Michael Lowy

Revolutions is a unique collection of rare photographs documenting some of the most important revolutionary upheavals, from the 1871 Paris Commune to the Zapatista rebellion of the 1990s.

Revolutions

Olivier Besancenot

« Ernesto “Che” Guevara n’était ni un saint, ni un surhomme, ni un chef infaillible : il était un homme comme les autres, avec ses forces et ses faiblesses, ses lucidités et ses aveuglements, ses erreurs et ses maladresses. Mais il avait cette qualité rare chez les acteurs de la scène politique : la cohérence entre les paroles et les actes. De ce point de vue, il était exceptionnel, et cette singularité est pour beaucoup dans l’attraction qu’il exerce aujourd’hui encore à travers le monde. Médecin argentin devenu ministre de l’Industrie à Cuba, il est mort en combattant la dictature militaire en Bolivie le 9 octobre 1967. Il existe déjà un bon nombre de biographies consacrées au Che. Nous, nous avons fait le choix de nous intéresser aux idées, aux valeurs, aux analyses, aux propositions, aux rêves de l’homme. Certes, il était un combattant qui maniait avec autant d’aisance la plume que le fusil. Mais pour quelle cause se battait-il ? Quelle image avait-il de la société enfin émancipée du cauchemar capitaliste ? Voilà les questions qui nous occupent dans ce livre, sans avoir la prétention de livrer la réponse. » O. B. et M. L.

Une braise qui brûle encore

Che Guevara

Franz Kafka: Subversive Dreamer is an attempt to identify and properly contextualize the social critique in Kafka’s biography and work that links father-son antagonisms, heterodox Jewish religious thinking, and anti-authoritarian or anarchist protest against the rising power of bureaucratic modernity. The book proceeds chronologically, starting with biographical facts often neglected or denied relating to Kafka’s relations with the Anarchist circles in Prague, followed by an analysis of the three great unfinished novels—Amerika, The Trial, The Castle—as well as some of his most important short stories. Fragments, parables, correspondence, and his diaries are also used in order to better understand the major literary works. Löwy’s book grapples with the critical and subversive dimension of Kafka’s writings, which is often hidden or masked by the fabulistic character of the work. Löwy’s reading has already generated controversy because of its distance from the usual canon of literary criticism about the Prague writer, but the book has been well received in its original French edition and has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, and Turkish.

Subversive Dreamer

Franz Kafka

Daniel Bensaid

Penelope Duggan

The Paris Commune of 1871 was one of the first working class attempts at the social emancipation of the oppressed and exploited. Between 18 March and 29 May 1871, the popular classes succeeded for a while in breaking their chains. It was a short period when people could take control of their lives. The Paris Commune is an inspiration today. The memory of the past and its struggles strengthens the fight for the utopia of the future. This book, The Paris Commune - An ode to emancipation, is a collection of writings by Daniel Bensaïd, Olivier Besancenot, Sandra Bloodworth, Judy Cox, Penelope Duggan, Mathilde Larrère, Michael Löwy, Kay Mann, Eric Toussaint.

The Paris Commune

Renowned Marxist scholar Michael Löwy offers an indispensable assessment of an enduringly fascinating revolutionary. Vibrant, insightful, and wide-ranging, Löwy's essays illuminate the heroic, tough-minded idealist and martyr, Rosa Luxemburg. Active in the labor and socialist movements of Germany, Poland, and Russia, Luxemburg had international standing as an original and sharp-minded theorist during her life and remains one of the most admired and studied revolutionaries in the Marxist tradition. Löwy follows Luxemburg in blending diverse intellectual disciplines--philosophy, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and economics--to make sense of global realities in her time and our own. Luxemburg's creative intellectual endeavors were shaped by her genuine devotion to the free development of all people, and her fierce opposition to all forms of tyranny and authoritarianism. These commitments guided her analyses of exploitation and mass struggle, the dynamics of trade unions and of bureaucracy, the origins and impacts of economic crisis, the nature of war and imperialism, and the interconnections of reform and revolution. In accessible and stimulating prose, Löwy explores Luxemburg's many political and theoretical contributions, as well as her links to revolutionaries including Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, José Carlos Mariátegui, and Leon Trotsky. Through Löwy's expansive engagement with Luxemburg's political trajectory and influence, we are able to see her wrestle with political problems that remain relevant today.

Essays

Rosa Luxemburg: the Incendiary Spark

Em lembrança aos 50 anos do golpe militar no Chile em 11 de setembro de 1973. Em 11 de setembro de 1973, Salvador Allende, presidente democraticamente eleito do Chile três anos antes, foi assassinado no Palácio de La Moneda enquanto defendia seu mandato contra um grupo de militares e empresários golpistas. Neste livro, Olivier Besancenot e Michael Löwy optaram por reconstituir esse golpe sangrento na forma de um romance. Dão, assim, vida aos militantes da esquerda chilena da época que resistiram lutando com armas em punho. Esta obra também reconstrói o papel crucial dos Estados Unidos que, com o presidente Richard Nixon, apoiaram ativamente o golpista, e futuro ditador, Augusto Pinochet. Não é um livro de história, nem um ensaio teórico, mas documento histórico-ficcional, baseado numa sólida pesquisa, que relembra a onda de violência autoritária, e anticomunista, que assolou a América do Sul durante a década de 1970, quando a revolução chilena representava a esperança da esquerda mundial. Escrito por dois importantes intelectuais da esquerda contemporânea, esta história de tirar o fôlego decifra com meticulosidade a liquidação de uma autêntica experiência democrática socialista na periferia do capitalismo, dando início ao implacável regime neoliberal que dominou o continente nas décadas seguintes.

