions, and Reports

Series: Historical Materialism Book Series, Volume: 268

Volume Editors: Michael Taber and Daria Dyakonova

BRILL

The Communist Women’s Movement (CWM), virtually unknown today, was the world’s first international revolutionary organisation of women. Formed in 1920, the CWM mapped out a programme for women’s emancipation; participated in struggles for women’s rights; and worked to advance women’s participation in the Communist movement.

The present volume, part of a series on the Communist International in Lenin’s time, contains proceedings and resolutions of CWM conferences, along with reports on its work around the world. Most of the contents here are published in English for the first time, with almost half appearing for the first time in any language.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation in Latin America and Beyond

Actuality and Pertinence

EDITED BY LORENZO FUSARO AND LEINAD JOHAN ALCALÁ SANDOVAL – CONTRIBUTIONS BY ROSSANA CILLO; LUIS FELIPE DOCOA; ROBERTO FINESCHI; ABELARDO MARIÑA FLORES; LORENZO FUSARO; CARLOS ALBERTO DUQUE GARCÍA; SERGIO CÁMARA IZQUIERDO; MATARI PIERRE MANIGAT; LUCIA PRADELLA; WILLIAM I. ROBINSON; SIBYL ITALIA PINEDA SALAZAR AND LEINAD JOHAN ALCALÁ SANDOVAL

This edited collection engages with Marx’s General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, examining the relevance and actuality of Marx’s propositions for the analysis of contemporary capitalism in Latin America and beyond. The contributors offer an original and updated interpretation of Marx while also examining important topics in political economy. The contributors bring critical insights into scholarly debates on imperialism, exploitation, labor, and development.

Book: Truth and Lies about the famine in Ukraine, by Nikos Mottas

In Defense of Communism | June 18, 2022

The mythology surrounding the so-called Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, is exposed in a concise 78-pages book edited by Nikos Mottas and published in Greek language by Atexnos Publishing House.

For many decades, the issue of the Ukrainian famine in 1932-33, the famous Holodomor, occupies a prominent place in the arsenal of anti-communism. Especially after the counter-revolutionary overthrows in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, the Holodomor is at the forefront of a systematic and persistent attempt to vilify socialism of the 20th century and present it as an evil, inhumane system which is supposedly responsible for millions of deaths. 

Marx in Paris, 1871

Jenny’s ”Blue Notebook”

by Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy
Translated by Todd Chretien

Haymarket Books

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, leftist writers Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy offer a deeply informed, and eminently enjoyable, imagined history of what might have been if Karl Marx and his eldest daughter, Jenny, had travelled to Paris during the heady weeks of April 1871. In disguise, employing imperfect but serviceable French, Karl and Jenny encounter and debate many important figures of the movement, including Leó Frankel, Eugène Varlin, Charles Longuet, Elisabeth Dmitrieff, and Louise Michel, eventually returning to England with a profoundly changed sense of political possibility.