How does one explain the presence of educated recruits in movements that were overwhelmingly working class in composition? How did intellectuals function within the movements? In the first in-depth exploration of this question, Stanley Pierson examines the rise, development, and ultimate failure of the German Social Democrats, the largest of the European socialist parties, from 1887 to 1912. Prominent figures, such as Karl Kautsky, August Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg, and Eduard Bernstein are discussed, but the book focuses primarily on the younger generation. These forgotten intellectuals--Max Schippel, Paul Kampffmeyer, Conrad Schmidt, Paul Ernst, and others--struggled most directly with the dilemmas arising out of the attempt to translate Marxist doctrines into practical and personal terms. These young writers, speakers, and politicians set out to supplant old ways of thinking with a Marxist understanding of history and society. Pierson weaves together over thirty intellectual biographies to explore the relationship between ideology and politics in Germany. He examines the conflict within Social Democracy between the "revisionist" intellectuals, who sought to adapt Marxist theory to changing economic and social realities, and those "orthodox" and "radical" intellectuals who attempted to remain faithful to the Marxist vision. By examining the struggles of the socialist intellectuals in Germany, Pierson brings out the special features of German cultural, social, and political life before World War I. His study of this critical time in the development of the German Social Democratic party also illuminates the wider development of Marxism in Europe during the twentieth century.

What ought the political role of the intellectual to be? What challenges does the post-structuralist project present for Marxist accounts of the intellectual? This text, which includes important contributions from authors such as Montag and Sayers, considers different attempts by Marxist and post-Marxist writers to theorize these questions.

The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.

Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies is an innovative exploration of the ethical and political significance of Cultural Studies and Post-Marxist discourse theory. It argues that although Cultural Studies and post-Marxism tend to present themselves as distinct entities, they actually share a project - that of taking on the political. Post-Marxism presents itself as having a developed theory of political strategy, while Cultural Studies has claimed to be both practical and political. Bowman examines these intertwined, overlapping, controversial and contested claims and orientations by way of a deconstructive reading that is led by the question of intervention: what is the intervention of post-Marxism, of Cultural Studies, of each into the other, and into other institutional and political contexts and scenes?Through considerations of key aspects of Cultural Studies and cultural theory, Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies argues that the very thing that is fundamental to both of these 'politicised' app

Teres (English, Syracuse U.) brings to life the world of New York intellectuals from the 1930s to the present, drawing lessons for progressive politics today and arguing for a reassessment of the legacy of the New York intellectuals. He examines issues such as race and gender relations, literary quality, and politics as a means to fulfill personal, spiritual, and ethical needs, and profiles various figures of New York's left-wing intellectual culture. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book assesses the untimely relevance of Marx and Freud for Latin America, thinkers alien to the region who became an inspiration to its beleaguered activists, intellectuals, writers and artists during times of political and cultural oppression. Bruno Bosteels presents ten case studies arguing that art and literature—the novel, poetry, theatre, film—more than any militant tract or theoretical essay, can give us a glimpse into Marxism and psychoanalysis, not so much as sciences of history or of the unconscious, respectively, but rather as two intricately related modes of understanding the formation of subjectivity.