Rebuilding the Left - by Marta Harnecker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

What future is there for the left, faced with the challenges of the twenty-first century? Based on a lifetime's experience in politics, Marta Harnecker addresses the crisis facing the left today.

At its heart, this book is a critique of social democratic realpolitik. Harnecker reminds us that, contrary to today's orthodoxy, politics is not the art of the possible but the art of making the impossible possible by building a social and political force capable of changing reality.

She believes that the social experiments being carried out in Latin America today hold out hope that an alternative to capitalism is possible; they are essentially socialist, democratic projects in which the people are the driving force. To create a real alternative to capitalism, though, the left must change.

Rebuilding the Left offers real hope to those who still believe that we can create a different world.

Review Quotes

For Harnecker, politics is the art of discovering the potential in the present in order to make possible tomorrow what appears impossible today. In this book she does just this for Latin America and in particular Venezuela. But first she ditches the dogmas of the past with a disarming frankness. The result is an original and valuable contribution to rethinking left politics.
Hilary Wainwright, author of Reclaim the State

Full of observations, analyses and reflections which are extremely useful for the times we live in. Harnecker's personal knowledge of so many social and political movements makes this book particularly important.
Francois Houtart

Marta's ideas about what the left should be doing is a great tonic; and not just for those in Latin America but for those of us on the British left in these dying days of Blairism.
Hugh O' Shaughnessy, Tribune

About the Author

Marta Harnecker is a sociologist, political scientist, journalist and activist. After studying with Louis Althusser in Paris she returned to her native Chile, but was forced into exile following the military coup against Salvador Allende's government. In Cuba she ran the research institute Memoria Popular Latinoamerica (MEPLA) and continues to write. She has published over 60 books to date, from her classic The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism to the more recent The Left after Seattle. An ardent defender of the Bolivarian revolution, Harnecker's most recent books are Hugo Chávez Frias: un hombre, un pueblo; Venezuela: Militares junto al pueblo and Venezuela: una revolución sui generis.
Marta Harnecker is a sociologist, political scientist, journalist and activist. After studying with Louis Althusser in Paris she returned to her native Chile, but was forced into exile following the military coup against Salvador Allende's government. In Cuba she ran the research institute Memoria Popular Latinoamerica (MEPLA) and continues to write. She has published over 60 books to date, from her classic The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism to the more recent The Left after Seattle. An ardent defender of the Bolivarian revolution, Harnecker's most recent books are Hugo Chávez Frias: un hombre, un pueblo; Venezuela: Militares junto al pueblo and Venezuela: una revolución sui generis.