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Throughout a rather short life, Arthur Rosenberg achieved fame in a remarkable variety of intellectual roles: Born and raised in imperial Berlin, he gained an early reputation as a prolific ancient historian. In the 1920s, after a radical break with his erstwhile social environment, he became a leading communist politician. He left the communist movement in 1927, and then became famous as a tireless writer. His books on the rise and decline of the Weimar Republic, on the history of Bolshevism, and on Democracy and Socialism were translated into several languages.

There are many points of interest pertaining to the development of Marxist philosophy in contemporary China. This paper will focus on the following areas and problems: the debate about the criterion of truth; Marxist philosophical textbook reform; the inquiry into the human agent and subjectivity; Marxism and Confucianism; Deng Xiaoping’s theory; and the socialist market economic system. Let’s start with the debate about the criterion of truth, for this is the historical starting-point of contemporary Marxist philosophy in China.

The struggle to forge an effective movement against global capital marked a new level this year with the April 20 and 21 demonstrations in Quebec City, against the Summit of the Americas.  Macdonald Stainsby gives us a participant's account of the street actions as they evolved against the backdrop of the three-mile "wall of shame" which the authorities had had erected in order, as they saw it, to shield the official proceedings from another Seattle-style fiasco.  Never far from the center of Stainsby's attention is the running debate over the tactics appropriate to such confrontations.  Hi

It is very useful to have from Professor Kang Ouyang an elaborated statement of the philosophical and theoretical roots of the "market reforms" initiated under Deng Xiaoping.  However, his essay raises fundamental issues in regard to philosophy, socialism and Marxism, and social practice in the context of Chinese development.  Space allows for dealing with only a few of the more essential questions that he addresses.

Introduction

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Sadly they stared and sank in their chairs
And searched for a comforting notion
And the rich silver wall was ready to fall
As they shook in doubtful devotion T
he ice cubes would clink as they freshened their drinks
Whet their minds in bitter emotion.

... And the noise outside was the ringing of revolution.
-Phil Ochs