Complications is a brilliant study of the nature of communist totalitarianism pursued through the criticism of the recent work of two neo-liberal historians, Francois Furet and Martin Malia. Their books, The Passing of an Illusion and The Soviet Tragedy respectively were enthusiastically received in the West and, in Lefort's view, have drastically and harmfully oversimplified the nature of the Soviet regime and the nature of the support for it in the interests of providing a historiographical complement to the aggressive neo-liberal consensus of the present day. Lefort, who has always insisted on the relevance of the critique of totalitarianism to the renewal of the left, detects in the authors he surveys a neo-liberal bias that corrupts their interpretation both of the nature and of the lasting significance of the communist regime. It matters a great deal how autopsies of the Soviet Union are conducted because they imply what range of alternatives there is to its failed and criminal enterprise.

Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy (Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History)

Politics & Social Sciences

CLAUDE LEFORT

Philosophy

Columbia University Press

The political forms of modern society: Bureaucracy, democracy, totalitarianism

Claude Lefort is a French social and political theorist. His analysis of contemporary political events are often related to a consideration of one or more of the major contributions to the history of political thought. His accounts of the development of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, and of the role of symbolism in modern societies are set against a study of Marx's theory of political ideology. While critical of many traditional assumptions and doctrines, Lefort develops a political position based on a reappraisal of the idea of human rights and a reconsideration of what democracy means today.

John B. Thompson

Politics & Government

Polity Press

<p>This book examines the central questions of democracy and politics in modern societies. Through an analysis of some of the key texts of 19th and 20th century thought - from Marx, Michelet and de Tocqueville to Hannah Arendt - the author explores the ambiguities of democracy, the nature of human rights, the idea and the reality of revolution, the emergence of totalitarianism and the changing relations between politics, religion and the image of the body. While developing a highly original account of the nature of politics and power in modern societies, he links political reflection to the interpretation of history as an open, indeterminate process of which we are part. This work should interest specialists in social and political theory and philosophers.</p>

Democracy and Political Theory (English and French Edition)

University of Minnesota Press

MERLEAU-PONTY Y LO POLITICO

Prometeo Libros

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Books by CLAUDE LEFORT