On Changing The World

Michael Löwy is Research Director in Sociology at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. He is the author of many books, including The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx and, with Olivier Besancenot, Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy.

“Only the Stalinist gospel of convenient quotations is dead, not Marxist writing. Michael Löwy illustrates the vitality of the latter. His collection of essays, combining scholarship with passion, impresses by its sweep and scope. It ranges from liberation theology to the problem of ‘progress’ in Walter Benjamin. And, since it tackles such issues as utopia and nationalism, the book is also highly topical.”—Daniel Singer, author, Deserter from Death"Michael Löwy is unquestionably a tremendous figure in the decades-long attempt to recover an authentic revolutionary tradition from the wreckage of Stalinism, and these essays are very often powerful examples of this process."—Dominic Alexander, Counterfire"Michael Löwy is a Marxist author unlike any other. He has lived a life that is a study in uncommon political responsibility, one that traverses the peaks and valleys of revolutionary politics on multiple continents from the 1950s to the present and his degree of consistent, organized, and collectivist activist commitment is unicorn rare." —Alan Wald