Romantic Anti-capitalism and Nature examines the deep connections between the romantic rebellion against modernity and ecological concern with modern threats to nature. The chapters deal with expressions of romantic culture from a wide variety of different areas: travel writing, painting, utopian vision, cultural studies, political philosophy, and activist socio-political writing. The authors discuss a highly diverse group of figures - William Bartram, Thomas Cole, William Morris, Walter Benjamin, Raymond Williams, and Naomi Klein - from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century. They are rooted individually in English, American, and German cultures, but share a common perspective: the romantic protest against modern bourgeois civilisation and its destruction of the natural environment. Although a rich ecocritical literature has developed since the 1990s, particularly in the United States and Britain, that addresses many aspects of ecology and its intersection with romanticism, they almost exclusively focus on literature, and define romanticism as a limited literary period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This study is one of the first to suggest a much broader view of the romantic relation to ecological discourse and representation, covering a range of cultural creations and viewing romanticism as a cultural critique, or protest against capitalist-industrialist modernity in the name of past, pre-modern, or pre-capitalist values. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecology, romanticism, and the history of capitalism.

On the 100th anniversary of the publication of History and Class Consciousness, a new edition of this indispensable guide to Lukacs's thought and politics The philosophical and political development that converted Georg Lukács from a distinguished representative of Central European aesthetic vitalism into a major Marxist theorist and Communist militant has long remained an enigma. In this this now classic study, Michael Löwy for the first time traced and explained the extraordinary mutation that occurred in Lukács's thought between 1909 and 1929. Utilizing many as yet unpublished sources, Löwy meticulously reconstructed the complex itinerary of Lukács's thinking as he gradually moved towards his decisive encounter with Bolshevism. The religious convictions of the early Lukács, the peculiar spell exercised on him and on Max Weber by Dostoyevskyan images of pre-revolutionary Russia, the nature of his friendships with Ernst Bloch and Thomas Mann, were amongst the discoveries of the book. Then, in a fascinating case-study in the sociology of ideas, Löwy showed how the same philosophical problematic of Lebensphilosophie dominated the intelligentsias of both Germany and Hungary in the pre-war period, yet how the different configurations of social forces in each country bent its political destiny into opposite directions. The famous works produced by Lukács during and after the Hungarian Commune—Tactics and Ethics, History and Class Consciousness and Lenin—were analysed and assessed. A concluding chapter discussed Lukács's eventual ambiguous settlement with Stalinism in the thirties, and its coda of renewed radicalism in the final years of his life. In this new edition, Löwy has added a substantial new introduction which reassess the nature of Lukacs's thought in the light of newly published texts and debates.

Winner, 2020 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize A fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology Twenty years ago, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature introduced a new understanding of Karl Marx’s revolutionary ecological materialism. More than simply a study of Marx, it commenced an intellectual and social history, encompassing thinkers from Epicurus to Darwin, who developed materialist and ecological ideas. Now, with The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, Foster continues this narrative. In so doing, he uncovers a long history of the efforts to unite questions of social justice and environmental sustainability, and helps us comprehend and counter today’s unprecedented planetary emergencies. The Return of Nature begins with the deaths of Darwin (1882) and Marx (1883) and moves on until the rise of the ecological age in the 1960s and 1970s. Foster explores how socialist analysts and materialist scientists of various stamps, first in Britain, then the United States, from William Morris and Frederick Engels, to Joseph Needham, Rachel Carson, and Stephen J. Gould, sought to develop a dialectical naturalism, rooted in a critique of capitalism. In the process, he delivers a far-reaching and fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology. Ultimately, what this book asks for is nothing short of revolution: a long, ecological revolution, aimed at making peace with the planet while meeting collective human needs.

Romanticism is a worldview that finds expression over a whole range of cultural fields—not only in literature and art but in philosophy, theology, political theory, and social movements. In Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre formulate a theory that defines romanticism as a cultural protest against modern bourgeois industrial civilization and work to reveal the unity that underlies the extraordinary diversity of romanticism from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. After critiquing previous conceptions of romanticism and discussing its first European manifestations, Löwy and Sayre propose a typology of the sociopolitical positions held by romantic writers-from “restitutionist” to various revolutionary/utopian forms. In subsequent chapters, they give extended treatment to writers as diverse as Coleridge and Ruskin, Charles Peguy, Ernst Bloch and Christa Wolf. Among other topics, they discuss the complex relationship between Marxism and romanticism before closing with a reflection on more contemporary manifestations of romanticism (for example, surrealism, the events of May 1968, and the ecological movement) as well as its future. Students and scholars of literature, humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies will be interested in this elegant and thoroughly original book.

Commentators across the political spectrum have argued that the future has been absorbed by an ever-expanding present to which we cannot imagine alternatives. The notion that we have lost the ability to imagine change-culturally, socially, and politically-has become one of the defining problems of our time. But what is the difference between the populist narratives of those who promise to solve this problem by returning us to a glorious past and those who promise to lead us into a glorious future? Often, this book argues, not very much at all. Revealing neo-authoritarianism and capitalist hyper-innovation as two sides of the same coin, Mathias Nilges shows that today's reactionaries and futurists both harness and profit from the same temporal crises of our present. Looking to design, popular culture, literature, and recent theoretical and political discussions, Nilges offers ways of understanding the re-emergence of familiar and disturbing forms of right-wing politics and culture (authoritarianism, paternalism, fascism) not as historical repetition but as dangerous consequences of the contradictions of capitalism today. Using critical theory, in particular the work of Ernst Bloch, this book recovers a politics and culture of hope, which it locates beyond a future that is colonized by capitalism and a past that becomes the mystical playground for the new Right:in that which was never allowed to be and thus demands realization.

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The Hungarian social philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukcs (1885-1971) is one of the seminal intellectual figures of the twentieth century. With the possible exception of Leon Trotsky, he is also widely recognized as the outstanding Marxist thinker aside from Marx himself. Yet, as Lewis Coser has observed, Lukcs has remained the most enigmatic figure of the modern communist movement. Why were his theories so important to modern political and social thought? How did he come to have such influence on so many distinguished Western Intellectuals, and for such a long time? And why, despite this, did so many of his writings infuriate contemporary readers and critics? The centenary of Lukcs birth was celebrated in 1985 with symposia in a number of countries on several continents. Hundreds of Lukcs scholars and students attended, along with others who were interested in his time and his ideas, as well as the man and his work. In the process, new understanding of some of his most controversial concepts, ideas, and theses emerged. Newly discovered information and writings, as well as previously unknown preocupations in his seventy-year intellectual career were shared. This volume brings together some of the best and most original of the essays of participants in New York, Paris, Budapest, and Mexico City. Some of the contributions in this volume are sharply critical of Lukcs; others are clearly admiring. A great many take an objective but severe look at diverse aspects of his work. Together they constitute a close examination of the life work of the man Thomas Mann once called "The most important literary critic of today," Jean-Paul Sartre hailed as a significant modern philosopher," and Irving Howe declared "a major force in European intellectual life." Collectively, this volume shows why Georg Lukcs remains one of the remarkable intellectual figures of the twentieth century, whose work is of enduring significance for us today. Judith Marcus is on the faculty of Kenyon College. She is the author of Thomas Mann and Lukcs. Zoltn Tarrwas visiting Fulbright Scholar to Budapest, Hungary, and has taught sociology and history at the City College of CUNY, New School for Social Research, and Rutgers University. He is author of The Frankfurt School, The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno.

This book stages an encounter between romanticism in post-war and contemporary cinema and trends in historical materialism associated with revolutionary romantic historiography. Focused primarily on British cinema and examples of Hollywood cinema with significant relationships to British and English culture and history, it is loosely configured around three key emblematic motifs - country, land, people – that are simultaneously core values and rallying cries of distinctive varieties of conservative, restitutionist and revolutionary romanticism. The book seeks to establish the continuing relevance of the revolutionary romantic critique of capitalist modernity to contemporary political concerns such as the fate of the proletariat, populism, Brexit post-nationalism, ecocide and the Anthropocene.

An ideal introduction, explaining the history and key concerns of cultural studies