David McNally

Heather Brown

Vijay Prashad

Neil Faulkner

Korkut Boratav

Michael A. Lebowitz

Erkin Özalp

Haluk Gerger

E. Ahmet Tonak

Yeşim Dinçer

Prabhat Patnaik

Taner Timur

Metin Çulhaoğlu

Sungur Savran

August H. Nimtz

Aijaz Ahmad

Nail Satlıgan

Cem Eroğul

Haluk Yurtsever

Ellen M. Wood

Marksizmi öğrenmek için öncelikle hangi eserlerden başlamalı? Doğru anlayıp yorumlamak için Marksist klasikleri nasıl okumalı? Merakla sorulan, daima tartışılan bir konudur bu. Ne soru yersizdir, ne de bu konuda yapılan tartışmalar. Zira Marksizm, hayatın tüm alanlarını kucaklayan, devrimci pratikle tamamlanan, sınırsız, çok yönlü, karmaşık bir zenginliktir. Bu devasa Marksizm edebiyatı içinde, okurların yollarını bulabilmesi kolay değildir. Marksist Klasikleri Okuma Kılavuzu, bu soruları gündemine alan özgün bir çalışma olarak, her düzeyde Marksizm okuru için bir başucu kitabı olmayı hedefliyor. Türkiye’den ve dünyadan yetkin Marksist kuramcıları bir araya getiren bu kitapta, Marksizmin kurucu ve geliştirici teorisyenleri Marx, Engels ve Lenin’in yirmi yapıtı, yirmi farklı yazar tarafından tanıtılıp değerlendiriliyor. Bu yazılarda, Marksist klasiklerin doğum iklimi, içeriği, öteki klasiklerle ilişkisi, etkileri, bugün için önemi parlak şekilde değerlendiriliyor. Böylece, okura öncelikli bir okuma listesi önerilirken, bu eserlerin nasıl okunacağına dair bir rehber de verilmiş oluyor. Yazarların bu kitap için kaleme aldıkları yazılar, Türkiye’nin önde gelen Marksist yazarlarından Taner Timur’un giriş yazısıyla sunuluyor. Kitaba makaleleriyle katkıda bulunanlar: Aijaz Ahmad, August H. Nimtz, Cem Eroğul, David McNally, E. Ahmet Tonak, Ellen M. Wood, Erkin Özalp, Haluk Gerger, Haluk Yurtsever, Heather Brown, Korkut Boratav, Metin Çulhaoğlu, Michael A. Lebowitz, Nail Satlıgan, Neil Faulkner, Prabhat Patnaik, Sungur Savran, Taner Timur, Vijay Prashad, Yeşim Dinçer

Marksist Klasikleri Okuma Kılavuzu

What was “real socialism”—the term which originated in twentieth-century socialist societies for the purpose of distinguishing them from abstract, theoretical socialism? In this volume, Michael A. Lebowitz considers the nature, tendencies, and contradictions of those societies. Beginning with the constant presence of shortages within “real socialism,” Lebowitz searches for the inner relations which generate these patterns. He finds these, in particular, in what he calls “vanguard relations of production,” a relation which takes the apparent form of a social contract where workers obtain benefits not available to their counterparts in capitalism but lack the power to decide within the workplace and society. While these societies were able to claim major achievements in areas from health care to education to popular culture, the separation of thinking and doing prevented workers from developing their capacities as fully developed human beings. The relationship within “real socialism” between the vanguard as conductor and a conducted working class, however, did not only lead to the deformation of workers and those elements necessary for the building of socialism; it also created the conditions in which enterprise managers emerged as an incipient capitalist class, which was an immediate source of the crises of “real socialism.” As he argued in The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development, Lebowitz stresses the necessity to go beyond the hierarchy inherent in the relation of conductor and conducted (and beyond the “vanguard Marxism” which supports this) to create the conditions in which people can transform themselves through their conscious cooperation and practice—i.e., a society of free and associated producers.

The Conductor and the Conducted

The Contradictions of "Real Socialism"

“A good society,“ Michael Lebowitz tells us, “is one that permits the full development of human potential.” In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a conflict between profits and human development, profits take precedence. Just ask the unemployed, those toiling at dead-end jobs, the sick and infirm, the poor, and the imprisoned. But if not capitalism, what? Lebowitz is also critical of those societies that have proclaimed their socialism, such as the former Soviet Union and China. While their systems were not capitalist and were capable of achieving some of what is necessary for the “development of human potential,” they were not “good societies.” A good society as Lebowitz defines it must be marked by three characteristics: social ownership of the means of production, social production controlled by workers, and satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Lebowitz shows how these characteristics interact with and reinforce one another, and asks how they can be developed to the point where they occur more or less automatically—that is, become both a society’s premises and outcomes. He also offers fascinating insights into matters such as the nature of wealth, the illegitimacy of profits, the inadequacies of worker-controlled enterprises, the division of labor, and much more.

Real Human Development

The Socialist Alternative

Connects the Marxist construct of capitalism to systems of community In this book, Michael Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his award-winning, Beyond Capital. Karl Marx, in Capital, focused on capital and the capitalist class that is its embodiment. It is the endless accumulation of capital, its causes and consequences that are central to Marx’s analysis. In taking this approach, Marx tended to obscure not only the centrality of capital’s “immanent drive” and “constant tendency” to divide the working class but also the political economy of the working class (“social production controlled by social foresight”). In Between Capitalism and Community, Lebowitz demonstrates that capitalism contains within itself elements of a different society, one of community. Whereas Marx’s intellectual construct of capitalism treats it as an organic system that reproduces its premises of capital and wage-labor (including a working class that looks upon the requirements of capital “as self-evident natural laws”), Lebowitz argues that the struggle of workers in common and activities based upon solidarity point in the direction of the organic system of community, an alternative system that produces its own premises, communality, and recognition of the needs of others. If we are to escape the ultimate barbarism portended by the existing crisis of the earth system, the subordination of the system of capitalism by that of community is essential. Since the interregnum in which capitalism and community coexist is marked by the interpenetration and mutual deformation of both sides within this whole, however, the path to community cannot emerge spontaneously but requires a revolutionary party that stresses the development of the capacities of people through their protagonism.

Between Capitalism and Community

21. Yüzyıl İçin Sosyalizm, net ve yenilikçi bir sosyalist gelecek tasarımı sunuyor; bu tasarımın hayata geçirilmesinin somut aşamalarını da gösteriyor. Aynı zamanda, kapitalizmin mantığını gerçek anlamıyla kavramanın, yani süregiden kapitalist kâr güdülerine karşı insanın gerçek gereksinimlerini savunmanın, başlı başına politik bir eylem olduğunu da anlatıyor. Marx'ın ekonomi politik alanındaki mirasının yaratıcı ve sadık bir yorumunu yapan yazar, Venezüella'da yaşanan çarpıcı sürecin deneyimlerine de özel olarak eğiliyor. Merkezine emekçileri yerleştiren sosyalizm anlayışıyla, özgün bir kalkınma modelini bağdaştırarak "21. yüzyıl sosyalizmi" adını verdiği tasarımını ayrıntılandırıyor. Kitabın çoğu bölümü, Venezüella'daki işçi örgütlerinde yapılan sunumlardan geliştirilmiş. Bu yönüyle de kitap herhangi bir akademik metnin çok ötesinde; genel okurların da ilgiyle okuyacağı yalınlıkta.

Bugünden Kuralım 21. Yüzyıl İçin Sosyalizm

Michael A. Lebowitz

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