On Changing The World: Essays in Political Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin

Description

This collection of essays - including several translated to english for the first time - cover a wide range of topics and figures too often neglected by the dominant trends in Marxist literature. With a particular focus on the important role played by Romanticism in Marxist thought, topics include religion, Utopia, Rosa Luxemburg and Walter Benjamin.

Michael Loewy is Research Director in Sociology at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. He is the author of many books, including The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx and, with Olivier Besancenot, Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy.

"Only the Stalinist gospel of convenient quotations is dead, not Marxist writing. Michael Loewy illustrates the vitality of the latter. His collection of essays, combining scholarship with passion, impresses by its sweep and scope. It ranges from liberation theology to the problem of 'progress' in Walter Benjamin. And, since it tackles such issues as utopia and nationalism, the book is also highly topical." -Daniel Singer, author, Deserter from Death "Michael Loewy is unquestionably a tremendous figure in the decades-long attempt to recover an authentic revolutionary tradition from the wreckage of Stalinism, and these essays are very often powerful examples of this process." -Dominic Alexander, Counterfire "Only the Stalinist gospel of convenient quotations is dead, not Marxist writing. Michael Loewy illustrates the vitality of the latter. His collection of essays, combining scholarship with passion, impresses by its sweep and scope. It ranges from liberation theology to the problem of 'progress' in Walter Benjamin. And, since it tackles such issues as utopia and nationalism, the book is also highly topical." Daniel Singer, author, Deserter from Death "Michael Loewy is unquestionably a tremendous figure in the decades-long attempt to recover an authentic revolutionary tradition from the wreckage of Stalinism, and these essays are very often powerful examples of this process." Dominic Alexander, Counterfire