The general political and ideological factors of nineteenth century German historical development are quite generally known. Less well known or understood are the economic and material roots from which the revolutionary spirit arose. This work examines the deep-seated dissatisfactions caused by the transition from agrarianism to industrialism, and shows the severe impact on German politics of the profound social adjustments required to meet the new economic conditions. Book jacket.

In 133 and 123/122 BCE, the Gracchan reforms opened three cans of worms, pitting the Roman landowning elites against their poorer compatriots, Roman economic interests against those of the Italian allies, and senators against equestrians. As these cumulative divisions threatened to coalesce into a perfect storm, the noble and wealthy tribune of the plebs M. Livius Drusus in 91 boldly proposed a comprehensive if costly New Deal. The eventual annulment of Drusus’ visionary reform package set the stage for the armed rebellion of Rome’s key Italic allies. Even before the conclusion of this gargantuan struggle in 87, the deep divisions Drusus and his backers had sought to resolve, compounded by political discontent among the enfranchised Italians, caused the Roman polity to descend into a series of devastating civil wars, terminated in 82/81 by Sulla’s vindictive victory and reactionary new settlement. Offering a novel narrative analysis of the pivotal events of this well-known but often poorly understood period, this book seeks to demonstrate how the time from Livius Drusus’ tribunate of the plebs to Sulla’s unparalleled dictatorship was marked by momentous reform and experimentation and suggests that the former’s fateful failure arguably represents the moment the Romans lost their ancestral Republic.

The Fourth Revolution shows how the cyclical nature of social movements has come to define not only American history but also the nation's ideal of progress.

'Who is Hakim Bey? I love him!' Timothy Leary'Exquisite...' Allen Ginsberg'Hard-line dada/surrealism' Rudy Rucker'A Blake angel on bad acid' Robert Anton Wilson'Scares the shit out of us' Church of the SubGeniusThe underground cult bestseller! Essays that redefine the psychogeographical nooks of autonomy. Recipes for poetic terror, anarcho -black magic, post-situ psychotropic surgery, denunciations of spiritual addictions to vapid infotainment cults -- this is the bastard classic, the watermark impressed upon our minds. Where conscience informs praxis, and action infects consciousness, T.A.Z. is beginning to worm its way into above-ground culture.This book offers inspired blasts of writing, from slogans to historical essays, on the need to insert revolutionary happiness into everyday life through poetic action, and celebrating the radical optimism present in outlaw cultures. It should appeal to alternative thinkers and punks everywhere, as it celebrates liberation, love and poetic living.The new edition contains the full text of Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism, the complete communiques and flyers of the Association fo Ontological Anarchy, the long essay 'The Temporary Autonomous Zone,' and a new preface by the author.'A literary masterpiece...' Freedom'A linguistic romp...' Colin Wilson'Fascinating...' William Burroughs

Following the translated English text of Karl Marx's 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party, 14 contributors--members of the Political Studies Association (UK) Marxism Specialist Group--dissect this surprisingly brief for so seminal a document in four sections: as text and context (e.g. Michael Levin's "The Hungry Forties: The Socioeconomic Context...", in relation to revolution (Paxton's "Marx's Theory of History and the Russian Revolution"), the role of the working class (Wilks-Heeg's "The Communist Manifesto and Working- class Parties in Europe), and its relevancy today (Burnham's "The Communist Manifesto as International Relations Theory"). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Modernity in the late eighteenth century transformed all domains of European life -intellectual, industrial, and social. Not least affected was the experience of time itself: ever-accelerating change left people with briefer intervals of time in which to gather new experiences and adapt. In this provocative and erudite book Reinhart Koselleck, a distinguished philosopher of history, explores the concept of historical time by posing the question: what kind of experience is opened up by the emergence of modernity? Relying on an extraordinary array of witnesses and texts from politicians, philosophers, theologians, and poets to Renaissance paintings and the dreams of German citizens during the Third Reich, Koselleck shows that, with the advent of modernity, the past and the future became 'relocated' in relation to each other.The promises of modernity -freedom, progress, infinite human improvement -produced a world accelerating toward an unknown and unknowable future within which awaited the possibility of achieving utopian fulfillment. History, Koselleck asserts, emerged in this crucial moment as a new temporality providing distinctly new ways of assimilating experience. In the present context of globalization and its resulting crises, the modern world once again faces a crisis in aligning the experience of past and present. To realize that each present was once an imagined future may help us once again place ourselves within a temporality organized by human thought and humane ends as much as by the contingencies of uncontrolled events.

