After Marxism - Softcover

Ronald Aronson

3.6

15 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898624169 ISBN 13: 9780898624168

Publisher: The Guilford Press, 1994

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After Marxism calls for a new radical coalition centered around morality and utopian sensibility. The book explores the kinds of commitments, values, and approaches to social realities that may still be described as radical today. These include the determination to end every form of oppression; a freedom to combine many different theories and kinds of analysis; an open and experimental attitude; an appreciation of modernity's great promise of being on our own; an understanding that radical social change encompasses attitudes and behaviors, as well as structures and systems; and a commitment to uniting the various potential radical groups, strands, and energies into a new radical coalition, a heterogeneous "we" founded on a deep sense of solidarity.

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About the Author:

Ronald Aronson, Ph.D., received his doctorate in the History of Ideas at Brandeis University, where he studied with Herbert Marcuse. A community organizer in the early days of the New Left, he served as an editor of the journal, Studies on the Left. He has written and edited four books on Jean-Paul Sartre, several articles and a book on South Africa, as well as a book that studies the problem of hope in the contemporary world. He is professor and Graduate Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Review:

"With this book Ronald Aronson makes a brave and lucid contribution to the assessment of the central event in the intellectual life of our time--the complex disabling of Marxism as social politics and as a working ethos. The account he gives of his personal political odyssey is a fine example of this kind of reflection, and his readings of Adorno, Foucault, and other actors in late Marxism are insightful. For those engaged in the collective effort to define a postMarxist democratic radicalism, After Marxism will constitute a solid tool and touchstone." --Norman Rush, author of Mating

"Aronson is an engaging, down-to-earth guide to left-wing theory in the post-Marxist era. After convincingly putting Marx in his place in the museum of noble ideas, he introduces a challenging array of contemporary radical thinkers. Throughout, he makes it clear that `after Marx' there are still revolutions to launch and worlds to win." --Barbara Ehrenreich, author of The Worst Years of Our Lives

"This is not a sectarian book by an author with an axe to grind. On the contrary, it strikes me as a painfully honest work by someone openly searching for his bearings in a changed world...Aronson remains sympathetic to the Marxism he leaves behind, taking with him the still usefull elements of its theoretical apparatus and its utopian vision of the future." --Stephen L. Newman, York University

"Thought-provoking....Its account of Marxism is both useful and accessible to students." --Jean-Pierre Boule, Nottingham Trent University, UK

"....Aronson's engaged and wide-ranging book combines a critical analysis of Marxism, a personal-political autobiography, and an outline of a new radical project...." --Moishe Postone, Contemporary Sociology

"...this work, from a resolutely leftist author who is evidently pained by his own intellectual conclusions, presents a powerful challenge to anyone still laying claim to the title of Marxist." --Terry Eagleton, Fadical Philosophy 82

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