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Book Synopsis
Is it possible, as Marx and Engels announced in the Communist Manifesto, for there to occur a withering away of the state? In this cool and lucid work of speculative philosophy, Andrew Levine traces the ideal of communism from Rousseau’s notion of the perfect state in which the general will would be spontaneously expressed, to Marx’s classless utopia. He argues that Rousseau’s legacy allows us to think of ways in which human beings can be transformed, morally and politically, from the condition in which the state is necessary. This is quite different, Levine shows, from the dangerous Stalinist dream of the New Man. The concept of a stateless society assumes that politics is about encouraging autonomy and a sense of the social whole; it breaks definitively with the pessimistic tradition in Western thought that views politics as a necessary evil.

Featuring elegant and concise discussions of Kant, Rousseau, Burke, de Tocqueville, Marx and more recent thinke

The End of the State A Marxist Reflection on an Idea of Rousseaus

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    A Paperback by Andrew Levine

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      View other formats and editions of The End of the State A Marxist Reflection on an Idea of Rousseaus by Andrew Levine

      Publisher: Verso Books
      Publication Date: 1/17/1987 12:04:00 AM
      ISBN13: 9780860918813, 978-0860918813
      ISBN10: 0860918815
      Also in:
      Political structure and processes

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Is it possible, as Marx and Engels announced in the Communist Manifesto, for there to occur a withering away of the state? In this cool and lucid work of speculative philosophy, Andrew Levine traces the ideal of communism from Rousseau’s notion of the perfect state in which the general will would be spontaneously expressed, to Marx’s classless utopia. He argues that Rousseau’s legacy allows us to think of ways in which human beings can be transformed, morally and politically, from the condition in which the state is necessary. This is quite different, Levine shows, from the dangerous Stalinist dream of the New Man. The concept of a stateless society assumes that politics is about encouraging autonomy and a sense of the social whole; it breaks definitively with the pessimistic tradition in Western thought that views politics as a necessary evil.

      Featuring elegant and concise discussions of Kant, Rousseau, Burke, de Tocqueville, Marx and more recent thinke

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