Books by Paul Mattick

In this new edition of his classic work, Paul Mattick argues that we can only develop scientific understandings of social life by subjecting the very categories of social science to rigorous study and critique.

Theory as Critique argues that the key to understanding Marx's Capital lies in viewing it as a critique of economic theory.

Communism aims at putting working people in charge of their lives. A multiplicity of Councils, rather than a big state bureaucracy is needed to empower working people and to focus control over society. Mattick develops a theory of a council communism through his survey of the history of the left in Germany and Russia. He challenges Bolshevik politics: especially their perspectives on questions of Party and Class, and the role of Trade Unions. Mattick argues that a The revolutions which succeeded, first of all, in Russia and China, were not proletarian revolutions in the Marxist sense, leading to the a association of free and equal producersa, but state-capitalist revolutions, which were objectively unable to issue into socialism. Marxism served here as a mere ideology to justify the rise of modified capitalist systems, which were no longer determined by market competition but controlled by way of the authoritarian state. Based on the peasantry, but designed with accelerated industrialisation to create an industrial proletariat, they were ready to abolish the traditional bourgeoisie but not capital as a social relationship.This type of capitalism had not been foreseen by Marx and the early Marxists, even though they advocated the capture of state-power to overthrow the bourgeoisie a but only in order to abolish the state itself.a

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.