As we face new and debilitating catastrophes caused by capitalism and nation-state politics, Saladdin Ahmed argues that our only hope is to create space for a new world by negating the existing order. To achieve this new society, Revolutionary Hope After Nihilism outlines a practical philosophy of change that rejects ideologies of false hope and passive hopelessness. Drawing public attention to the decisiveness of the present historical moment, Ahmed introduces a critical theory of social emancipation based on post-Soviet revolutionary movements that have emerged at the margins of the global social order. The rise of socially and politically exclusionary movements in multiple parts of the world, ongoing ecological crisis, anti-Black racism, and the concretization of despair brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic demand a new approach to revolution, which Ahmed argues, must be rooted in the experiences of the most oppressed in society. Realizing the epistemological potential of emancipatory movements, Ahmed rejects dystopian nihilism and positions our focus on marginalized spaces to break out of capitalist totalitarianism.

“Socialism ... is essentially prophetic Messianism ...” So Erich Fromm writes in his 1961 classic Marx’s Concept of Man. World-renowned Critical Theorist, activist, psychoanalyst, and public Marxist intellectual, Erich Fromm (1900-1980) played a pivotal role in the early Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and influenced emancipatory projects in multiple disciplines. While he remains popularly well known as author of such best-selling books as Escape from Freedom and The Art of Loving, Fromm’s contribution to Critical Theory is now being rediscovered. Fromm’s work on messianism in the 1950s-1970s responded to earlier debates among early twentieth century German Jewish thinkers and radicals, including Hermann Cohen, Rosa Luxemburg, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Georg Lukács. The return to Fromm, as well as growing interest in Jewish messianism’s influence on the Frankfurt School, makes this book timely. Fromm’s bold defense of radical hope and trenchant critique of political catastrophism are more relevant than ever. “Joan Braune’s work on Erich Fromm is indispensable for students of Frankfurt School critical theory ... Braune reveals the central role that Fromm played in the early development of Frankfurt School critical theory. She also discloses the role that Fromm played in shaping some of the most important debates in critical theory. One of the most interesting issues that informed the debates among early critical theorists was messianism and its political implications. There is no better book on this issue. Those of us who are interested in the development of Frankfurt School critical theory owe Dr. Braune a great deal of gratitude.” – Arnold L. Farr, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, President, International Herbert Marcuse Society “Joan Braune's work on Fromm brings this important figure in critical theory back into the conversation at a needed time. It also appears at a time when we must recapture prophetic messianism – the hope in humanity for a better future.” Jeffery Nicholas, Providence College, author of Reason, Tradition, and the Good: MacIntyre’s Tradition-Constituted Reason and Frankfurt School Critical Theory

Digital technology has revolutionized connectivity, but it has also overcome spatial obstacles that used to shield people from subjugating gazes and unlimited exercise of power. The home as an auratic space is dead, and this alienation has hindered our democratic capacities and created complex crises. The Death of Home aims to intellectually engage readers via enhancing spatial literacy to critically confront today’s crises.

Great critical theorists from Marx and Engels to Adorno and Horkheimer not only came from the margins but also stayed faithful to the plight of the marginalized. They refused to compromise about the struggle for equality and tried to universalize its emancipatory essence. From Marx to Benjamin, critical philosophers who showed fidelity to the cause were denied a career in European universities and made impoverished, stateless, and homeless. Marginalization and critical theory are inseparable; yet, today, Marxism is institutionalized, and the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory is gentrified. Critical Theory from the Margins, however, revives the Critical Theory that endorses criticism, aiming to negate dominant regimes of truth. It is unapologetic in its fidelity to the universalist struggles of the minoritized. In that spirit, Saladdin Ahmed shows that capitalism imposes a totalitarian social mode of existence and neoliberalism perpetuates fascism as a class of ideology across nationalist and religious movements. This book, then, is both a theorization and an argument in favor of the application of the episteme of the silenced as the essence of the critical education necessary for achieving universal emancipation.

Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis takes up the question of how to theorize and revive revolutionary hope in the present era of political disillusion. The collection consists of new cutting-edge research essays written by an interdisciplinary mix of established and emerging scholars, bringing together a wide range of intellectual traditions and perspectives. The contributors confront the challenge of relearning hope by exploring the politically transformative potential of past disappointments and defeats. They encourage us to acknowledge, come to terms with and learn from the complexities, failures, and losses entailed in resistance, and to consider them as an occasion for rethinking the established patterns of revolutionary thought. Specifically, the essays question how engagement with past disappointments, losses, and defeats can help us creatively respond to the difficulties and failures of resistance—and inspire our imagination of revolutionary possibilities in the present. Written in an accessible tone without theoretical density or academic jargon, Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis provides theoretical and historical contexts to what it means to engage in left activism today. A vital resource for those interested in intellectual history, political history, radical politics, democracy, and contemporary political theory.

First published in 1968, the year of international-student confrontation and revolution, this classic challenges readers to choose which of two roads humankind ought to take: the one, leading to a completely mechanized society with the individual a helpless cog in a machine bent on mass destruction; or the second, being the path of humanism and hope.