The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx (Alex Callinicos)

“My aim in this book has been to fill a gap in the literature on Marx by providing an accessible modern introduction to his life and thought by someone who shares his basic beliefs on history, society and revolution. I am grateful to a number of people for their help and encouragement: to Peter Clark and Tony Cliff, who had the idea in the first place; to Tony Cliff for his searching criticisms of the book in manuscript; and to Peter Goodwin and Peter Marsden, who performed the same task as well as the more difficult one of trying to make the book readable. Although the general political standpoint taken in this book is that of the Socialist Workers Party, the errors it undoubtedly contains are all my own. I would like to dedicate The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx to Joanna Seddon, to whom I owe, among other things, such knowledge as I have of the Utopian socialists.” (Foreword)

Download: The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx

Making History: Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory (Alex Callinicos)

“Making History was first published in 1987. Certainly its tone and perhaps also its substantive preoccupations may seem to belong to a world that is irretrievably lost. There are, I think, two reasons for this. The first has to do with the political context. I wrote the book in the spring and summer of 1986, in the immediate aftermath of the great British miners’ strike of 1984–5. (Indeed, Making History was conceived and much of the work for it done before the strike, but its writing delayed, principally by my involvement in covering the strike for six months as a journalist at Socialist Worker and my co-authoring a book about the miners’ struggle.)1 The strike and its defeat by the Thatcher government was an event of global resonance, both symbolically and practically. It marked the end of a particular kind of workers’ movement and the apparent triumph of a neo-liberal capitalism that was at once brutally single-minded in its preoccupation with profit-maximisation and insidiously effective in mobilising the desires of individuals as possessive consumers.” (from “Context”)

Download: Making History – Alex Callinicos