This book restores social production and classes back at the centre of Marxist theory by providing what E. V. Ilyenkov calls the development of a "fully logical and really historical" dialectical examination of human social production.

Dialectics of Class Struggle examines the historical development of classes from ancient times to present. It analyses the development of ancient slavery into feudalism and the latter into capitalism. It focuses on the laws and limits of capitalist development, the contradictions inherent in the capitalist state, revolutions in the twentieth century and the possibilities for human freedom that they revealed. It concludes with an examination of class struggles in the global economy and shows the human deprivations as well as the human possibilities.

Combining bold theortical analysis and careful empirical investigation Harris provides a critical framework to understand the political and economic underpinnings of globalization. In an unique historical approach the book examines how the revolution in information technologies and the break-up of the Soviet Union intertwined to present new global opportunities to reorganize capitalism as a unified world system headed by an emerging transnational capitalist class. The book challenges the common view that nation states still define international relations, with the United States as hegemonic leader of the world system. Instead Harris offers a more complex analysis of world affairs that sees the current period as one of transition between nationally based industrial capitalism and a global system based on revolutionary methods of production and new class relationships. He argues this conflict appears in every country as national economies realigned to fit new patterns of world accumulation creating a host of political tensions within and between nations. This analysis is detailed in a distinctive interpretation of the US military/industrial complex, as well as the contemporary class struggles in Germany and the emerging powers of China, India and Brazil. The book concludes by investigating alternative trends which are currently challenging the inequalities of global capitalism, unfolding a fresh approach to the relationship between the state, market and civil society.

This anthology contains some of the more important Marxist thinkers now working on dialectics. As a whole the book is an unusual 'Introduction to Dialectics', a systematic restatement of what it is and how to use it, a survey of most of the main debates in the field, and a good picture of the current state of the art of dialectics.

"While Adorno has tended to be read as a critic of the administered world and the consumer industry rather than a Marxist, Adorno and Marx e stablishes Adorno's negative dialectics as fundamental for understanding Marx's critique of political economy. This conception of the critique of political economy as a critical theory marks both a radical departure from traditional Marxist scholarship and from traditional readings of Adorno's work and warns against identifying Adorno with Marx or Marx with Adorno. Rather, it highlights the intersection between Adorno's critical theory and Marx's critique of political economy that produces a critical theory of economic objectivity that moves beyond Marxian economics and Adornonian social theory. Written by an international team of leading thinkers in Marxism and Critical Theory, Adorno and Marx combines both breadth and depth of analysis to address the central topics for engaging with the global political economy, as well as the cutting-edge of critical social theory and practice."--

In Capitalism, Alienation and Critique Asger Sørensen offers an argument for first generation Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, discussing furthermore Hegelian dialectics and that of Mao, as well as classical political economy and the general economy of Georges Bataille.