Books in the Radical Thinkers series

These essays, written between 1949 and 1967, focus on a single theme: the triumph in the twentieth century of the state-bureaucratic apparatus and ';instrumental reason' and the concomitant liquidation of the individual and the basic social institutions and relationships associated with the individual.

Stinging revolutionary critique of contemporary society.

A reflection on everyday existence in the ‘sphere of consumption of late Capitalism’, this work is Adorno’s literary and philosophical masterpiece. Built from aphorisms and reflections, he shifts in register from personal experience to the most general theoretical problems.

Three renowned contemporary theorists discuss their different perspectives for politics and thought.

A Communist, feminist, and analysand asks what the social function of psychoanalysis should be and condemns what it has become The Weary Sons of Freud lambasts mainstream psychoanalysis for its failure to grapple with pressing political and social matters pertinent to its patients' condition. Gifted with insight and compelled by fury, Catherine Clement contrasts the original, inspirational psychoanalytical work of Freud and Lacan to the obsessive imitations of their uninspired followersthe weary sons of Freud.The analyst's once attentive ear has become deaf to the broader questions of therapeutic practice. Clement asks whether the perspective of socialism, brought to this study by a woman who is herself an analysand, can fill the gap. She reflects on her own history, as well as on that of psychoanalysis and the French left, to show what an activist and feminist restoration of the talking cure might look like.

Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of ';postmodern' fragmentation, ';difference,' and con-tingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject it to critique. In this book she sets out to renew the critical program of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democracy in both the ancient and modern world, examining its relation to capitalism, and raising questions about how democracy might go beyond the limits imposed on it.