Setembro Vermelho

Ce livre n’est pas un essai de plus sur Kafka. La lecture proposée par Michael Löwy ne manquera pas de susciter des controverses, tant elle se dissocie du canon habituel de la critique littéraire concernant cet auteur. Car il s’agit de trouver le fil rouge permettant de relier, dans la vie et l’oeuvre de Franz Kafka, la révolte contre le père, la religion de la liberté (d’inspiration juive hétérodoxe) et la protestation (d’inspiration libertaire) contre le pouvoir meurtrier des appareils bureaucratiques. A partir de données biographiques souvent négligées, tels les rapports de l’écrivain pragois avec les milieux anarchistes, et d’une étude des trois grands romans inachevés ainsi que des nouvelles les plus importantes, éclairée par des fragments, des paraboles, des éléments de la correspondance et du journal de Kafka, Michael Löwy met en évidence la dimension formidablement critique et subversive de cette oeuvre.

Franz Kafka, rêveur insoumis

The central theoretical argument of this book is that Marx's philosophy of praxis - first formulated in the Thesis on Feuerbach - is at the same time the founding stone of a new world view, and the methodological basis for his theory of (proletarian) revolutionary self-emancipation.

The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx

This illuminating study of Benjamin’s final essay helps unlock the mystery of this great philosopher Revolutionary critic of the philosophy of progress, nostalgic of the past yet dreaming of the future, romantic partisan of materialism—Walter Benjamin is in every sense of the word an “unclassifiable” philosopher. His essay “On the Concept of History” was written in a state of urgency, as he attempted to escape the Gestapo in 1940, before finally committing suicide. In this scrupulous, clear and fascinating examination of this essay, Michael Löwy argues that it remains one of the most important philosophical and political writings of the twentieth century. Looking in detail at Benjamin’s celebrated but often mysterious text, and restoring the philosophical, theological and political context, Löwy highlights the complex relationship between redemption and revolution in Benjamin’s philosophy of history.

Reading Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History'

Fire Alarm

This anthology of writings by Latin American Marxists in the twentieth century features theoretical, sociological, historical, and economic studies, as well as documents centering on the political struggles throughout the continent.--From publisher description.

An Anthology

Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present

Michael Löwy

Examining how writings on national issues by Marx & Engels could form the basis of an international dialectic, this text shows that by doing justice to national identities & linking new forms of social-movement, new internationalism can be created.

Essays on the National Question

Fatherland Or Mother Earth?

On oppose volontiers Max Weber à Karl Marx. Certes, le grand sociologue allemand était un libéral, hostile au communisme. Mais c’était aussi, nous rappelle Michael Löwy, textes à l’appui, un analyste très critique du capitalisme et de sa course effrénée au profit qui enferme l’humanité moderne dans un système implacable. Relisant la célèbre étude sur les « affinités électives » entre l’éthique protestante et l’esprit du capitalisme, Michael Löwy prolonge l’analyse. Il explore ainsi les « affinités négatives » entre l’éthique catholique et l’esprit du capitalisme et en retrouve la trace dans divers courants catholiques de gauche en Europe comme dans la théologie de la liberté en Amérique latine aujourd’hui. Il suit également les autres filiations anticapitalistes du sociologue de Heidelberg. D’une part celle du marxisme wébérien qui va de Georg Lukàcs à Maurice Merleau-Ponty, en passant par les premiers théoriciens de l’École de Francfort. D’autre part, celle d’un courant socialiste/romantique, essentiellement promu par des auteurs juifs allemands de la République de Weimar, tels Ernst Bloch ou Walter Benjamin. Cette postérité, Michaël Löwy, qui est à la fois un wébérien érudit et un marxiste engagé, l’incarne à sa manière. Et il entend montrer combien le courant critique du marxisme wébérien reste d’actualité alors que la toute puissance des marchés emprisonne, plus que jamais, les peuples dans la cage d’acier du calcul égoïste.

Max Weber et le marxisme wébérien

La cage d'acier

Classic study of Jewish libertarian thought, from Walter Benjamin to Franz Kafka Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Central Europe a generation of Jewish intellectuals whose work was to mark modern culture. Drawing at once on the traditions of German Romanticism and Jewish messianism, their thought was organized around the cabalistic idea of the tikkoun: redemption. Redemption and Utopia uses the concept of elective affinity to explain the surprising community of spirit that existed between redemptive messianic religious thought and the wide variety of radical secular utopian beliefs held by this important group of intellectuals. The author outlines the circumstances that produced this unusual combination of religious and non-religious thought and illuminates the common assumptions that united such seemingly disparate figures as Martin Buber, Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukacs."

Redemption Or Utopia

An erudite analysis of the critical and subversive dimensions of Kafka s writings "

Michael Lowy

Books

Your next favorite book is out there