Dissident Marxism and Utopian Eco-Socialism in the German Democratic Republic

The Intellectual Legacies of Rudolf Bahro, Wolfgang Harich, and Robert Havemann

Alexander Amberger (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

428 Seiten

2024
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-68780-6 (ISBN)

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In the 1970s, several members of the DDR opposition began to investigate the limits to unrestrained economic growth. The result of their work was three distinctive eco-utopias with an astonishing relevance to contemporary debates. This volume presents the first detailed account of them for an English-language readership.

Rudolf Bahro, Wolfgang Harich and Robert Havemann were probably the best-known critics of the DDR’s ruling Socialist Unity Party. Yet they saw themselves as Marxists, and their demands extended far beyond a democratisation of real socialism. When environmental issues became more important in the West in the 1970s, the Party treated it as an ideological manoeuvre of the class enemy. The three dissidents saw things differently: they combined socialism and ecology, adopting a utopian perspective frowned upon by the state. In doing so, they created political concepts that were unique for the Eastern Bloc. Alexander Amberger introduces them, relates them to each other, and poses the question of their relevance then and now.

Alexander Amberger studied political science at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg from 1999–2006. Since 2011, he has been a staff member for political education at 'Helle Panke' e.V. – Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin, and since 2017, a member of the Historical Commission of the party executive of DIE LINKE.

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1 Introduction

1 Research Question and State of the Art

2 The Concept of Political Utopia

3 Political Utopia Since the 1960s

4 Time, Place and Actors

5 Political Utopia and the GDR

6 Meadows and the GDR

2 Communism without Growth?: Wolfgang Harich and the Eco-Dictatorship

1 Harich and His Era

2 The Primacy of Nature: Harich’s Return to Archistic Utopia

3 How Communism without Growth? Was Received

3 Rudolf Bahro’s The Alternative in Eastern Europe

1 Bahro’s Life: Exploring the Realms of the Possible

2 The Origins of The Alternative

3 The Alternative

4 Bahro and Utopianism

5 Is The Alternative Really an Option?

4 Tomorrow: Robert Havemann in Pursuit of the Third Way

1 The Life of Robert Havemann

2 The Origins of Tomorrow

3 Havemann’s Classical Utopia

4 Havemann’s Utopian Ideas and Their Place in Utopian History

5 The Reception of Tomorrow in the East and the West

5 Conclusions

Bibliography

Index of Names

Erscheinungsdatum	23.01.2024
Reihe/Serie	Historical Materialism Book Series ; 306
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	854 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
	Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
ISBN-10	90-04-68780-7 / 9004687807
ISBN-13	978-90-04-68780-6 / 9789004687806
Zustand	Neuware