Customer Reviews

Reason in Revolt (Marxism in the Millennium)

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When I was a graduate student in Philosophy the academic line was that Engels's writings on dialectical materialsim were of purely historical interest. His examples of the dialectical nature of material reality reflected the limits of scientific knowledge of the late-19th century, at best. Well, Ted Grant and Alan Woods have written a book that not only makes the basic "laws of the dialectic" intelligible to any reader, but grapples with the most current developments in the sciences from "punctuated equilibrium" in evolution, to chaos theory in physics, the big bang and relativity in cosmology, to an excellent chapter on the Human Genome Project. As nonacademics, Grant and Woods's style is straightforward, lucid, and unencumbered by the referential shadows of the "current discourses." As long-time revolutionary Marxists in the tradition of British Trotskyism, Woods and Grant have been through the wars (in Grant's case since the '30s). They are the rare working-class autodidacts who manage through sheer guts and fortitude to cut through the prevailing rubbish, get to the essence of things, and make abstruse ideas clear without watering them down. In fact they both challenge and excite the reader. This is the most exciting book I've read since I encountered Marx and Engels thirty-five years ago. I think I get it now.

Ted Grant and Alan Woods have created yet another masterpiece! The book is dense, yet very readable and highly illuminating. If you're like me you'll find that you have to keep putting the book down to think about the concepts. I'm a philosophy major and this book has made me rethink all of my old ideas. Break free from metaphysics, the dialectic is much more accurate. I'd recomend this book to anyone.

i first read this work in one sitting off a computer screen
A clear and unmudled view of reality is a necessary component for any one seeking to bring about true and profound change for the benefit of all mankind. Reason in revolt openly defends the gains of humanitys attemts and successes at further understanding this world (universe) agianst those forces capitulating to conservitism and reaction with in the various branches of science its self, however as any marxist knows these atacks of mysticism are only but a deeper reflection on currantly prevailing economic/productive relations between men.
Alan Woods and Ted Grant in the great traditions of Marx, Engels,Lenin,Trostky... keep on the fight for a society based on "each from his own abilities, to each from his own need" in a scientific fashion dealing with concrete realistic terms, dialectics defended in this book is a most necessary tool to not only understand the world but to actualy change it through conscious activity.
i recomend this book to anyone how seeks to join in the fight for a truely better society.

This book is probobly the most important work ever published within the last 50 years. Grant and Woods lucidly explain from the most recent discoveries of science and technology what humanity's possibilities are, but also what present day restrictions will ultimately impede real progress. A must read for anyone either concerned with the current quasi-religious direction of scientific endeavor or about the state of the world in general today. Again, it would be completely valid to say that Reason in Revolt is one of the most important contributions to science since the publication of Engel's 'The Role Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man.'

You may notice that the reviews above contain not one simple example of how this book expands our understanding of our Universe. That is because the book does not contain any.

Of its numerous faults, which any decent sixth form student of physics would laugh at, it completely fails to understand, (or deliberately misrepresents), Einsteins Theory of Relativity.

This is now a law BTW, GPS systems would not work without it - the authors claim that Einstein insisted that a human being has to be present for the laws to work. The reality was that Einstein stated that these laws effected all matter, irrespective of whether a human was present or not.

Also it retreats in to a Newtonian view of our Universe, who argued from a religious position, that it was created by the infinite God, so it was infinite too.

Despite the obvious refutation of this, which is that infinity can exist only as an abstraction (there isn`t even infinity in mathematics, you can always add one to the number) - if there were an infinite number of stars and galaxies we would have no night, the light from an infinite numbers of stars would shine down upon us.

In fact no life on Earth would be possible. We would be burned to a crisp.

Not a book to recommend to anyone interested in science or Marxism. It should be sold as a book under the `Mysticism` section.