Rick Kuhn – författare

Rick Kuhn’s Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism is the definitive study of the life and work of this renowned economist, activist, and intellectual. As a young man, Grossman joined the socialist movement and participated in Jewish workers' strikes and demonstrations, as well as in boycotts against employers and the Austro-Hungarian state. He moved to Vienna, but was driven back to Poland by the Austrian state's racist citizenship policies. A member of the illegal Polish Communist Party, Grossman was frequently arrested and jailed, finally leaving Poland for a post at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, which gave rise to the famous 'Frankfurt School'.  Grossman published his best known work in Frankfurt, including studies of Marx's method in Capital and theories of economic crisis that remain influential today. In tracing Grossman's experiences, from KrakÓw to New York, and offering a detailed account of his ideas, the biography provides an intimate account of key events in twentieth century history, including the politicization of east European Jewry, the World Wars, the rise of Stalinism and Nazism, and the cold war.

Once widely regarded as the workers greatest hope for a better world, the ALP today would rather project itself as a responsible manager of Australian capitalism. Labor's Conflict provides an insightful account of the transformations in the Party's policies, performance and structures since its formation. Seasoned political analysts, Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn offer an incisive appraisal of the Party's successes and failures, betrayals and electoral triumphs in terms of its competing ties with bosses and workers. The early chapters outline diverse approaches to understanding the nature of the Party and then assess the ALP's evolution in response to major social upheavals and events, from the strikes of the 1890s, through two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the post-war boom. The records of the Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments are then dissected in detail. The compelling conclusion offers alternatives to the Australian Labor Party, for those interested in progressive change.

This volume assembles several of the Galician Marxist's most important essays, and serves as an accessible introduction to his project of 'recovering' Marx. Grossman highlights distinctive features of Marx's economic theory through contrasting with his forerunners, from Adam Smith to Jean Charles Sismondi. He moves on to show how many Marxist economists import faulty assumptions from mainstream economics into their analyses, and in the process provides a unique overview of the major debates among Marxists over politics and economics between Marx's death and the rise of Fascism in Germany.

This volume includes essential texts—many available here in English for the first time; some available for the first time in any language—by the influential revolutionary Marxist Henryk Grossman. This collection pulls from monographs, articles, essays, letters, and manuscript material to assemble Grossman's most important contributions on economic theory. The first in four volumes of Grossman's works, this collection provides the basis for a deeper understanding of his contribution to Marxist economic theory and the critique of bourgeois economics. Rick Kuhn's essential introduction explains the contexts in which the pieces were written and establishes their contemporary relevance.

Henryk Grossman is best-known as a Marxist economist, but he also wrote valuable political interventions from his various positions within the workers' movement—first as a leader of the revolutionary organization of Jewish workers in the Polish province of Austria before the First World War, then as a member of the Communist Workers Party of Poland during the early 1920s, and later as a Marxist academic during the early 1930s. These writings deal with the political situation, tactics and strategy for the Jewish Social Democratic Party of Galicia, the initial reception of Marxism in Poland, and include substantial reflections on the left wing movements, organizations, and leading individuals of his time.This is the second volume in a substantial multi-volume reference work collecting and translating all of Grossman's writings.

The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System, Being also a Theory of Crisis was Henryk Grossman’s most important, influential, and also most denounced work. As official Communist economic thought was petrifying, to comply with the needs of the Stalinist state in Russia, Grossman’s book challenged the developing dogma. Combining Marx's method and insights with a comprehensive assessment of the very substantial literature on crisis theory, Grossman demonstrated how the capitalist system, even under supposedly ideal conditions, will break down economically. Grossman’s recovery of Marx’s explanations for capitalism’s crises and tendency to break down is as timely as ever, and thanks to Jairus Banaji and Rick Kuhn, this wonderful, first full English translation is now available. The Law of Accumulation is the third of four volumes of Grossman's works.

The pioneering and still relevant Marxist studies of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in this collection are, with one exception, published in English here for the first time. Before his better-known work on Marx’s theories, Henryk Grossman wrote about the economic history of Galicia, the Polish province annexed by the Habsburgs, drawing on very extensive primary research. His later, devastating critique of Weber argument about Protestantism and the rise of capitalism is also included in this volume.

Contemporary labour movement thinking about the Australian economy took shape between the depression of the 1930s and the long post-war boom, in the form of moderate and, today much diminished, left nationalist currents. Economic conditions, the level of the class struggle and the political proclivities of different classes, particularly as expressed in the working class’s main organisations – the Australian Labor Party (ALP), Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and trade unions. This study focuses on labour movement understandings of three fundamental aspects of Australian capitalism: the country’s place in the world; its class structure; and its experience of severe economic fluctuations.