Böcker av Dick Howard

The Marxian Legacy, first published in 1977 and released in a second edition in 1988, was and remains distinct in its view of Marxian theory as 'critique, ' aware of its own origins and limitations and self-conscious about its own historical rootedness in changing social and political conditions.

This book traces a dialectic relationship between "politics" and "antipolitics," the first, as used here, being akin to philosophy as an activity of open inquiry, plural democracy, and truth-finding, and the latter in the realm of ideology, technocracy, and presupposed certainties.

The conflict between politics and antipolitics has replayed throughout Western history and philosophical thought. From the beginning, Plato's quest for absolute certainty led him to denounce democracy, an anti-political position challenged by Aristotle. In his wide-ranging narrative, Dick Howard puts this dilemma into fresh perspective, proving our contemporary political problems are not as unique as we think.Howard begins with democracy in ancient Greece and the rise and fall of republican politics in Rome. In the wake of Rome's collapse, political thought searched for a new medium, and the conflict between politics and antipolitics reemerged through the contrasting theories of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas. During the Renaissance and Reformation, the emergence of the modern individual again transformed the terrain of the political. Even so, politics vs. antipolitics dominated the period, frustrating even Machiavelli, who sought to reconceptualize the nature of political thought. Hobbes and Locke, theorists of the social contract, then reenacted the conflict, which Rousseau sought (in vain) to overcome. Adam Smith and the growth of modern economic liberalism, the radicalism of the French revolution, and the conservative reaction of Edmund Burke subsequently marked the triumph of antipolitics, while the American Revolution momentarily offered the potential for a renewal of politics. Taken together, these historical examples, viewed through the prism of philosophy, reveal the roots of today's political climate and the trajectory of battles yet to come.

In this rethinking of Marxism and its blind spots, Dick Howard argues that the collapse of European communism in 1989 should not be identified with a victory for capitalism and makes possible a wholesale reevaluation of democratic politics in the U.S. and abroad. The author turns to the American and French Revolutions to uncover what was truly "e;revolutionary"e; about those events, arguing that two distinct styles of democratic life emerged, the implications of which were misinterpreted in light of the rise of communism.Howard uses a critical rereading of Marx as a theorist of democracy to offer his audience a new way to think about this political ideal. He argues that it is democracy, rather than Marxism, that is radical and revolutionary, and that Marx could have seen this but did not. In Part I, Howard explores the attraction Marxism held for intellectuals, particularly French intellectuals, and he demonstrates how the critique of totalitarianism from a Marxist viewpoint allowed these intellectuals to see the radical nature of democracy. Part II examines two hundred years of democratic political life-comparing America's experience as a democracy to that of France. Part III offers a rethinking of Marx's contribution to democratic politics. Howard concludes that Marx was attempting a "e;philosophy by other means,"e; and that paradoxically, just because he was such an astute philosopher, Marx was unable to see the radical political implications of his own analyses. The philosophically justified "e;revolution"e; turns out to be the basis of an anti-politics whose end was foreshadowed by the fall of European communism in 1989.

Analyzes the relation of philosophy and politics, and illustrates this by a reinterpretation of Kant, Hegel and Marx. On the basis of a retrospective reading of Kant's theory of reflective judgement, a concept of a system beyond philosophy is developed to study modern democratic policies.

What is the political, how does a critique of the present become a politics for the future, and especially, what becomes of radical politics once it abandons the economistic promises of Marxism?