 | The Specter of Democracy: What Marx and Marxists Haven''t Understood and Why In this engaging and persuasive book, Dick Howard takes a critically innovative look at Marxism and its blind spots and rethinks the nature of democracy. He explores the attraction Marxism holds for intellectuals, examines two hundred years of democratic political life-focusing on the American and French Revolutions and the truly "revolutionary" aspects of those events-and rethinks Marx's contribution to democratic politics. Howard concludes that Marx was attempting a "philosophy by other means", and that, paradoxically, because he was such an astute philosopher Marx was unable to see the radical political implications of his own analyses. Howard offers a new way of thinking about democratic policy as a political ideal, positing that Marx could have seen this radical third way but did not. Dick Howard teaches political philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook |
