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Louis Proyect wrote
One important point to make about Helena Sheehan’s political odyssey —
from a conservative Catholic upbringing through the radicalism of the US
left in the 1960s and early 70s, on to Official Sinn Fein and the
Communist Party of Ireland, and then into the Irish Labour Party — is
that it demonstrates with crystal clarity the importance of the theory
of state capitalism for revolutionary politics.
[...]
full: http://socialistreview.org.uk/449/navigating-zeitgeist
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Helena Sheehan's earlier book "Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A
Critical History" is a must-read by a remarkable person, a chronicling
of the dialectics of nature debate, beginning with Engels and Marx's
ideas on the developmental history and the structure of natural science.
Sheehan describes their impact on 20th century historians and
philosophers of human and other natural sciences. She has chapters on
the Marxism of the 2d International, that of Russian Marxism and
pre-revolutionary debates, the debate that took place in the period
following the October Revolution, and the Dialectics of Nature debate
during the Comintern period. In the 2017 afterword, when this book
originally published in 1985 was republished by Verso, among other
things she discusses the crucial role of Bukharin in the shaping of the
debates, in works that have subsequently come to light, and Bukharin's
cri de couer for socialist humanism. Sheehan writes with much feeling
for Marx's view of science in a "more contextual, sociohistorical"
context, probing into the role of ideology in relation to science and
the philosophy of science. She has informative profiles of the major
discussants in this debate, including not only Engels and materialism
and dialectics but Liebnecht, Kautsky, Max Adler, the Polish Marxists,
the Russian Machists , Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Pavlov, Lysenko,
Lukacs, Korsch and the neo-Hegelian revival, Gramsci, Bernal, JBS
Haldane, Joseph Needham, Maurice Cornforth, and most interestingly, the
brilliant flash of intuition and intense study on the part of the
ill-fated Christopher Caudwell, killed in his first battle encounter in
Spain, then the Frankfort School, Lefebvre, Brecht, Reich, Hook, Eastman
and Hermann Muller. A fascinating read, and one which among other things
prompted in me a new appreciation of the need to jettison the linear in
favor of a dialectical approach to our most important
theoretical/practical problems, and not only in science - an immense but
essential task.
In her new book among other topics she tells the story about writing
this book and the political climate in which she conducted her research
in the International Lenin School in Moscow.
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