Henry Heller

Sixteenth century Europe, like the late twentieth century, did not escape the ravages of ethnic discord. In an examination of the Italian presence in France under the Valois and Bourbon monarchs, Henry Heller explores how the economic power of Italian merchants, bankers, and ecclesiastics provoked a hostile reaction from French humanists, lawyers, and nobles that eventually spread to the Huguenots and the urban Catholic population. He also discusses the important role of anti-Italian xenophobia in the events surrounding the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the Estates-General of Blois in 1576-77, the Catholic League revolt, and the triumph of Henri IV. Heller links the cultural, moral, and political aspects of anti-Italianism with the rise of economic nationalism among the emergent French middle class. He also sheds light on the origins of the social construction of European anti-Semitism by showing how the language and rhetoric employed by the French against the Italians was similar to that used against Jews elsewhere in Europe. As one of the few studies of ethnic conflict within Renaissance Europe, this ground-breaking work will be indispensable to all scholars of European politics, ethnicity, economics, and history, as well as all those interested in the roots of today's ethnic tensions.

Mode of Production: The Final Horizon of Practice and Theory re-invigorates the Marxist concept “mode of production” by showing how it continues to have a central place in understanding the broad sweep of human history. Drawing on recent materialist theory and newer insights from historical and anthropological scholarship, the book discusses the three modes of production that existed, the conflicts between them, the importance of Indigenous struggles to socialism, and explicates a materialist contemporary cultural politics. The authors present pathways for activism and theory through the wide range of contemporary hegemonies and offer crucial resources to inform social justice activism today.

Mode of Production: The Final Horizon of Practice and Theory re-invigorates the Marxist concept ‘mode of production’ by showing how it continues to have a central place in understanding the broad sweep of human history, while also offering crucial resources to inform social justice activism today. Drawing on recent materialist theory and newer insights from historical and anthropological scholarship, the book discusses the three modes of production that existed, the conflicts between them, the importance of Indigenous struggles to socialism, and explicates a materialist contemporary cultural politics. The book offers a pathway for activism and theory through the wide range of contemporary hegemonies.

In this stirring and persuasive defence of the classical Marxist view of the French Revolution as a bourgeois and capitalist revolution, Henry Heller lays to rest the stylish revisionism on the subject that still dominates in academic circles. Based mainly on articles published in the journal Historical Materialism, Heller that the rise of a bourgeois capitalist class in France stretches back to the sixteenth century, and that the Revolution itself played a large role in strengthening this nascent class politically and economically.

Henry Heller’s short account of the history of capitalism combines Marx’s economic and political thought with contemporary scholarship to shed light on the current capitalist crisis. It argues that capitalism is an evolving mode of production that has now outgrown its institutional and political limits. The book provides an overview of the different historical stages of capitalism, underpinned by accessible discussions of its theoretical foundations. Heller shows that capitalism has always been a double-edged sword, on one hand advancing humanity, and on the other harming traditional societies and our natural environment. He makes the case that capitalism has now become self-destructive, and that our current era of neoliberalism may trigger a transition to a democratic and ecologically aware form of socialism.

Henry Heller’s short account of the history of capitalism combines Marx’s economic and political thought with contemporary scholarship to shed light on the current capitalist crisis. It argues that capitalism is an evolving mode of production that has now outgrown its institutional and political limits. The book provides an overview of the different historical stages of capitalism, underpinned by accessible discussions of its theoretical foundations. Heller shows that capitalism has always been a double-edged sword, on one hand advancing humanity, and on the other harming traditional societies and our natural environment. He makes the case that capitalism has now become self-destructive, and that our current era of neoliberalism may trigger a transition to a democratic and ecologically aware form of socialism.

Can the ivory tower rise above capitalism? Or are the humanities and social sciences merely handmaids to the American imperial order? The Capitalist University surveys the history of higher education in the United States over the last century, revealing how campuses and classrooms have become battlegrounds in the struggle between liberatory knowledge and commodified learning. Henry Heller takes readers from the ideological apparatus of the early Cold War, through the revolts of the 1960s and on to the contemporary malaise of postmodernism, neoliberalism and the so-called 'knowledge economy' of academic capitalism. He reveals how American educational institutions have been forced to decide between teaching students to question the dominant order and helping to perpetuate it. The Capitalist University presents a comprehensive overview of a topic which affects millions of students in America and increasingly, across the globe.

In the light of the deepening crisis of capitalism and continued non-Western capitalist accumulation, Henry Heller re-examines the debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe and elsewhere. Focusing on arguments about the origin, nature and sustainability of capitalism, Heller offers a new reading of the historical evidence and a critical interrogation of the transition debate. He advances the idea that capitalism must be understood as a political as well as an economic entity. This book breathes new life into the scholarship, taking issue with the excessively economistic approach of Robert Brenner, which has gained increasing support over the last ten years. It concludes that the future of capitalism is more threatened than ever before. The new insights in this book make it essential reading for engaged students and scholars of political economy and history.

In the last generation the classic Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution has been challenged by the so-called revisionist school. The Marxist view that the Revolution was a bourgeois and capitalist revolution has been questioned by Anglo-Saxon revisionists like Alfred Cobban and William Doyle as well as a French school of criticism headed by François Furet. Today revisionism is the dominant interpretation of the Revolution both in the academic world and among the educated public. Against this conception, this book reasserts the view that the Revolution - the capital event of the modern age - was indeed a capitalist and bourgeois revolution. Based on an analysis of the latest historical scholarship as well as on knowledge of Marxist theories of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the work confutes the main arguments and contentions of the revisionist school while laying out a narrative of the causes and unfolding of the Revolution from the eighteenth century to the Napoleonic Age.