This is the untold story of the Russian Revolution: its antecedents, its far-reaching changes, its betrayal by Bolshevik terror, and the massive resistance of non-Bolshevik revolutionaries. This in-depth, eyewitness history written by Voline, an outspoken activist in the Russian Revolution, is accompanied by a biography of the author by Rudolf Rocker and a contemporary introduction by anarchist historian Iain McKay. Significant attention is given to what the author describes as “struggles for the real Social Revolution”; that is, the uprising of the sailors and workers of Kronstadt in 1921, and the peasant movement that Nestor Makhno led in Ukraine. These movements, which sought to defend the social revolution from destruction by the politicians, provide important material for a clearer understanding of both the original objectives of the Russian Revolution and the problems with which all revolutions with far-reaching social objectives have to contend. Drawing on the revolutionary press of the time, Voline reveals the deep cleavage between the objectives of the libertarians and those of the Bolsheviks, differences which the latter “resolved” by ruthlessly eliminating all who stood in their way in the struggle for power. This edition is a translation of the full text of La Révolution inconnue, originally published in French in 1947. It reinstates material omitted from earlier English-language editions and reproduces the complete text of the original volumes.

What’s new about the apocalypse? Revelation does not allow us to look back after the end and enumerate pivotal turning points. It happens in an immediate encounter with the transformatively new. John Milton’s and Andrew Marvell’s lyrics attempt to render the experience of such an apocalyptic change in the present. In this respect they take seriously the Reformation’s insistence that eschatology is a historical phenomenon. Yet these poets are also reacting to the Regicide, and, as a result, their works explore very modern questions about the nature of events, what it means for a significant historical occasion to happen. Lyric Apocalypse argues that Milton’s and Marvell’s lyrics challenge any retrospective understanding of events, including one built on a theory of revolution. Instead, these poems show that there is no “after” to the apocalypse, that if we are going to talk about change, we should do so in the present, when there is still time to do something about it. For both of these poets, lyric becomes a way to imagine an apocalyptic event that would be both hopeful and new.

The French revolts of May 1968, the largest general strike in twentieth-century Europe, were among the most famous and colourful episodes of the twentieth century. Julian Bourg argues that during the subsequent decade the revolts led to a remarkable paradigm shift in French thought - the concern for revolution in the 1960s was transformed into a fascination with ethics. Challenging the prevalent view that the 1960s did not have any lasting effect, From Revolution to Ethics demonstrates that intellectuals and activists turned to ethics as the touchstone for understanding interpersonal, institutional, and political dilemmas. In absorbing and scrupulously researched detail Bourg explores the developing ethical fascination as it emerged among student Maoists courting terrorism, anti-psychiatric celebrations of madness, feminists mobilizing against rape, and pundits and philosophers championing human rights. Based on newly accessible archival sources and over fifty interviews with men and women who participated in the events of the era, From Revolution to Ethics provides a compelling picture of how May 1968 helped make ethics a compass for navigating contemporary global experience.

These essays arose out of lectures given in Oxford to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the 1848 revolutions in Europe. Authoritative, yet readable and colourful, they comprise judicicious summaries of the existing stte of knowledge, as well as new insights and unfamiliar information. Thebook also seeks to place the revolutionary events in their wider context: apart from chapters covering the main centres of disturbance in France, Germany, Italy, and the Habsburg lands, there are discussions of the situation in Britain and Russia, which were affected but not convulsed by thedisorders elsewhere; of reactions in the United States of America; of the symbolism of 1848 for the later democratic, radical, and socialist movements. 1848 marked the first breakdown of traditional authority across much of the continent, and as such is of profound significance in the developmentof modern European politics as a whole.