Paul Lafargue and the Flowering of French Socialism, 1882-1911

Paul Lafargue and the Flowering of French Socialism, 1882-1911
Author: Leslie DERFLER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674034228

Paul Lafargue, the disciple and son-in-law of Karl Marx, helped to found the first French Marxist party in 1882. Over the next three decades, he served as the chief theoretician and propagandist for Marxism in France. During these years - which ended with the dramatic suicides of Lafargue and his wife - French socialism, and the Marxist party within it, became a significant political force. Leslie Derfler explores Lafargue's political strategies, specifically his break with party co-founder Jules Guesde in the Boulanger and Dreyfus episodes and over the question of socialist syndicalist relations. Derfler shows Lafargue's importance as both political activist and theorist. He describes Lafargue's role in the formulation of such strategies as the promotion of a Second Workingmen's International, the pursuit of reform within the framework of the existent state but opposition to any socialist participation in nonsocialist governments, and the subordination of trade unionism to political action. He emphasizes Lafargue's pioneering efforts to apply Marxist methods of analysis to questions of anthropology, aesthetics, and literary criticism.

The Human Tradition in Modern France

The Human Tradition in Modern France
Author: K. Steven Vincent
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2000-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1461644380

The Human Tradition in Modern France gives a human perspective of the history of France from 1789 to the present, revealed in essays that highlight individuals and intriguing events that too often have been lost under labels and statistics. Students will gain an understanding of the humor and passion in French history from these new, original essays by well-established scholars. This collection also relates the individuals, events, and controversies to current historiographical debates. The Human Tradition in Modern France is an excellent supplementary text for courses on French history and is also useful for courses in world history and Western Civilization.

Marxism and National Identity

Marxism and National Identity
Author: Robert Stuart
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2006-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780791466704

Provides the first sustained analysis of the collision between Marxism and nationalism in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair.

Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871-1885

Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871-1885
Author: Julia Nicholls
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2019-07-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108499260

The first comprehensive account of revolutionary and socialist thought after the 1871 Paris Commune, France's last nineteenth-century revolution.

Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–1920

Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–1920
Author: Karen Offen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 711
Release: 2018-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316991598

Karen Offen offers a magisterial reconstruction and analysis of the debates around relations between women and men, how they are constructed, and how they should be organized, that raged in France and its French-speaking neighbors from 1870 to 1920. The 'woman question' encompassed subjects from maternity and childbirth, and the upbringing and education of girls to marriage practices and property law, the organization of households, the distribution of work inside and outside the household, intimate sexual relations, religious beliefs and moral concerns, government-sanctioned prostitution, economic and political citizenship, and the politics of population growth. The book shows how the expansion of economic opportunities for women and the drop in the birth rate further exacerbated the debates over their status, roles, and possibilities. With the onset of the First World War, these debates were temporarily placed on hold, but they would be revived by 1916 and gain momentum during France's post-war recovery.

Wine, Sugar, and the Making of Modern France

Wine, Sugar, and the Making of Modern France
Author: Elizabeth Heath
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2014-10-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107070589

Reveals how empire and global economic crisis redefined republican citizenship and laid the foundations of a racial state in France.

Love and Capital

Love and Capital
Author: Mary Gabriel
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2011-09-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 031619137X

Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, Love and Capital reveals the rarely glimpsed and heartbreakingly human side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death. Drawing upon previously unpublished material, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel tells the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. Through it, we see Karl as never before: a devoted father and husband, a prankster who loved a party, a dreadful procrastinator, freeloader, and man of wild enthusiasms -- one of which would almost destroy his marriage. Through years of desperate struggle, Jenny's love for Karl would be tested again and again as she waited for him to finish his masterpiece, Capital. An epic narrative that stretches over decades to recount Karl and Jenny's story against the backdrop of Europe's Nineteenth Century, Love andCapital is a surprising and magisterial account of romance and revolution -- and of one of the great love stories of all time.

The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought

The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought
Author: Alastair Hemmens
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-04-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030125866

What is work? Why do we do it? Since time immemorial the answer to these questions, from both the left and the right, has been that work is both a natural necessity and, barring exploitation, a social good. One might criticise its management, its compensation and who benefits from it the most, but never work itself, never work as such. In this book, Alastair Hemmens seeks to challenge these received ideas. Drawing on the new ‘critique-of-value’ school of Marxian critical theory, Hemmens demonstrates that capitalism and its final crisis cannot be properly understood except in terms of the historically specific and socially destructive character of labour. It is from this radical perspective that Hemmens turns to an innovative critical analysis of the rich history of radical French thinkers who, over the past two centuries, have challenged the labour form head on: from the utopian-socialist Charles Fourier, who called for the abolition of the separation between work and play, and Marx’s wayward son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, who demanded The Right to Laziness (1880), to the father of Surrealism, André Breton, who inaugurated a ‘war on work’, and, of course, the French Situationist, Guy Debord, author of the famous graffito, ‘never work’. Ultimately, Hemmens considers normative changes in attitudes to work since the 1960s and the future of anti-capitalist social movements today. This book will be a crucial point of reference for contemporary debates about labour and the anti-work tradition in France.

Socialists and International Actions for Peace 1914–1923

Socialists and International Actions for Peace 1914–1923
Author: Masao Nishikawa
Publisher: Frank & Timme GmbH
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2010-10-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3865962963

The analyses and accounts of the history of the "Second International" often go up to 1914, the year its anti-war efforts were to prove futile. All actions of the socialists during World War I were discussed in the context of the pathway to the "Third International." The author aims to present a somewhat different picture from existing views by examining the thoughts and actions of socialists in the years 1914-1923 beyond the framework of whether they supported or opposed the "Third International." He describes what circumstances led to the formation of "communism" and "social democracy," which divided in two the international socialist movement for almost 70 years, paying attention to various issues deeply involved in international and domestic politics as well as in the socialist movement. Masao Nishikawa taught western history at the Tokyo Women's Christian College (1966-1968), the University of Tokyo (1968-1994) and Senshū University (1994-2004). He was visiting professor at Ruhr University Bochum (1976-1977) and Bremen University (1988-1989). Upon retirement he was made professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. He had a worldwide fame as a specialist of international socialist movements.

Transformations of Contemporary Capitalism

Transformations of Contemporary Capitalism
Author: David J. Evans
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2023-10-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000967123

In recent decades, there has been many attempts to describe, explore, and explain the new ‘post-modern’ capitalism of the twenty-first century. In this context, this book looks at one of the most exciting strands of this research in the late twentieth century: the flexible specialisation research programme (FSRP). Drawing on the history of ideas, discourse, and literature on capitalism of the last four decades, this book shows that although ‘flexible specialisation’ anticipated some of the ways in which capitalism was being transformed in the late twentieth century, they underestimated and failed to anticipate the forms of ‘creative destruction’ and corporate digital control which were becoming embedded in the global capitalist accumulation dynamic itself. The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union and the ‘end of history’ failed to open up the pathway for new forms of modern social democracy but gave rise instead to the new digital Behemoths. Today, the classical tendencies of capitalism as anticipated by Marx are all too present and, despite talk of ‘post-capitalism’ and ‘digital/techno-feudalism’, the landscape of monopolyfinance capital has consolidated itself. The book counterposes the FSRP with the various Marxist interpretations of the capitalist transition, together with the wider social and economic theories that emerged in the first decades for the twenty-first century around, for example, the ‘great acceleration’, de-growth, and post-growth. This book will be of interest to all readers concerned with heterodox political economy, critical social theory, intellectual history, and, above all, the prospects for social transformation leading to social justice and an ‘egalitarian enlightenment’.