Thomas Riggins is a retired philosophy and humanities teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. Thomas is currently a Chief Editorial Counselor at Midwestern Marx and an editor for the Journal of American Socialist Studies. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association.\nThomas Riggins' Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism provides commentary and social, scientific, and philosophical contextualization to classical texts in the Marxist canon such as Friedrich Engels' Anti-Dühring and V. I. Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, State and Revolution, and Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. For the beginner to readings in the Marxist tradition, this book will help break down and explain with a plethora of rich and contextual examples even the most complex of philosophical, scientific, and economic concepts in Marxism. The seasoned reader in the Marxist tradition will find that this text provides the contextualization and critiques necessary to sustain the theoretical relevance of Marxism into the 21st century.\nAs more and more people are looking for alternatives to the existing order, Thomas Riggins' Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism provides a lucid and necessary account of the Marxist ideas which have haunted capitalism for the last nearly two centuries.

Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism

Politics & Social Sciences

Riggins PhD, Thomas

Philosophy

Midwestern Marx Publishing Press

There are few if any really good anthologies devoted to the topic of philosophical Marxism (Dialectical and Historical Materialism) which so thoroughly cover the dialectical method as the selections in this anthology.\nCarlos L. Garrido, a philosophy instructor, PhD candidate at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, an activist in the struggle for socialism in the U.S., and a co-founder and editor of Midwestern Marx, a Marxist educational Institute, and the Journal of American Socialist Studies, has scoured the literature of both the classic Marxist thinkers (Marx, Engels, Lenin), two of their most influential followers who came to power by means of major revolutions (Stalin and Mao), as well as some of the most important thinkers whose work was informed by this classical tradition (Plekhanov, Bukharin, Bernal, Haldane, Olgin and Ilyenkov). Additionally, he has provided an exceptional systematization of the dialectical materialist worldview in his introduction to the anthology.\nThese selections present the heart of the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism and aim to help students get to the essence of this view of reality in order to apply practically its lessons to contemporary political, economic and social problems. It is not intended for those who just want to read about reality, but for those who want, as Marx insisted, to change it as well.

Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview: An Anthology of Classical Marxist Texts on Dialectical Materialism

ENGELS, FRIEDRICH

Bukharin, Nikolaĭ

Ilyenkov, Evald

Lenin, V.I.

Stalin, J.V.

Marx,Karl

Garrido, Carlos L.

Plekhanov, Georgi

Tsetung, Mao

Eurocommunism: A Critical Reading of Santiago Carrillo and Eurocommunist Revisionism

Riggins, Thomas

No Great Wall: On The Continuities of the Chinese Revolution

History

Martínez, Carlos

Asia

In The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism, Carlos L. Garrido provides a comprehensive development of his concept of the purity fetish, tracing the outlook to the Eleatic school of Ancient Greek philosophy, and showing how it has appeared in 20th century Western Marxism and in contemporary U.S. socialism. In every form the purity fetish takes in Western Marxism's politics, Carlos argues that one finds not only the failure to obtain truth, but also the inability to create a revolutionary movement\nEndorsements:\n"This book will soon become a must-read for anyone who is serious about the socialist road and the goal of communism."\n- Roland Boer, professor at Renmin University of China, Beijing. Author of many books, including the recently published Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (2021) and Friedrich Engels and the Foundations of Socialist Governance (2021).\n"This book is a healthy antidote to the widespread infantile leftism that infects the American left."\n- Thomas Riggins, retired philosophy teacher (NYU, New School, et. al), chief editorial counselor at the Midwestern Marx Institute and author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism (2022) and Eurocommunism: A Critical Reading (2022).\n"This book—a clarion call for the collective project of building socialism—should be widely read and discussed!"\n- Gabriel Rockhill, Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique & Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. Author of many books, including Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, and Democracy (2017) and Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics (2016).\n"In adroitly dissecting the philosophical underpinnings of what passes for Marxism in the academy... Carlos Garrido demonstrates the importance of theoretical education in dialectical materialism for the class struggle in the contemporary conjuncture."\n- Helmut-Harry Loewen, veteran anti-apartheid and anti-fascist campaigner in Western Canada, Associate of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University and a retired University of Winnipeg lecturer in sociology and criminological theory.\n"Garrido’s accessible philosophical discussion is indispensable for understanding much of the Western left’s inability to think dialectically, to truly follow Hegel and Marx rather than just invoke them, to understand the struggle for socialism as it is, rather than as it might be in the politically juvenile imaginations of so many."\n- Radhika Desai, Professor at the Department of Political Studies and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Author of many books, including Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Karl Polanyi and Twenty First Century Capitalism (2020), Revolutions (2020), Japan’s Secular Stagnation (2022), and Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2022). With Alan Freeman, she co-edits the Geopolitical Economy book series with Manchester University Press and the Future of Capitalism book series with Pluto Press.\n"Garrido's book is a valuable tool in the struggle to build a symbiotic relationship of solidarity, comradeship, respect and mutual learning between the Western left and the socialist world."\n- Carlos Martinez, independent researcher and political activist from London, Britain. He is the co-founder of No Cold War and Friends of Socialist China, and the author of The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse (2019) and No Great Wall: On the Continuities of the Chinese Revolution (2022).

The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism

The Journal of American Socialist Studies (JASS) is an annual interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication of the Midwestern Marx Publishing Press - the official press of the Midwestern Marx Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis.\nIssue 2 (Winter 2022) includes contributions from:\n- Noam Chomsky 
- Thomas Riggins 
- Paul C. Mishler 
- Carlos L. Garrido 
- Edward Liger Smith 
- Noah Khrachvik 
- Mitchell K. Jones 
- Alex Zambito 
- Tathagat Singh 
- Yanis Iqbal 
- Jymee C 
- Marius Trotter 
- Vincent Kancans 
- Avrom Landy

Journal of American Socialist Studies: Issue 2 - Winter 2022

CHOMSKY, Noam.

Mishler, Paul C

Smith, Edward Liger

Jones, Mitchell K

Zambito, Alex

Singh, Tathagat

Iqbal, Yanis

Trotter, Marius

Politics & Government

Why We Need American Marxism

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