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Democracy and Revolution
The limitations and advances of various forms of democracy in class society, from its roots in ancient Greece through its rise and decline under capitalism. Discusses the emergence of Bonapartism, military dictatorship, and fascism, and how democracy will be advanced under a workers and farmers regime.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
45 people want to read
About the author
George Novack
47 books22 followersLeftist political activist and Marxist theoretician.
He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A. in 1926, and an M.A. in 1927. He was on a successful track in the publishing business, when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America in 1933 and was a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to 1973.
In 1937-40 Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found the Moscow trials to have been a complete frame-up.
George Novack was not one of the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act, but he played a major role in the defense campaign.
Novack produced a number of books on various aspects of Marxism: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, America's Revolutionary Heritage, Democracy and Revolution, Empiricism and Its Evolution, Humanism and Socialism, The Origins of Materialism, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, Revolutionary Dynamics of Women's Liberation, and Understanding History, Marxist Essays.
He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A. in 1926, and an M.A. in 1927. He was on a successful track in the publishing business, when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America in 1933 and was a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to 1973.
In 1937-40 Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found the Moscow trials to have been a complete frame-up.
George Novack was not one of the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act, but he played a major role in the defense campaign.
Novack produced a number of books on various aspects of Marxism: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, America's Revolutionary Heritage, Democracy and Revolution, Empiricism and Its Evolution, Humanism and Socialism, The Origins of Materialism, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, Revolutionary Dynamics of Women's Liberation, and Understanding History, Marxist Essays.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 5, 2014
Introducción del derecho romano y el cesarismo para posteriormente llevarnos a ciertos sucesos relevantes en la historia europea y así analizar el desarrollo y práctica del concepto de la democracia a través de las revoluciones burguesas. Los distintos expresiones e hijas bastardas de la democracia como el fascismo. Del feudalismo al capitalismo. Del capitalismo al la lucha de clases.
Historia del liberalismo, declaración de los derechos del hombre, carta magna de virginia y los 16 articulos del individuo que influyen en los derechos del hombre y del ciudadano.
Historia del liberalismo, declaración de los derechos del hombre, carta magna de virginia y los 16 articulos del individuo que influyen en los derechos del hombre y del ciudadano.
September 7, 2025
It’s no wonder the overwhelming majority of the American people have an unfavorable view of Congress. Even if you use the bourgeois media’s definition of things, Congress has never had more than 3% of its members from the working class. It is an institution where popular legislation goes to die. The reason is that Congress is not intended to represent the interests of the working majority in America, but to manage society on behalf of the rich. Governments are instruments of class rule, and Washington serves the capitalist class while working people are left to fend for ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln said in his 1848 speech to the House of Representatives while opposing war on Mexico, “Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
How has the institution once led by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Abraham Lincoln, leader of the Second American Revolution, gone from the most thoroughgoing democracy of the time of its inception to the rotting tumor it has become? The dialectical and historical materialist method is required for such an explanation since it is the only scientific world outlook which bases itself on the underlying economic necessity that determines the whole of social development. George Novack, whose works have educated generations of the working class and will continue to help guide our march to power for generations to come, applies this method to the most pressing question about the role of democracy in the age of capitalist rot and its prospects under the new economic forms which will carry humanity into the future.
The reader will be taken through the emergence of democracy in ancient times beginning with the Greeks, its Roman manifestation and overthrow, its communal mode in medieval Europe, its ascendency in bourgeois form, to today where its erosion has become apparent to everyone paying even the modest amount of attention. At each step Novack indexes the particular form of democracy to the activities of the producing classes and the economic relations that determine them. The text summarizes very important lessons from the experience of the working class in its efforts to bring about industrial democracy in parts of the world where the mode of production was backwards for the time. In facing these challenges the working class could see what was necessary to bring about the robust workers and farmers democracy which they intended for themselves, even if the conditions did not permit its manifestation. Novack lays out these necessities as part of a scientific program for workers power.
Abraham Lincoln said in his 1848 speech to the House of Representatives while opposing war on Mexico, “Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
How has the institution once led by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Abraham Lincoln, leader of the Second American Revolution, gone from the most thoroughgoing democracy of the time of its inception to the rotting tumor it has become? The dialectical and historical materialist method is required for such an explanation since it is the only scientific world outlook which bases itself on the underlying economic necessity that determines the whole of social development. George Novack, whose works have educated generations of the working class and will continue to help guide our march to power for generations to come, applies this method to the most pressing question about the role of democracy in the age of capitalist rot and its prospects under the new economic forms which will carry humanity into the future.
The reader will be taken through the emergence of democracy in ancient times beginning with the Greeks, its Roman manifestation and overthrow, its communal mode in medieval Europe, its ascendency in bourgeois form, to today where its erosion has become apparent to everyone paying even the modest amount of attention. At each step Novack indexes the particular form of democracy to the activities of the producing classes and the economic relations that determine them. The text summarizes very important lessons from the experience of the working class in its efforts to bring about industrial democracy in parts of the world where the mode of production was backwards for the time. In facing these challenges the working class could see what was necessary to bring about the robust workers and farmers democracy which they intended for themselves, even if the conditions did not permit its manifestation. Novack lays out these necessities as part of a scientific program for workers power.
September 30, 2024
Sounds like commie gobbledygook to me. Guess that's what happens when you get a book from an international worker's day rally.
November 1, 2025
Marxists don't think that democracy exists in the abstract. Every state reflects the values of its ruling class. Democracy in ancient Athens was slave democracy, based on a system of slave labor. Democracy in the US today is bourgeois democracy, based on the values of the billionaires who own almost everything in this country. But that doesn't mean that you can't have a book which draws the lessons of all these systems. This is such a book.
During the 15 year, ultimately successful, lawsuit of the Socialist Workers Party against the FBI, Jack Barnes, then SWP National Secretary in his deposition was handed a copy of this book by the lawyer for the plaintiffs, and asked, "Does this book set forth the Socialist Workers Party's views on the relationship of democracy, the Constitution, and socialism?
Barnes' reply was "Yes. In view of the questions of the court on this topic the last week, I tried to find a single book that was written and printed well before the litigation which captured the views of the Socialist Workers Party on the question of the Republican form of government, democracy, the Constitution, and how the fight in defense of democracy connects with the fight for socialism.
"This is the single book that collects the views of the SWP on these questions, buttressed by our views on the rise of democracy going back to the first known examples I think in the rise of the republican form of government."
The book was received into evidence by the judge, and it is worthy of your careful perusal as well.
Let me also recommend Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History, The Origins of Materialism: The Evolution of a Scientific View of the World, The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
During the 15 year, ultimately successful, lawsuit of the Socialist Workers Party against the FBI, Jack Barnes, then SWP National Secretary in his deposition was handed a copy of this book by the lawyer for the plaintiffs, and asked, "Does this book set forth the Socialist Workers Party's views on the relationship of democracy, the Constitution, and socialism?
Barnes' reply was "Yes. In view of the questions of the court on this topic the last week, I tried to find a single book that was written and printed well before the litigation which captured the views of the Socialist Workers Party on the question of the Republican form of government, democracy, the Constitution, and how the fight in defense of democracy connects with the fight for socialism.
"This is the single book that collects the views of the SWP on these questions, buttressed by our views on the rise of democracy going back to the first known examples I think in the rise of the republican form of government."
The book was received into evidence by the judge, and it is worthy of your careful perusal as well.
Let me also recommend Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History, The Origins of Materialism: The Evolution of a Scientific View of the World, The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews