Marxism and the Call of the Future

Click title to link to the first chapter of this book published on line

Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics

The Revolutionary Worker is proud to feature an excerpt from the forthcoming book Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics by Bob Avakian and Bill Martin.

Published by Open Court—whose titles run the gamut from works on analytic philosophy to philosophical studies of The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer—this provocative new book will be available in March.

Marxism and the Call of the Future is a wide- ranging dialogue between two provocative thinkers: Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and Bill Martin, a radical social theorist and professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. The two address the relevance and challenges before Marxism in the contemporary world; imperialism and the state of world humanity; secularism and religion; animal rights; the prospects for revolution; and much more. They discuss philosophers like Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida—and along the way make contact with diverse figures like Tecumseh and Bob Dylan.

Marxism and the Call of the Future is a lively exchange that often goes in unexpected directions. In the chapter we are printing, "Calculation, Classes, and Categorical Imperatives," Bob Avakian and Bill Martin explore people’s "objective interests" in replacing the current system, the role of "the ethical" or "the good" in the revolutionary process, and the nature of ethics itself. The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant and his view that people should be treated as an end and never only as a means is an important point of reference in the discussion.

We thank Open Court for their cooperation in making advance publication of this chapter possible.