Leon Trotsky’s Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History
Trotsky’s contribution to historical materialism has been subject to two broadly defined critical assessments. Detractors have tended to dismiss his interpretation of Marxism as a form of productive force determinism, while admirers have tended to defend his Marxism as a voluntarist negation of the same…. Read more here
Reform, Revolution and the Problem of Organisation in the First New Left
In this essay I analyse the debate over the question of political organisation as it was articulated within the first British New Left of 1956-62. I argue that to characterise the New Left primarily in terms of the break made by many of its leading intellectuals with Stalinism is only partially adequate. .. Read more here
Theory and Practice of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century
The word ‘revolution’ was first used in an unmistakably modern sense in the eighteenth century to describe the American and French revolutions. And although it had begun to gravitate towards something like this modern meaning in England in the wake of her seventeenth-century revolutions … Read more here
Marxism, Nihilism, and the Problem of Ethical Politics Today
In a recent and very powerful critique of the social and political irrelevance of much of contemporary political theory, Raymond Geuss made the somewhat idiosyncratic suggestion that if “political philosophy wishes to be at all connected with a serious understanding of politics … Read more here