Holding fast to an image of the past

"In this fascinating collection, Neil Davidson explores the nature of the Marxist tradition through a series of essays on individual thinkers. Combining surveys of the careers and figures including Tom Nairn and Alasdair MacIntyre with assessments of important works like Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities and Isaac Deutscher's biography of Trotsky, and ranging in time from the legacy of Adam Smith to Naomi Klein's analysis of neoliberalism, Davidson argues for a self-reflective form of historical materialism as a necessary intellectual component of the struggle for human liberation"--P. [4] of cover.