The Contradictions of "Real Socialism"

”‘The owl of Minerva only flies at dusk’–it was Hegel’s old maxim that seemed confirmed when in 1991 the Socialist Register published Michael Lebowitz’s article on the nature of ‘real socialism’ amid its very demise. This new book takes off from there, but its wings are buoyed by Lebowitz’s work since then, from Beyond Capital to The Socialist Alternative. The profound understanding in this new book of why twentieth-century attempts at constructing socialism failed must be an essential element in the socialist renewal emerging amid the first great capitalist crisis of the twenty-first century. It thus appears that the old wise owl also flies at dawn.“–Leo Panitch, editor, the Socialist Register“What would Marx have thought had he lived to see the Soviet Union? Nobody has interpreted Marx to greater advantage to answer this question than renowned Marxist scholar Michael Lebowitz, who explains in The Contradictions of ‘Real Socialism’ why Marx would not have been pleased!”–Robin Hahnel, professor of economics, Portland State University

Michael Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada,and the author of several books including The Socialist Imperative, The Contradictions of “RealSocialism,” and The Socialist Alternative. He was Director, Program in Transformative Practice andHuman Development, Centro Internacional Miranda, in Caracas, Venezuela, from 2006-11.