Socialism Unbound

Published more than twenty years ago, Stephen Eric Bronner's bold defense of socialism remains a seminal text for our time. Treating socialism as an ethic, reinterpreting its core categories, and critically confronting its early foundations, Bronner's work offers a reinvigorated "class ideal" and a new perspective for progressive politics in the twentieth century.

"Socialism Unbound" is an extraordinary work of political history that revisits the pivotal figures of the labor movement: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg. Examining their contributions as well as their flaws, Bronner shows how critical innovation gave way to dogma. New practical problems have arisen, and this volume engages with the relationship between class and social movements, institutional accountability and democratic participation, economic justice and market imperatives, and internationalism and identity. With a foreword by Dick Howard and a new introduction by the author, Bronner's classic study remains indispensable for scholars and activists alike.

Stephen Eric Bronner is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and director of civic diplomacy and human rights at the Institute for World Challenges, Rutgers University. Chair of the executive committee at U.S. Academics for Peace and senior editor of the internet journal Logos, he has published more than twenty-five books, including Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction; Camus: Portrait of a Moralist; Peace Out of Reach: Middle Eastern Travels and the Search for Reconciliation; and Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement. He received the Michael A. Harrington Prize for Moments of Decision: Political History and the Crises of Radicalism.

Dick Howard is distinguished professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author of The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the French and American Revolutions and The Specter of Democracy: What Marx and Marxists Haven't Understood and Why.