Description: The current resurgence of Marxism is based on new sources of inspiration and creativity from movements that seek democratic, egalitarian and ecological alternatives to capitalism. The Marxism of many of these movements is neither dogmatic nor prescriptive, but rather, 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. Marxisms in the Twenty-First Century challenges vanguardist Marxism featured in South Africa and beyond. Featuring leading thinkers from the Left, the book offers provocative ideas on interpreting our current world and serves as an excellent introduction to new ways of thinking about Marxism to students and scholars in the field. Many anti-capitalist traditions and themes - including democracy, globalisation, feminism, critique and ecology inform and shape the contributions in this volume.
Brief description: Michelle Williams is an editor and an associate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her books include Labour in the Global South: Challenges and Alternatives for Workers; The Roots of Participatory Democracy: Democratic Communists in South Africa and Kerala, India; and South Africa and India: Shaping the Global South.
Review Quotes: "In the aftermath of the Marikana killings, this is a most welcome book that rejects the glib disdain of Marxism and theological Marxism. More interestingly, it is in search of new ways of theorizing South Africa's contemporary reality and transforming it." --Saleem Badat, vice-chancellor, Rhodes University, and author, Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid: from SASO to SANSCO 1968-1990