Analytical and Essential Marxism

Analytical Marxism involves the attempt to reconstruct Marxist theory and to refocus Marxist politics in the light of contemporary intellectual developments – especially in analytical philosophy and economic theory—and historical events – above all, the failures of Communist regimes. In order to assess this reconstruction it is necessary to bear in mind a conception of the overall Marxist project. By this standard of comparison it remains to be seen whether Analytical Marxism can effect the required kind of connection between its theory and its practice.     

Exploitation, Extortion and Oppression

Exploitation, extortion and oppression describe unjust social arrangements that ought to be changed. The concept of exploitation is particularly associated with Marx's critique of capitalism, and the term 'extortion' sometimes designates the injustice of feudalism. The distinctions between these concepts can be clarified using the framework of rational-choice theory. Oppression is a situation of unfair exclusion (from resources, or utilities more generally). Exploitation is the unfair use by one person of the excluded situation of another. Extortion involves the deliberate creation of an exploiting situation. The relation of these phenomena to coercion is a logical one only in the case of extortion: coercion being necessary to extortion.     

Reviews

Timothy J. Colton & Robert C. Tucker (eds), Patterns in Post‐Soviet Leadership. Boulder, San Francisco & Oxford: Westview Press, 1995, ix + 245 pp., £40.95 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

Jeremy Lester, Modern Tsars and Princes: The Struggle for Hegemony in Russia. London & New York: Verso, 1995, xiii + 307 pp., £34.95 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Robert W. Orttung, From Leningrad to St Petersburg: Democratisation in a Russian City. Basingstoke & London: Macmillan Press, xiii + 332 pp., £33.50 h/b.

Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr & Jeffrey Paul (eds), Liberalism and the Economic Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, xv + 319 pp., £16.95.

Mario I. Blejer & Fabrizio Coricelli, The Making of Economic Reform in Eastern Europe: Conversations with Leading Reformers in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, v + 156 pp., £35.00.

George Blazyca & Janusz Dabrowski (eds), Monitoring Economic Transition: The Polish Case. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995, xiii + 175 pp., £30.00.

Laszlo Csaba, The Capitalist Revolution in Eastern Europe: A Contribution to the Economic Theory of Systemic Change. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, x + 342 pp., £49.95

Robert V. Daniels, Soviet Communism from Reform to Collapse. Lexington Mass., Toronto: D.C. Heath, 1995, xxviii + 387 pp., No price.

David Remnick, Lenin's Tomb, London: Penguin Books, 1994, xii + 586 pp., £7.99.

Christian Joppke, East German Dissidents and the Revolution of 1989: Social Movement in a Leninist Regime. London: Macmillan, 1995, xiv + 277 pp., £40.00.

Janusz Bugajski, Nations in Turmoil: Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe. Oxford: Westview Press, 1995, xiv + 265 pp., £44.50 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

Dennis P. Hupchick, Culture and History in Eastern Europe. London: Macmillan, 1994, xvii + 226 pp., £24.00.

David Kirby, The Baltic World 1772–1993. Europe's Northern Periphery in an Age of Change. London and New York: Longman, 1995, viii + 472 pp., £16.99.

Payam Akhavan & Robert Howse (eds), Yugoslavia, the Former and Future: Reflections by Scholars from the Region. Washington: The Brookings Institution, and Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1995, xxviii + 188 pp., £25.75 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Sabrina Petra Ramet & Ljubi?a S. Adamovich (eds), Beyond Yugoslavia: Politics, Economics, and Culture in a Shattered Community. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995, x + 502 pp., £37.00.

Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945–1990. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995, xvi + 443 pp., £42.50 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995, xvii + 340 pp., £35.00.

Tom J. Winnifrith, Shattered Eagles, Balkan Fragments. London: Duckworth, 1995, 171 pp., £20.00

Milenko Karanovich, The Development of Education in Serbia and Emergence of Its Intelligentsia, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, x + 270 pp., £25.00.

James Dingley & Arnold McMillin (eds), Occasional Papers in Belarusian Studies. London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1995, viii + 73 pp., No price.

Christopher Smart, The Imagery of Soviet Foreign Policy and the Collapse of the Russian Empire. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995, 180 pp., £47.95.

Hafeez Malik, Soviet‐Pakistan Relations and Post‐Soviet Dynamics. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1994, x + 383 pp., £47.50.

Theodore Taranovski (ed. and trans.), with the assistance of Peggy McInerny, Reform in Modern Russian History: Progress or Cycle? Washington, DC, and Cambridge, England: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1995, xiii + 436 pp., £40.00.

Leo Schelbert & Nick Ceh (eds), Essays in Russian and East European History: Festschrift in Honor of Edward C. Thaden. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, v + 252 pp., $45.00.

Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Collected Writings 1947–1994. Los Angeles: Charles Schlacks, Jnr, 1994; vii + 312 pp., $39.95.

Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, Vol. 1: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, 469 pp., £35.00.