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Historical Materialism #40
The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader
Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading contemporary political theorist who has been described as the founder, together with Robert Brenner, of �Political Marxism,’ a distinct version of historical materialism which has inspired a research program that spans a number of academic disciplines. Organized thematically, this Reader provides an overview of her original interpretations of capitalism, and many different topics.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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About the author
Ellen Meiksins Wood
36 books207 followersEllen Meiksins Wood FRSC (April 12, 1942 – January 14, 2016) was an American-Canadian Marxist historian and scholar. From 1967 to 1996, she taught political science at Glendon College, York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
With Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood articulated the foundations of Political Marxism, a strand of Marxist theory that places history at the centre of its analysis. It provoked a turn away from structuralisms and teleology towards historical specificity as contested process and lived praxis.
Meiksins Wood's many books and articles, were sometimes written in collaboration with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Of these, The Retreat from Class received the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988.
Wood served on the editorial committee of the British journal New Left Review between 1984 and 1993. In 1996, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, a marker of distinguished scholarship. From 1997 to 2000, Wood was an editor, along with Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, of Monthly Review, the socialist magazine.
With Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood articulated the foundations of Political Marxism, a strand of Marxist theory that places history at the centre of its analysis. It provoked a turn away from structuralisms and teleology towards historical specificity as contested process and lived praxis.
Meiksins Wood's many books and articles, were sometimes written in collaboration with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Of these, The Retreat from Class received the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988.
Wood served on the editorial committee of the British journal New Left Review between 1984 and 1993. In 1996, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, a marker of distinguished scholarship. From 1997 to 2000, Wood was an editor, along with Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, of Monthly Review, the socialist magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 1, 2021
Clear, scholarly, and awesome. Ellen Meiksins Wood critique's our concept of democracy through Western history.
"Even democratic power will undoubtedly present dangers about which liberalism – with its principles of civil liberties, the rule of law, and protection for a sphere of privacy – may yet have lessons to teach; but the limitation of power is not the same thing as its disalienation. Democracy, unlike liberalism even in its most idealised form, furthermore implies overcoming the opposition of ‘economic’ and ‘political’ and eliminating the superimposition of the ‘state’ upon ‘civil society’. ‘Popular sovereignty’ would thus not be confined to an abstract political ‘sphere’, but would instead entail a disalienation of power at every level of human activity, an attack on the whole structure of domination that begins in the sphere of production and continues upwards to the state. From this point of view, just as the coupling of ‘liberal’ and ‘democracy’ may be misleading, the joining of ‘socialist’ and ‘democracy’ should be redundant" (p.287).
"Even democratic power will undoubtedly present dangers about which liberalism – with its principles of civil liberties, the rule of law, and protection for a sphere of privacy – may yet have lessons to teach; but the limitation of power is not the same thing as its disalienation. Democracy, unlike liberalism even in its most idealised form, furthermore implies overcoming the opposition of ‘economic’ and ‘political’ and eliminating the superimposition of the ‘state’ upon ‘civil society’. ‘Popular sovereignty’ would thus not be confined to an abstract political ‘sphere’, but would instead entail a disalienation of power at every level of human activity, an attack on the whole structure of domination that begins in the sphere of production and continues upwards to the state. From this point of view, just as the coupling of ‘liberal’ and ‘democracy’ may be misleading, the joining of ‘socialist’ and ‘democracy’ should be redundant" (p.287).
March 31, 2022
Dense as usually, buy Woods remains a vital voice on questions of democracy in general and Athenian democracy in particular. She has a sharper eye to how capitalism truly functions than most.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews