About the Book
Communism or as Ken Jowitt prefers Leninism has attracted repelled mystified and terrified millions for nearly a century. In his brilliant timely and controversial study New World Disorder Jowitt identifies and interprets the extraordinary character of Leninist regimes their political corruption extinction and highly unsettling legacy.
Earlier attempts to grasp the essence of Leninism have treated the Soviet experience as either a variant of or alien to Western history an approach that robs Leninism of much of its intriguing novelty. Jowitt instead takes a "polytheist" approach Weberian in tenor and terms comparing the Leninist to the liberal experience in the West rather than assimilating it or alienating it.
Approaching the Leninist phenomenon in these terms and spirit emphasizes how powerful the imperatives set by the West for the rest of the world are as sources of emulation assimilation rejection and adaptation; how unyielding premodern forms of identification organization and action are; how novel powerful and dangerous charisma as a mode of organized indentity and action can be.
The progression from essay to essay is lucid and coherent. The first six essays reject the fundamental assumptions about social change that inform the work of modernization theorists. Written between 1974 and 1990 they are we know now startingly prescient. The last three essays written in early 1991 are the most controversial: they will be called alarmist pessimistic apocalyptic. They challenge the complacent optimistic and self-serving belief that the world is being decisively shaped in the image of the West—that the end of history is at hand.
Earlier attempts to grasp the essence of Leninism have treated the Soviet experience as either a variant of or alien to Western history an approach that robs Leninism of much of its intriguing novelty. Jowitt instead takes a "polytheist" approach Weberian in tenor and terms comparing the Leninist to the liberal experience in the West rather than assimilating it or alienating it.
Approaching the Leninist phenomenon in these terms and spirit emphasizes how powerful the imperatives set by the West for the rest of the world are as sources of emulation assimilation rejection and adaptation; how unyielding premodern forms of identification organization and action are; how novel powerful and dangerous charisma as a mode of organized indentity and action can be.
The progression from essay to essay is lucid and coherent. The first six essays reject the fundamental assumptions about social change that inform the work of modernization theorists. Written between 1974 and 1990 they are we know now startingly prescient. The last three essays written in early 1991 are the most controversial: they will be called alarmist pessimistic apocalyptic. They challenge the complacent optimistic and self-serving belief that the world is being decisively shaped in the image of the West—that the end of history is at hand.