William T. Smaldone – författare

This volume offers the essential theoretical thought of the Austro-Marxist thinkers Otto Bauer, Max Adler, Karl Renner, Friedrich Adler, Rudolf Hilferding, and Otto Neurath over the span of their Austrian Social-Democratic careers, from the decades before World War I until the mid-1930s. Austro-Marxist theoretical perspectives were conceived as social scientific tools for the issues that faced the development of socialism in their time. The relevance of their thought for the contemporary world inheres in this understanding.

This volume offers the essential theoretical thought of the Austro-Marxist thinkers Otto Bauer, Max Adler, Karl Renner, Friedrich Adler, Rudolf Hilferding, and Otto Neurath over the span of their Austrian Social-Democratic careers, from the decades before World War I until the mid-1930s. Austro-Marxist theoretical perspectives were conceived as social scientific tools for the issues that faced the development of socialism in their time. The relevance of their thought for the contemporary world inheres in this understanding.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Austrian socialist thinkers such as Otto Bauer, Rudolf Hilferding, Karl Renner, and Max Adler emerged from and helped transform Austrian Social Democracy into one of Europe's best organized and most effective political and social movements. Equipped with extensive introductions that outline the intellectual and political background within which the Austro Marxists worked, these volumes represent the most thorough effort to date to provide a representative sampling in English of the Austro-Marxists' key theoretical ideas and their approaches to politic action. Drawing on their writings from the early twentieth century until the collapse of Austrian Socialism in the 1930s, these volumes illustrate the conceptual richness of Austro-Marxist thought and the enduring challenge that socialists faced then and now in the realization of their hopes.

As the author of the ground-breaking work of Marxist political economy, Finance Capital, and a leader in the German Social Democratic Party, Rudolf Hilferding was a dominant intellectual and political figure in the history of European socialism from its halcyon days in the pre-1914 era until its collapse in the 1930s. This collection of his previously unpublished correspondence allows readers to trace the evolution of Hilferding’s thought as socialism’s fortunes declined and his own fate became precarious. It shows how, in the face of rising Stalinism and fascism, democracy remained at the core of his socialist vision.

As the author of the ground-breaking work of Marxist political economy, Finance Capital, and a leader in the German Social Democratic Party, Rudolf Hilferding was a dominant intellectual and political figure in the history of European socialism from its halcyon days in the pre-1914 era until its collapse in the 1930s. This collection of his previously unpublished correspondence allows readers to trace the evolution of Hilferding's thought as socialism's fortunes declined and his own fate became precarious. It shows how, in the face of rising Stalinism and fascism, democracy remained at the core of his socialist vision.