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August 2008 ISBN: ISBN: 480 pp. |
The Challenge and Burden of Historical TimeSocialism in the Twenty-First Century by István Mészáros, foreword by John Bellamy Foster “Today Mészáros’s theoretical insights are becoming a material force, gripping the masses through various world-historical developments, including the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez.” A breakthrough in the development of socialist thought, this extraordinary new work by the leading Marxian philosopher of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century is both a companion volume to Mészáros’s pathbreaking Beyond Capital and a major theoretical contribution in its own right. It focuses on the “decapitation of historical time” in today’s capitalism and the necessity of a new “socialist time accountancy” as a revolutionary response to the debilitating present. It offers a strong refutation of the view that “there is no alternative” to the current social order. Mészáros’s wide-ranging analysis explores the forces behind the expansion of world inequality, the return of imperial interventionism, the growing structural crisis of the capitalist state, and the widening ecological crisis—along with the hope offered by the reemergence of concrete socialist alternatives. At the heart of his book is an examination of Latin America’s historic Bolivarian journey, which is producing new revolutionary transformations in Bolivia, Venezuela, and elsewhere. A work of great political as well as philosophical importance, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time defines the challenges and burdens facing all those committed to a more rational, egalitarian future. ISTVÁN MÉSZÁROS is author of Socialism or Barbarism: From the “American Century” to the Crossroads, Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition, The Power of Ideology, and Marx’s Theory of Alienation. MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS  |
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