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Collected here for the first time are a number of important essays that Birnbaum has written over the last twenty years, ranging from such compelling topics as sociology to post-Marxism to education. Two questions inspire these essays. If thinkers are prisoners of their political contexts, how can thought apprehend historical movement? Can moral imagination alter social constraints? Birnbaum sees sociology as historical and philosophical commentary, shaped by politics. In close and subtle examinations of the Marxist legacy, he makes innovative analytical moves and turns Marxism upon itself. His investigation includes an essay on the Marxist theory of religion proving that it is a major contribution to the debate on society and spirituality. An inquiry into the antithesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis asks if any project of human self-transformation is still plausible. In an essay dated 1984, he anticipates the collapse of the Communist regimes and new conflicts in the West. In a stringent article written after the sixties, but which speaks to the nineties, he considers the technocratic servitude of the liberal university. Finally, he describes the contradictory advice offered to President Mitterand when he convened the world's intellectual vanguard in Paris in 1983. Birnbaum concludes, half in melancholy and half in hope, that intellectual inquiry's critical tasks are unending.

"Taking stock from time to time of where a field has been and where it appears to be going can heighten self-consciousness about the meaning and purpose of the quiry. It can also help to identify blind alleys which are being diligently but fruitlessly pursued. And it can help to clarify goals and provide new direction for their achievement. "Such stocktaking of the scientific study of religion is the purpose of this book. It doesn't aspire to dissect and evaluate all that the field encompasses, but to discover what has happened over the course of fifty to a hundred years to the ideas, theories, and insights contributed by the classical writers in the field. What has been their fate? How much do they continue to be the last word and in what ways have they been altered, extended, and elaborated upon by subsequent work? In effect, are we beyond the classics in the scientific study of religion or still mostly in the middle of them?"-from the Introduction.

The twentieth century witnessed a profound shift in both socialism and social reform. In the early 1900s, social reform seemed to offer a veritable religion of redemption, but by the century's end, while socialism remained a vibrant force in European society, a culture of extreme individualism and consumption all but squeezed the welfare state out of existence. Documenting this historic change, After Progress: European Socialism and American Social Reform in the 20th Century is the first truly comprehensive look at the course of social reform and Western politics after Communism, brilliantly explained by a major social thinker of our time. Norman Birnbaum traces in fascinating detail the forces that have shifted social concern over the course of a century, from the devastation of two world wars, to the post-war golden age of economic growth and democracy, to the ever-increasing dominance of the market. He makes sense of the historical trends that have created a climate in which politicians proclaim the arrival of a new historical epoch but rarely offer solutions to social problems that get beyond cost-benefit analyses. Birnbaum goes one step further and proposes a strategy for bringing the market back into balance with the social needs of the people. He advocates a reconsideration of the notion of work, urges that market forces be brought under political control, and stresses the need for education that teaches the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Both a sweeping historical survey and a sharp-edged commentary on current political posturing, After Progress examines the state of social reform past, present and future.

Toward A Critiacal Sociology

Collection of essays on contemporary sociology and cultural change, with particular reference to social structure and leadership in capitalist developed countries - covers historical and traditional aspects of the modern social class system, the political attitudes of interest groups, social participation, the position of women, the role of trade unions and intellectuals, age group conflicts, youth unrest, social implications of automation, social change, etc. Bibliography.