Why have the great revolutionary leaders of modern times―from Robespierre to Lenin and Mao Tse-tung―so often been ascetics, austere "puritans" with few emotional ties? What functions, political as well as personal, do these ascetic traits perform for the modern revolutionary leader and for his followers?Noted historian and author Bruce Mazlish is convinced that, beginning in the nineteenth century, the needs of modernizing revolutions have produced a distinct new type of political leader, the revolutionary ascetic. This individual's denial of personal pleasures and commitments both enables him to perform politically necessary, if personally repulsive, revolutionary acts, and to command the allegiance of his more worldly followers.Starting with Cromwell and the religious ascetics of the Puritan Revolution, Mazlish shows, in a series of fascinating personality sketches, how this asceticism first became secularized with the French Revolution and then in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was put to the service of a new kind of "total" modernizing revolution in Russia, China, and elsewhere. In two remarkably vivid portraits of Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, Mazlish shows us precisely how two of the century's best-known revolutionaries consciously and unconsciously used their personal asceticism to induce revolutionary change.

The Revolutionary ascetic: Evolution of a political type

Mazlish, Bruce

McGraw=Hill

James and John Stuart Mill - Father and Son In The Nineteenth Century

Century Hutchinson Ltd.

In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry

Biographies & Memoirs

Penguin

Examines the complex interrelationship between Marx's life and writings, tracing the evolution of Marx's ideology in the context of the nineteenth century and the industrial revolution, evaluating Marx's role as a social scientist and his continuing relevance

The Meaning of Karl Marx

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Why is Marxism the major secular religion of our day? This provocative book seeks to answer that question by examining the complex interrelationship of Karl Marx's life and writings. Mazlish traces the evolution of Marx's ideology in the context of the 19th century and the industrial revolution, looking closely at Marx's early poems and essays as well as his relations with his father and family and his early philosophical, economic, and revolutionary writings. Examining how Marx worked toward the economic theory of history that culminated in Capital, this book illuminates the so-called conflict between the "young" humanist Marx and the "old" scientific Marx by concentrating on a human Marx who consistently pursued his revolutionary millennial vision in both phases of his career.

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology

In this book Mazlish examines the historical origins of sociology, looking closely at how what he terms the "cash nexus"--the omnipresent substitution of money for personal relations--was perceived as changing the nature of human relations in the 19th century and led to the development of sociology as a means of dealing with this condition. Mazlish also considers the breakdown of connections in modern society: how the orderly 18th century world in which God, humanity, and nature were closely connected to one another came to be replaced with one of felt disconnection, and how individualism then came to be seen as replacing a sense of community in modern society. He investigates the work of a number of 19th-century English writers who were concerned with this breakdown of connections, including Adam Smith, William Wordsworth, Edmund Burke, Thomas Carlyle, and particularly novelists such as Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot. He also explores the influence of Darwin, presents Engels and Marx as precursors of the science of sociology and discusses at length the major founding figures of modern classical sociology: Ferdinand Tönnies, George Simmel, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber.

Community & Culture

In this book Mazlish examines the historical origins of sociology, looking closely at how what he terms the "cash nexus"--the omnipresent substitution of money for personal relations--was perceived as changing the nature of human relations in the 19th century and led to the development of sociology as a means of dealing with this condition. Mazlish also considers the breakdown of connections in modern society: how the orderly 18th century world in which God, humanity, and nature were closely connected to one another came to be replaced with one of felt disconnection, and how individualism then came to be seen as replacing a sense of community in modern society. He investigates the work of a number of 19th-century English writers who were concerned with this breakdown of connections, including Adam Smith, William Wordsworth, Edmund Burke, Thomas Carlyle, and particularly novelists such as Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot. He also explores the influence of Darwin, presents Engels and Marx as precursors of the science of sociology and discusses at length the major founding figures of modern classical sociology: Ferdinand Tï¿½nnies, George Simmel, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber.

History

Europe

Penn State University Press

What makes this book stand out is the way in which Mazlish situates sociology in the broader context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century social thought. This is the most interesting treatment I have read of how there came to be a felt need for sociology, of how a place was created in the intellectual firmament for this new science. -Craig Calhoun, University of North Carolina"At a time of the breakdown of sociology, or at least the virtual loss of the idea of historicity within the discipline, this examination of the birth of sociology can provide valuable insight into the current condition no less than the glorious antecedents of a major field of social research. . . . [A New Science] does a great deal to explain how the field of sociology comes to reject connections, and celebrate distinctions: distinctions of class, race, nationality, and the like. And [in] the extended discussions of Marx, Durkheim, Toennies (who is especially deserving and often ignored in the great chain of European sociological beings) and Weber, we get a word picture of some genuine substance and innovation." -Irving Louis Horowitz, History of European Ideas"Although numerous able interpreters have attempted syntheses of the sociological tradition, Mazlish is the first to search so boldly for its ultimate intentions. . . . Beginning students will find this a stimulating, wittily written introduction to the history of sociology." -Harry Liebersohn, American Historical Review"An accessible, fascinating, erudite, and provocative tour de force with a memorable, even gripping, conclusion. It is a must for both college and general libraries." -Choice

History & Criticism

From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to current films like The Terminator about menacing androids, writers have expressed concern about computers and biogenetic creations taking over or altering human life. In this engrossing and lively book, Bruce Mazlish discusses the complex relationship between humans and machines, pondering the implications of humans becoming more mechanical (our bodies increasingly hooked up to artificial parts), and of computer robots being programmed to think. Mazlish argues that just as Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud overturned our illusions of separation from and domination over the cosmos, the animal world, and the unconscious, it is now necessary to relinquish a fourth fallacy or discontinuity--that humans are discontinuous and distinct from the machines they make. Drawing on history and legend, science and science fiction, Mazlish examines how events and individuals have shaped the ways that humans relate to machines. He describes early Greek and Chinese automatons (forerunners of the robot); he discusses the seventeenth-century debate over what was called the "animal machine"; he shows how the Industrial Revolution created a truly mechanical civilization; he looks at what thinkers such as Descartes, Linnaeus, Darwin, Freud, Pavlov, Charles Babbage, T.H. Huxley, and Samuel Butler contributed to our understanding of human nature as contrasted with animal or machine; and he surveys the modern revolutions in biogenetics and computer and brain sciences that have brought humans and machines closer together than ever before. Mazlish argues provocatively that human nature is best understood in the context of the machines and tools we have created and that humans and our creations―computer robots―will eventually evolve into two new species coexisting in a symbiotic relationship.

The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines

Computers & Technology

Computer Science

Yale University Press

In this philosophical history of broad sweep and original synthesis, Bruce Mazlish considers the human sciences-their achievements, failings, and possibilities. Starting with the remote human past and continuing to the present , the author discusses what sort of knowledge the human sciences claim to offer, what role the scientific method can or should assume, and the direction of human sciences in the future.

The Uncertain Sciences

World

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mazlish, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mazlish, Bruce

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mazlish, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Revolutionary ascetic: Evolution of a political type

James and John Stuart Mill - Father and Son In The Nineteenth Century

In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry

The Meaning of Karl Marx

The Meaning of Karl Marx

A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology

A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology

A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology

The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines

The Uncertain Sciences