Join the Haymarket Book Club to take 50% off Everything!
Description
Neil Davidson explores classic themes of nation, state, and revolution in this collection of essays. Ranging from the extent to which nationalism can be a component of led-wing politics to the difference between bourgeois and socialist revolutions, the book concludes with an extended discussion of the different meanings history has for conservatives, radicals, and Marxists.
Author Bios

Neil Davidson (1957-2020) lectured in Sociology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Glasgow. He authored The Origins of Scottish Nationhood (2000), Discovering the Scottish Revolution (2003), for which he was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (2012), Holding Fast to an Image of the Past (2014) and We Cannot Escape History (2015). Davidson was on the editorial boards of rs21 and the Scottish Left Project website, and was a member of the Radical Independence Campaign.

More Info

Publication date: July 21, 2015

Table of Contents
We Cannot Escape History: Nations, States and Revolutions

Part 1:Nations and States

1.The Trouble with ‘Ethnicity’
2.What is National Consciousness?
3.From National Consciousness to Nation-states
4.Two Replies to John Foster:
Stalinism, ‘Nation Theory’, and Scottish History
The Public Memoirs and Confessions of an Unconscious Weberian
5.The Necessity of Multiple Nation-States for Capital [incorporating 'Many Capitals. Many States']


Part 2:States and Revolutions

6.Asiatic, Tributary or Absolutist?
7.Centuries of Transition
8. How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?
9.When History Failed to Turn
10. The French Revolution is Not Over
11.Scotland: Birthplace of Passive Revolution?
12. The American Civil War Considered as a Bourgeois Revolution
13Revolutions in Theory and History: a Reply to Alex Callinicos and Donny Gluckstein

Reviews

Blog Posts

Haymarket Books are deeply saddened by the death of Neil Davidson, one of the most important Marxist thinkers of his generation, a true working class intellectual, and a socialist who fought with extraordinary energy for a better world. Here, we gather a selection of tributes.

With both the Labour Party and the Conservatives having launched their manifestos in recent days, Britain’s snap general election is gathering momentum. Jeremy Corbyn’s program has been widely described as Labour’s most radical and left-wing for decades; meanwhile, the Tories continue their sharp shift to the right under Theresa May. Added to this, Brexit and renewed calls for Scottish independence mean that the election is taking place in a context of profound change and uncertainty. Haymarket Books' Duncan Thomas interviewed Neil Davidson, British socialist and author of How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?, to glean some meaning from the madness.


Credit: Loz Pycock

Other books by the author