Carl Freedman: The Age of Nixon: A Study in Cultural Power (2012)

Applies Marxism and psychoanalysis to the study of American politics. In America, every age is the Age of Nixon.

The fundamental argument of this book is, first, that Richard Nixon, though not generally regarded as a charismatic or emotionally outgoing politician like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, did establish profound psychic connections with the American people, connections that can be detected both in the brilliant electoral success that he enjoyed for most of his career and in his ultimate defeat during the Watergate scandal; and, second and even more important, that these connections are symptomatic of many of the most important currents in American life. The book is not just a work of political history or political biography but a study of cultural power: that is, a study in the ways that culture shapes our politics and frames our sense of possibilities and values. In its application of Marxist, psychoanalytic, and other theoretical tools to the study of American electoral politics, and in a way designed for the general as well as for the academic reader, it is a new kind of book.

Publisher Zero Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, 2012
ISBN 1846949432, 9781846949432
295 pages

commentary (Steven Shaviro)

publisher
google books

PDF (EPUB)

Horvat Branko: Politička ekonomija socijalizma (1982/84) [Croatian]

In this important book Branko Horvat advances a type of Yugoslav Marxism referred to by many as Yugoslav ‘Praxis’ Marxism, a name adopted from the journal Praxis that promoted a humanist style of socialist thought from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. For years, Horvat has been directly associated with many of the authors who originally founded this journal, and his work illustrates his indebtedness to them.

Originally published as The Political Economy of Socialism, New York, 1982
Translated by Dubravko Mihaljek and Mia Miki
Publisher ČGP Delo, Globus, Izdavačka djelatnost, Zagreb
546 pages
via Ignorant Schoolmaster and His Committees

PDF

Alain Badiou: The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings (2011–)

“Testing the winds of history blowing from the Arab revolts.

In the uprisings of the Arab world, Alain Badiou discerns echoes of the European revolutions of 1848. In both cases, the object was to overthrow despotic regimes maintained by the great powers—regimes designed to impose the will of financial oligarchies. Both events occurred after what was commonly thought to be the end of a revolutionary epoch: in 1815, the final defeat of Napoleon; and in 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union. But the revolutions of 1848 proclaimed for a century and a half the return of revolutionary thought and action. Likewise, the uprisings underway today herald a worldwide resurgence in the liberating force of the masses—despite the attempts of the ‘international community’ to neutralize its power.

Badiou’s book salutes this reawakening of history, weaving examples from the Arab Spring and elsewhere into a global analysis of the return of emancipatory universalism.”

Originally published as Le Reveil de l’histoire, Nouvelles Editions Lignes, 2011

Translated by Gregory Elliott
Publisher Verso Books, 2012
ISBN 1844678792, 9781844678792
126 pages

Reviews: Jasper Bernes and Joshua Clover (Los Angeles Review of Books), Daniel Tutt (Platypus), Anindya Bhattacharyya (Socialist Review).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-7-5)