Marxism and Social Movements

Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity.

Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research.

Contributors include: Paul Blackledge, Marc Blecher, Patrick Bond,Chik Collins, Ralph Darlington, Neil Davidson, Ashwin Desai, Jeff Goodwin, Chris Hesketh, Gabriel Hetland, Elizabeth Humphrys, Christian Høgsbjerg, David McNally, Trevor Ngwane, Heike Schaumberg and Hira Singh.

Colin Barker is honorary lecturer in sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He co-organizes the annual international conferences on Alternative Futures and Popular Protest. He has published many books and articles on social movements and revolutions and is an active socialist.

Laurence Cox, Ph.D. (1999, Trinity College Dublin), co-directs the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at Maynooth. He co-edits the social movement journal Interface and has also published Understanding European Movements (Routledge, 2013, with Cristina Flesher Fominaya).

John Krinsky, Ph.D. (2002, Columbia University), is associate professor of political science at The City College of New York. He co-edits the journal Social Movement Studies, and published Free Labor: Workfare and the Contested Language of Neoliberalism (Chicago 2007).

Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Ph.D. (2006, Bergen) is associate professor of sociology at the University of Bergen. He co-edits the journal Interface and has published widely on social movements. He is the author of Dispossession and Resistance in India (Routledge, 2010).