Research Catalog

Title

Race, class and power : Harold Wolpe and the radical critique of Apartheid / Steven Friedman.

Author

Friedman, Steven

Publication

• Pietermaritzburg : University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, [2015]
• ©2015

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

viii, 368 pages; 22 cm

Summary

Over four decades ago, radical scholars began to suggest a new way of looking at South African society - one that blamed the economic power of those who owned property for the racial bondage of the black majority. Their work, and the debates it triggered, are mostly forgotten, but they and their critics have much to say that sheds lights on today's South African realities. Harold Wolpe was arguably the most influential theorist of this generation. His writings played a major role in a revolution in thought, and his celebrated escape from prison in the 1960s made him a symbol of alternative action. Race, Class and Power clearly and insightfully examines Wolpe's work in the political, intellectual, and social contexts in which it was developed and to which it gave form. Drawing on interviews with those who Wolpe worked with, disagreed with, and inspired, the book also maps his influence on ideas and the culture that emerged in anti-apartheid circles in the 1970s. Harold Wolpe's writings are a prism through which South African society can be viewed, and this book is an intellectual biography both of Wolpe and of South Africa's left. It also assesses and engages with the ongoing impact of Wolpe's ideas into the post-apartheid present. Moreover, it suggests how Wolpe's work can move us towards a way of thinking about and acting upon South Africa's realities differently. -- Amazon.com.

Alternative Title

Harold Wolpe and the radical critique of apartheid

Subject

• Wolpe, Harold > Apartheid
• 1900-1999
• Minorities > South Africa
• Apartheid > South Africa
• South Africa > Race relations

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-357) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The man the and movement: Harold Wolpe and the fight against apartheid -- Class struggle in the classroom: Wolpe and the battle of ideas -- Voice in the wilderness? Harold Wolpe, the SACP and the ANC -- The Marxism of the middle class? The academic radicalism of the 1970s -- Class tells: Wolpe's critique of liberal and nationalist orthodoxy -- Critique of pure reason: the cheap labour thesis's critics -- Recognizing racial reality: race and class in Wolpe's later work -- Real people, real politics: seeing strategic opening in apartheid's retreat -- Beyond them and us: politics of division, politics of possibility -- Schooled in reality: Wolpe, education and the politics of reform -- A few small areas in the vicinity of Beijing: Harold Wolpe and post-apartheid South Africa -- Questions, not answers: transcending the Marxist tradition.

ISBN

• 9781869142865
• 1869142861

OCLC

• 905088830
• SCSB-12236051

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library