In this work, Brian Roper refreshes our understanding of democracy using a Marxist theoretical framework.

Table of Contents

• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Origins: democracy in the ancient Greek world
• Democracy suppressed: the Roman republic and empire
• The early Middle Ages and the transition from feudalism to capitalism
• The English Revolution and parliamentary democracy
• The American Revolution and constitutional redefinition of democracy
• The revolutionary revival of democracy in France
• The revolutions of 1848–49
• Capitalist expansion, globalisation and democratisation
• The Marxist critique of capitalism and representative democracy
• Precursors of socialist participatory democracy: the Paris Commune of 1871 and Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917
• Bibliography