Paul Mattick

The Limits of the Mixed Economy

Marx and Keynes

the economic crisis and the failure of capitalism

Business as usual

What is Communism? is a small book comprised of three essays by Paul Mattick written from 1934 to 1936, What is Communism?, Capitalism and Planning, and The Inevitability of Communism. In these essays, Mattick, of course, examines what communism is, what planned economy is, and gives a critique of Sidney Hook's understanding of Marx's Capital (Das Kapital) to give a lens into what communism is. Born in Pomerania in 1904 and raised in Berlin by class-conscious parents, Mattick was already at the age of 14 a member of the Spartacists' Freie Sozialistiche Jugend. In 1918, he started to learn as a toolmaker at Siemens, where he was also elected as the apprentices' delegate on the workers' council of the company during the German revolution. Implicated in many actions during the revolution, arrested several times and threatened with death, Mattick radicalized along the left and oppositional trend of the german communists. After the 'Heidelberg' split of the KPD(Spartacus) and the formation for the KAPD in the spring of 1920, he entered the KAPD and worked in the youth organization Rote Jugend, writing for its journal. Paul Mattick died in February 1981 leaving an almost finished manuscript for another book, which was laler edited and published by his son, Paul Mattick Jr., as 'Marxism - Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie?'

with Capitalism and Planning and The Inevitability of Communism

What is Communism?

Karl Korsch

Anton Pannekoek

Gruppe Internationaler Kommunisten Hollands

Albert Flachmann

Der Zusammenbruch der staatskapitalistischen Gesellschaften Osteuropas enthüllt zugleich den Geburtsfehler der westeuropäischen Linken, ihre Abhängigkeit vom sozialistischen Schein der Staatsvergesellschaftung, die nun, da es ihr scheinbar wie Schuppen von den Augen fällt, der sozialen Revolution den Rücken kehrt und linksliberal verendet. Diese Neuveröffentlichung rätekommunistischer Schriften ruft in Erinnerung, daß es dazu immer eine Alternative gab. Inhalt: Diethard Behrens: Eine kommunistische Linke jenseits des Leninismus? (1987) Gruppe Internationaler Kommunisten Hollands: Thesen über den Bolschewismus (1934) Paul Mattick: Über Anton Pannekoek (1962) Anton Pannekoek: Lenin als Philosoph (1938) Karl Korsch: Zur Philosophie Lenins (1938) Albert Flachmann: Erinnerungen an Anton Pannekoek Paul Mattick: Der Leninismus und die Arbeiterbewegung des Westens (1970) Diethard Behrens u. Kornelia Haffner: Auf der Suche nach dem “wahren Sozialismus” (1990)

Marxistischer Antileninismus

In Theory as Critique, Paul Mattick explores the structure of the argument in Marx’s Capital in order to explain its applicability to the society we live in.

Theory as Critique: Essays on Capital

Sylvère Lotringer

Rainer Ganahl

Between August 2001 and February 2002, the Austrian conceptual artist Rainer Ganahl, who lives and works in New York, created a series of drawings entitled Die letzten Tage der Sigmund Freud Banknote (The Last Days of the Sigmund Freud Banknote). This series is in reference to the introduction of the Euro as the new Austrian currency and the discontinuance of the Austrian 50 Schilling banknote, which bears a portrait of Sigmund Freud. In consideration of Freud's importance for dream analysis, Ganahl recorded his dreams each morning until February 28, 2002, when the Schilling ceased to be a legal tender in Austria. Each drawing contains one 50 Schilling note, the dream and its associations, as well as the daily recorded value of the 50 Schilling banknote in different currencies and the number of books on sale at major online booksellers, Amazon.com and Bücher.de. With an introduction by the artist and texts by Paul Mattick, professor of philosophy at Adelphi University, and Sylvère Lotringer, General Editor of Semiotext(e), and a professor at the Center for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University.

Counting the Last Days of the Sigmund Freud Banknote

Money and Dreams

Critique of Marcuse: One-dimensional Man in Class Society

Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory

The recent global economic downturn has affected nearly everyone in every corner of the globe. Its vast reach and lingering effects have made it difficult to pinpoint its exact cause, and while some economists point to the risks inherent in the modern financial system, others blame long-term imbalances in the world economy. Into this debate steps Paul Mattick, who, in Business as Usual, explains the global economic downturn in relation to the development of the world economy since World War II, but also as a fundamental example of the cycle of crisis and recovery that has characterized capitalism since the early nineteenth century. Mattick explains that today’s recession is not the result of a singular financial event but instead is a manifestation of long-term processes within the world economy. Mattick argues that the economic downturn can best be understood within the context of business cycles, which are unavoidable in a free-market economy. He uses this explanation as a springboard for exploring the nature of our capitalist society and its prospects for the future. Although Business as Usual engages with many economic theories, both mainstream and left-wing, Mattick’s accessible writing opens the subject up in order for non-specialists to understand the current economic climate not as the effect of a financial crisis, but as a manifestation of a truth about the social and economic system in which we live. As a result the book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain a succinct and jargon-free understanding of recent economic events, and, just as important, the overall dynamics of the capitalist system itself.

