Following our recent national conference call, we came away with the conclusion, based on participant request, for further political education that elaborates upon the meaning and nature of socialism and its politics.
David McLellan’s Marxism After Marx is one of the better catalogues of the philosophy. Now in its Fourth Edition, it is composed of a series of short essays that describe in a clear and concise fashion the names of major thinkers and how they relate to one another. From Engels to Existentialism, Luxemburg to Liberation Theology, the reader is given a useful grasp of the major currents within both socialist politics as well as the Western Marxist discipline in academia. One should not derive from this book a set of endorsements or preferences for any one thinker or their philosophy; instead, this is a purely educational effort and does not reflect any preference of the Green Power Project.
The book is not perfect. It does not include Caribbean thinkers like Eric Williams, CLR James, or their contemporaries. Also absent are WEB Du Bois, Angela Davis, various members of the Black Panther Party, and the thinkers that congregated around Monthly Review magazine (Sweezy and Baran, John Bellamy Foster, et. al.). Future posts will aim to educate on those thinkers and their work.
However, in a time when the word Marxism is again on everyone’s lips and socialism is becoming a popular buzzword in the Democratic Party’s base, understanding a long and at times extremely complicated historical phenomenon like Marxism after Marx is a worthwhile political education project.