"The Cold War and the New Imperialism" is an account of global history since 1945, which brings massive changes in global politics, economics, and society together in a single narrative, illuminating and clarifying the dilemmas of the present. Written for the general reader, it draws together scholarly research from a wide range of sources without losing sight of the larger pattern of events. In the sixty-year period since the end of World War II, the world has indeed been remade. The war itself mobilized the political and social aspirations of hundreds of millions of people. The contest between the United States and the Soviet Union for global dominance drew every country into its field of force. Struggles for national liberation in the Third World brought an end to colonial empires. Revolutions in China, Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere shook the global order, as did failed uprisings in Paris and Prague. Since the end of the Cold War the forces of the capitalist market have overwhelmed social institutions that have given meaning to human existence for centuries. But the end of the Cold War has created as many problems for the world's remaining superpower, the United States, as it has solved. With its political, economic, and financial hegemony eroding, the United States has responded with military adventures abroad and increasing inequality and authoritarianism at home. "The Cold War and the New Imperialism" draws all these threads together and shows vividly that the end of history is not in sight.

"The Cold War and the New Imperialism" is an account of global history since 1945, which brings massive changes in global politics, economics, and society together in a single narrative, illuminating and clarifying the dilemmas of the present. Written for the general reader, it draws together scholarly research from a wide range of sources without losing sight of the larger pattern of events. In the sixty-year period since the end of World War II, the world has indeed been remade. The war itself mobilized the political and social aspirations of hundreds of millions of people. The contest between the United States and the Soviet Union for global dominance drew every country into its field of force. Struggles for national liberation in the Third World brought an end to colonial empires. Revolutions in China, Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere shook the global order, as did failed uprisings in Paris and Prague. Since the end of the Cold War the forces of the capitalist market have overwhelmed social institutions that have given meaning to human existence for centuries. But the end of the Cold War has created as many problems for the world's remaining superpower, the United States, as it has solved. With its political, economic, and financial hegemony eroding, the United States has responded with military adventures abroad and increasing inequality and authoritarianism at home. "The Cold War and the New Imperialism" draws all these threads together and shows vividly that the end of history is not in sight.

In the last generation the classic Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution has been challenged by the so-called revisionist school. The Marxist view that the Revolution was a bourgeois and capitalist revolution has been questioned by Anglo-Saxon revisionists like Alfred Cobban and William Doyle as well as a French school of criticism headed by François Furet. Today revisionism is the dominant interpretation of the Revolution both in the academic world and among the educated public. Against this conception, this book reasserts the view that the Revolution - the capital event of the modern age - was indeed a capitalist and bourgeois revolution. Based on an analysis of the latest historical scholarship as well as on knowledge of Marxist theories of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the work confutes the main arguments and contentions of the revisionist school while laying out a narrative of the causes and unfolding of the Revolution from the eighteenth century to the Napoleonic Age.

For a generation, the history of the ancien régime has been written from the perspective of the Annales school, with its emphasis on the role of long-term economic and cultural factors in shaping the development of early modern France. In this detailed study, Henry Heller challenges such a paradigm and assembles a huge range of information about technical innovation and ideas of improvement in sixteenth-century France. Emphasising the role of state intervention in the economy, the development of science and technology, and recent research into early modern proto-industrialisation, Heller counters notions of a France mired in an archaic, determinist mentalité. Despite the tides of religious fanaticism and seigneurial reaction, the period of the religious wars saw a surprising degree of economic, technological and scientific innovation, making possible the consolidation of capitalism in French society during the reign of Henri IV.

For a generation, the history of the ancien régime has been written from the perspective of the Annales school, with its emphasis on the role of long-term economic and cultural factors in shaping the development of early modern France. In this detailed study, Henry Heller challenges such a paradigm and assembles a huge range of information about technical innovation and ideas of improvement in sixteenth-century France. Emphasising the role of state intervention in the economy, the development of science and technology, and recent research into early modern proto-industrialisation, Heller counters notions of a France mired in an archaic, determinist mentalité. Despite the tides of religious fanaticism and seigneurial reaction, the period of the religious wars saw a surprising degree of economic, technological and scientific innovation, making possible the consolidation of capitalism in French society during the reign of Henri IV.

Heller refutes Roland Mousnier's thesis that early modern France was a society of orders in which most people knew and accepted their status in society. This concept of order certainly had meaning for the sixteenth-century elite because of aristocratic domination over land and people, but it is not clear that this was also the view of the commoners. Heller maintains that for peasants, craftsmen, and merchants the decline of the French economy started at the beginning rather than the middle of the sixteenth century. This resulted in unrest which spread from town to countryside, culminating in the three great popular movements of the civil wars: the Calvinist Revolt of the 1560s, the Catholic League's challenge to the power of the Monarchy, and the revolts of the 1590s. Heller stresses that the history of sixteenth-century France is one of both resistance and domination. It was often the upper class which took the initiative, directing much of the violence toward the commoners, and many of those involved in the civil wars were fighting for their own economic positions. Iron and Blood helps to clarify the significance of the French Civil Wars by showing them to be rooted in an aristocratic reaction against the earlier social unrest which began among the common people.