Democratic Marxism Book Series

The crisis of Marxism in the late twentieth century was the crisis of orthodox and vanguardist Marxism associated mainly with hierarchical communist parties, and which was imposed – even as state ideology – as the ‘correct’ Marxism. The Stalinisation of the Soviet Union and its eventual collapse exposed the inherent weaknesses and authoritarian mould of vanguardist Marxism. More fundamentally, vanguardist Marxism was rendered obsolete but for its residual existence in a few parts of the world, including authoritarian national liberation movements in Africa and China.

With the deepening crises of capitalism, a new democratic Marxism (or democratic historical materialism) is coming to the fore. Such a democratic marxism is characterised in the following ways:

Its sources span non-vanguardist grassroots movements, unions, political fronts, mass parties, radical intellectuals, transnational activist networks and the progressive academy;
It seeks to ensure that the inherent categories of Marxism are theorised within constantly changing historical conditions to find meaning;
It is open to other forms of anti-capitalist thought and practice, including currents within radical ecology, feminism, emancipatory utopianism and indigenous thought;
It does not seek to be a monolithic and singular school of thought but engenders contending perspectives;
Democracy as part of the heritage of people’s struggles, is understood as the basis for articulating alternatives to capitalism and as the primary means for constituting a transformative subject of historical change.

This series seeks to elaborate the social theorising and politics of democratic Marxism.

Volume 1

Marxisms in the 21st Century: Crisis, Critique and Struggle

Although Marx’s writings on social transformation figured prominently in the global Left imagination for more than 150 years, by the late twentieth century the relevance of Marxism was under question by both the Left (including Marxists) and Right. Its revival in the second decade of the twenty-first century is finding new sources of inspiration and creativity from movements that believe that ‘another world is possible’ through democratic, egalitarian and ecological alternatives to capitalism built by ordinary people. The Marxism of many of these movements is not dogmatic or prescriptive, but open, searching, utopian. It revolves around four primary factors: the importance of democracy for an emancipatory project; the ecological limits of capitalism; the crisis of global capitalism; and the learning of lessons from the failures of Marxist-inspired experiments. This edited book introduces some contemporary approaches to Marxism. It shows how the twenty-first century has seen enormous creativity from movements that seek to overcome the weaknesses of the past by forging fundamentally new approaches to politics that draw inspiration from Marxism along with many other anti-capitalist traditions such as feminism, ecology, anarchism and indigenous traditions. Featuring leading thinkers from the Left, it offers provocative ideas on interpreting our current world and will serve as an excellent reference book to introduce a new way of thinking about Marxism to students and scholars in the field.

Volume 2

Capitalism’s Crises: Class Struggles in South Africa and the World

This second volume in the Democratic Marxism series breaks new ground in our understanding of the complexity and depth of the worldwide economic crisis. The contributors, from across the global North and South, employ political, economic and ecological prisms to reflect the wide range of Left responses from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the People’s Budget initiative in India, and left think-tanks, to labour unions and left parties such as Syriza and Podemos in Europe. Their compelling analyses showcase the global impact of capitalism’s failure in the twenty-first century.

Volume 3

The Climate Crisis: South African and Global Democratic Eco-Socialist Alternatives (Free Download Available)

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Capitalism’s addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced. Extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels and accelerating feedback loops are a commonplace feature of our lives. The number of environmental refugees is increasing and several island states and low-lying countries are becoming vulnerable. Corporate-induced climate change has set us on an ecocidal path of species extinction. Governments and their international platforms such as the Paris Climate agreement deliver too little, too late. Most states, including South Africa, continue on their carbon-intensive energy paths, with devastating results. Political leaders across the world are failing to provide systemic solutions to the climate crisis. This is the context in which we must ask ourselves: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history?

Volume three in the Democratic Marxism series, investigates ecosocialist alternatives that are emerging. It presents the thinking of leading climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical work, the authors collectively examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in the current moment. This volume builds on the class-struggle focus of Volume 2 by placing ecological issues at the center of democratic Marxism. Most importantly, it explores ways to renew historical socialism with democratic, ecosocialist alternatives to meet current challenges in South Africa and the world.

Volume 4: Racism after Apartheid: Challenges for Marxism and Anti-Racism

Download this book at: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25726

Racism after Apartheid, volume four of the Democratic Marxism series, brings together leading scholars and activists from around the world studying and challenging racism. In eleven thematically rich and conceptually informed chapters, the contributors interrogate the complex nexus of questions surrounding race and relations of oppression as they are played out in the global South and global North. Their work challenges Marxism and anti-racism to take these lived realities seriously and consistently struggle to build human solidarities.

Volume 5: BRICS and the New American Imperialism: Global Rivalry and Resistance

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BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance.

The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance. While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers.

Volume 6: Destroying Democracy: Neoliberal capitalism and the rise of authoritarian politics

Download the book here: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/50256

Destroying Democracy, volume six of the Democratic Marxism series, focuses on how decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded the global democratic project and how, in the process, rising authoritarianism is expressing itself in divisive and exclusionary politics, populist political parties and movements, increased distrust in fact-based information and news, and the withering accountability of state institutions. Over the last four decades, democracy has radically shifted to a market democracy in which all aspects of human, non-human and planetary life are commodified and corporations have become more powerful than states and their citizens. This is how neoliberal capitalism functions at a systemic level and if left unchecked is the greatest threat to democracy and a sustainable planet. The authors home in on four country cases – India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States of America to interrogate issues of politics, ecology, state security, media, access to information and political parties, and affirm the need to reclaim and re-build an expansive and inclusive democracy. The book is an invaluable resource for all who are interested in understanding the threats to democracy and the rising tide of authoritarianism in the global south and the global north.