The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism

Business as Usual

Thomas Ryckman

Michael Gottfried

Z. Harris

Anne Daladier

DOES DISCOURSE HAVE A 'STRUCTURE'? HARRIS'S REVOLUTION IN LINGUISTICS As a freshman back in 1947 I discovered that within the various academic divisions and subdivisions of the University of Pennsylvania there existed a something (it was not a Department, but a piece of the Anthropology Department) called 'Linguistic Analysis'. I was an untalented but enthusiastic student of Greek and a slightly more talented student of German, as well as the son of a translator, so the idea of 'Linguistic Analysis' attracted me, sight unseen, and I signed up for a course. It turned out that 'Linguistic Analysis' was essentially a graduate program - I and another undergraduate called Noam Chomsky were the only two undergraduates who took courses in Linguistic Analysis - and also that it was essentially a one-man show: a professor named Zellig Harris taught all the courses with the aid of graduate Teaching Fellows (and possibly - I am not sure - one Assistant Professor). The technicalities of Linguistic Analysis were formidable, and I never did master them all. But the powerful intellect and personality of Zellig Harris drew me like a lodestone, and, although I majored in Philosophy, I took every course there was to take in Linguistic Analysis from then until my gradua tion. What 'Linguistics' was like before Zellig Harris is something not many people care to remember today.

Analysis of an Immunology Sublanguage

The Form of Information in Science

Originally published in 1978, the essays in this text discuss issues surrounding inflation, governmental roles in economic matters and varying economic systems and theories with a particular lean towards discussing capitalism evaluating how all of these factors affect the economic state of America. Mattick takes on the view that Economics is not an exact science and calls into question its predictive powers and as such, emphasises the issues that he felt needed most attention at the time of writing. This title will be of interest to students of economics and politics.

Economics, Politics and the Age of Inflation

In Social Knowledge Paul Mattick examines the possibility of scientific knowledge of society, taking Marx’s critique of economics as an exemplary case of the anthropological understanding of social life.

An Essay on the Nature and Limits of Social Science

Social Knowledge

Herman Gorter

Otto Rühle

Franz Pfemert

" 'Workers' councils' does not designate a fixed form of organization, elaborated once and for all and for which all that remains is to perfect its details; it concerns a principle, that of workers' self management of the enterprise and of production. The realization of this principle can never occur through a theoretical discussion concerning the best means of execution. It is a question of the practical struggle against the apparatus of capitalist domination." - Anton Pannekoek The Council Communist Reader is a collection of selected writings from a few council communists. Council Communism emerged in Holland and Germany in the 1920's as an alternative to Bolshevik and Marxist-Leninist thought up to the Third International. Council Communist theory was derived from workers' experiences in the German Revolution of 1918, the early years of the Weimar Republic, and the study of the early council movements in Russia in 1905 and 1917. They sought not to impose a kind of organization upon the workers' movement, but instead to uplift the form of "councils" as spontaneous and self-emancipatory for the working class. This was a throughline for the council communists to connect back to Marx's understanding of proletarian revolution in maintaining "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves." Council communism was not to be a new ideology for the working class, but to take a critique of state socialism back to the roots of self-emancipation towards theoretical coherence which can combat all forms that hinder emancipation and move this theoretical coherence into practice. From this, and their understanding revolutionary consciousness develops as a result of crisis, revolution is not a choice but a necessity. The works included in this book have been chosen to reflect the developments of Council Communism over decades; this is not an exhaustive, encyclopedic collection of all councilist texts, but a collection of key texts. This book in the Radical Reprint series from Pattern Books is made to be accessible and as close to manufacturing cost as possible.

The Council Communist Reader

Reform and Revolution (otherwise known as Reform or Revolution) is a collection of chapters from Marxism: The Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie?, a book by Paul Mattick, Sr. arranged and published posthumously by Paul Mattick, Jr. In Reform and Revolution, Mattick, Sr. relates understanding of reformism, radicalism, and revolutionary action through the lens of historical materialism, as reformism being another maintaining of capitalist form. Through the book, Mattick details that capitalism and the historical process is to be analyzed through the accumulation of capital maintained through social forces of production, rationalizing labor exploitation towards its expansion. "As capital expands, so does the working class." Paul Mattick, Sr. (March 13, 1904 - February 7, 1981) was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions.

Reform and Revolution

Gus G

What is Communism? is a small book comprised of three essays by Paul Mattick written from 1934 to 1936, What is Communism?, Capitalism and Planning, and The Inevitability of Communism. In these essays, Mattick, of course, examines what communism is, what planned economy is, and gives a critique of Sidney Hook's understanding of Marx's Capital (Das Kapital) to give a lens into what communism is.

With Capitalism and Planning and the Inevitability of Communism

What Is Communism?

Marx and Keynes: The Limits of the Mixed Economy is a 1969 book by Paul Mattick which presents a Marxist critique of the Keynesian approach to economic problems. During a time in which the economic orthodoxy was to say that the contradictions of the capitalist system had been overcome, Marx and Keynes goes against the orthodoxy to examine how the solutions which are presented for the market in Keynesianism are only limited and present the same contradictions. Written before the complete turn to Neoliberalism, Mattick not only critiques Keynes' policies, but also points out the same contradictions of the system exist within the state capitalism of the USSR, proclaiming himself an "Anti-Bolshevik Communist." Past being a critique of Keynesianism, Marx and Keynes is also a guide to understanding Marx's economics, from the theory of value to the falling rate of profit, Mattick applies Marx to the current state of economics in the '60s. Paul Mattick, Sr. (March 13, 1904 - February 7, 1981) was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions.

This is an exciting exploration of the role art plays in our lives. Mattick takes the question "What is art?" as a basis for a discussion of the nature of art, he asks what meaning art can have and to whom in the present order.

Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

Art in Its Time

Art In Its Time takes a close look at the way in which art has become integral to the everyday 'ordinary' life of modern society. It explores the prevalent notion of art as transcending its historical moment, and argues that art cannot be separated from the everyday as it often provides material to represent social struggles and class, to explore sexuality, and to think about modern industry and our economic relationships.

Paul Mattick

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