Böcker i Historical Materialism-serien

In contrast to the traditional Marxist interpretation of emerging capitalism and its revolutionary bourgeoisie, State and Society in Eighteenth-Century France shows that commodified labor, fundamental to the existence of a capitalist bourgeoisie, did not take shape in eighteenth-century France. Through the revolutionary period, the mass of the population consisted of peasants and artisans in possession of land and workshops, all embedded in autonomous communities. The old regime bourgeoisie and nobility thus developed within the absolutist state in order to have the political means to impose feudal forms of exploitation on the people. These class relations, and not those offered in the traditional interpretation, gave rise to the crisis of 1789 and the revolutionary conflicts of the 1790s

Subject of numerous interpretations and studies, the vicissitudes of the famous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research nevertheless still contain some little-known sagas. One of these less discussed stories is the human and scientific relationship that bound philosopher Max Horkheimer and economist Friedrich Pollock for over fifty years.Based on texts and letters translated here into English for the first time, as well as some previously unpublished documents, For Nonconformism reconstructs the crucial moments in the friendship between the two scholars with an engaging narrative style and unwavering philological accuracy. Nicola Emery accompanies readers through a tour of the two friends and intellectuals' 'nonconformism' and their search for an alternative life-form that led to the birth of Frankfurt critical theory.

Written at the height of the purges, but unpublished for decades, Megrelidze's text is arguably the most significant, erudite and wide-ranging work of Marxist philosophy written in the USSR at the time. Discussing the emergence and development of human consciousness from the origins of humanity to the rise of capitalism, Megrelidze discusses the major achievements of contemporary cognitive science, sociology, philosophy and linguistics in the light of the works of Marx and Engels that were being published at the time. Far from the rigidities of official 'diamat', the book illuminates the important debates in Soviet intellectual life that led to the works of figures such as Vygotsky and members of the 'Bakhtin Circle'.

"She burst across the revolutionary sky like a blazing meteor, dazzling all in her path," Trotsky wrote. For the poet Boris Pasternak, she was Lara, the heroine of his novel Doctor Zhivago.Commissar, revolutionary fighter, espionage agent, journalist, Larisa Reisner (1895-1926) was a model for the 'new woman' of the Russian Revolution, and one of its most popular and brilliant writers, whose works were published in mass editions and read by millions. In this sweeping biography, Cathy Porter sets her life against the backdrop of the world-shaking events of 1917. Drawing on material recently released from the Soviet archives, Porter tells Reisner's story through the memories of those close to her, her own voluminous writings, and her six books-published for the first time together with this biography.