The Lost Debate. German Socialist Intellectuals and Totalitarianism

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Published Nov 2026

William David Jones

From the founding of the Weimar Republic to the advent of the Cold War, embattled German socialist intellectuals worked to explain the new European dictatorships. Historian William David Jones traces their efforts and explains how they pioneered new approaches to the analysis of totalitarianism. Key socialist thinkers discussed include Rudolf Hilferding, Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Karl Korsch, Ruth Fischer, Richard Löwenthal, and Franz Borkenau. Their writings often anticipated the better-known Cold War-era books by Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, and others.

This is the second edition, revised and updated. The American Library Association named the first edition to its Choice list of Outstanding Academic Titles in 2001.

Biographical Note

William David Jones, Ph.D. (1992), Claremont Graduate School, is Professor Emeritus of History at Mt. San Antonio College. He has published articles and reviews on the intellectual and political history of the Left in Europe and the United States.

Readership

This book is for college and university students in Modern European and U.S. History, Government, and Political Philosophy, as well as graduate students and research specialists in those fields.

Table of Contents

Preface [2026]
Acknowledgements [2026]
Preface [1999]
Acknowledgements [1999]

Introduction

1 Strange Defeat: The Weimar Left, 1918–1933
1 The German Left and the New Dictatorships
2 The German Left Divided
3 Assessing the Dangers
4 The German Left Defeated

2 Socialists in Dark Times: Exile, 1933–1939
1 New Perspectives on Fascism
2 A New Beginning for German Socialism?
3 Charting Theories of the Totalitarian State
4 Spain and the Hitler–Stalin Pact

3 Varieties of Anti-Totalitarianism: Wartime, 1939–1945
1 Brown and Red Fascism
2 Strategies of Anti-Totalitarianism
3 The Totalitarian Counterrevolution
4 Responding to the New Authoritarian State
5 Totalitarianism and the State Capitalism Debate
6 Case Study of a Totalitarian Legal System
7 Nazism as Totalitarianism?
8 The Critique of Totalitarian Reason

4 Totalitarianism’s Temptations: Cold War and After
1 Leftist Intellectuals after the War
2 On Marx and Marxism
3 Responding to the Cold War
4 The Long March through the Institutions
5 Traces of the ‘Lost Debate’

Bibliography
Index