Even Maurice Dobb's critics, and there were many, acknowledged that he was one of the world's most significant Communist economists. From his outpost at the University of Cambridge, where he was a protege of John Maynard Keynes and mentor to students ranging from Eric Hobsbawm to Amartya Sen, Dobb made himself into one of British communism's premier intellectuals. Until now, this remarkable life has been all but forgotten. Yet following Dobb's life from his birth in 1900 to his death in 1976 does more than just recover the career of one of modern Britain's most paradoxical thinkers. It reveals a surprising history that casts new light on the connections that bound economics, politics, and power together in the twentieth century--a history whose legacy still endures, long after the Soviet Union's fall.

This book is about nuclear legacies in Russia and Central Asia, focusing on selected sites of the Soviet atomic program, many of which have remained understudied. Nuclear operations, for energy or military purposes, demanded a vast infrastructure of production and supply chains that have transformed entire regions. In following the material traces of the atomic programs, contributors pay particular attention to memory practices and memorialization concerning nuclear legacies. Tracing the Atom foregrounds historical and contemporary engagements with nuclear politics: how have institutions and governments responded to the legacies of the atomic era? How do communities and artists articulate concerns over radioactive matters? What was the role of radiation expertise in a broader Soviet and international context of the Cold War? Examining nuclear legacies together with past atomic futures and post-Soviet memorialization and nuclear heritage shines light on how modes of knowing intersect with livelihoods, compensation policies, and historiography. Bringing together a range of disciplines - history, science and technology studies, social anthropology, literary studies, and art history - this volume offers insights that broaden our understanding of twentieth-century atomic programs and their long aftermaths.

This book discusses the active relationship among the mechanics of memory, visual practices, and historical narratives. Reflection on memory and its ties with historical narratives cannot be separated from reflection on the visual and the image as its points of reference which function in time. This volume addresses precisely that temporal aspect of the image, without reducing it to a neutral trace of the past, a mnemotechnical support of memory. As a commemorative device, the image fixes, structures, and crystalizes memory, turning the view of the past into myth. It may, however, also stimulate, transform, and update memory, functioning as a matrix of interpretation and understanding the past. The book questions whether the functioning of the visual matrices of memory can be related to a particular historical and geographical scope, that is, to Central and Eastern Europe, and whether it is possible to find their origin and decide if they are just local and regional or perhaps also Western European and universal. It focuses on the artistic reflection on time and history, in the reconstructions of memory due to change of frontiers and political regimes, as well as endeavours to impose some specific political structure on territories which were complex and mixed in terms of national identity, religion and social composition. The volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, history and visual studies.

This handbook advances the interdisciplinary field of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) by identifying thirty-five topics of ongoing research. Instead of focusing on historically significant texts, it features experts talking about current debates. Individually, each chapter provides a resource for new research. Together, the chapters provide a thorough introduction to contemporary work in PPE, which makes it an ideal reader for a senior-year course. The handbook is organized into seven parts, each with its own introduction and five chapters: I. Frameworks II. Decision-Making III. Social Structures IV. Markets V. Economic Systems VI. Distributive Justice VII. Democracy The "Frameworks" part discusses common tools and perspectives in PPE, and the "Decision-making" section shows different approaches to the study of choice. From there, parts on "Social Structures," "Markets" and "Economic Systems" each use tools from the three PPE disciplines to study and distinguish parts of society. The next part explains dominant theories and challenges to the paradigm of "Distributive Justice." Finally, a part on "Democracy" offers five challenges to current democratic practice.

Is there such a thing as human nature? Here Sean Sayers defends the controversial theory that human nature is in fact an historical phenomenon. He gives an ambitious and wide ranging defence of the Marxist and Hegelian historical approach and engages with a wide range of work at the heart of the contemporary debate in social and moral philosophy.

Communism was destroyed not from without, but from within--by a persistent failure to make its economic theories work in practice. But what exactly did go wrong with its central planning? Until the last moment, top western economists claimed that Communism was superior to western models. Even now, centralised Marxist planning retains its admirers, especially among the young. With the benefit of new archival research, we can finally grasp how falsified and manipulated statistics blindfolded Communist governments and confused western leaders, leading to staggering errors of judgement. Both sides believed that East Germany had a stronger economy than West Germany; that North Korea would overtake South Korea; that Mao's China was a paradise for its starving peasants. Those who warned that a dearth of reliable economic data would condemn central planning to irrational misallocation of investment and labour were ignored or belittled. But, ultimately, they were vindicated. Jasper Becker answers the big question: what accounts for the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, China and everywhere else? And why don't present debates acknowledge that failure? This unconventional history of Communism and the Cold War explains why the same old clash of theories is continuing to shape the world today.

The Political Economy of Populism explores the interplay between identity, the economy and inequality to explain the dynamics of populist votes since the beginning of the 20th century. The book discusses the political and economic implications of populist governance using data on populist incumbencies and linking it to historical data on the macro economy and democracy. Chapters draw from the most recent political science, economics and other social science literature, as well as historical data, to explain the long-term causes and consequences of populism. Populism emerges and gains traction when political entrepreneurs exploit underlying identity conflicts for political gains. As the distributional consequences of both economic distress and economic growth typically favor the elite over the poor and the lower middle class, economic shocks usually sharpen the underlying identity conflicts between the groups. The book provides evidence of significant differences in the ways fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by incumbent populists in Latin America, Europe and the OECD. The work concludes by suggesting avenues through which a 21st century social consensus can be built, so that our society can avoid repeating the mistakes that led to wars and failed economic experiments in the 20th century. The Political Economy of Populism marks a significant contribution to the study of populism and is suited to students and scholars across the social sciences, including economics, political science and sociology.

Authored by a stellar line-up of top China scholars from the US, Europe, Australia and China. Interdisciplinary in approach, so will appeal to courses on Chinese society, politics and history. Writing style is excellent and the chapters are truly connected due to the bok being co-authored.

* Offers a practical overview of 28 crucial concepts in Marxist theory as developed and integrated by Jacques Lacan. * Opens up new possibilities of discourse within the academic field for considering Marxist economic, philosophical, epistemological, political and sociological concepts within the context of Lacan's readings. * Demonstrates the importance of Marxist concepts to Lacanian psychoanalytic practice. * Brings together a broad range of international contributors on the cutting edge of researching Marxist / Lacanian encounters. * Will appeal to psychoanalysts as well as academics and researchers in a broad range of fields.

* Offers a practical overview of 28 crucial concepts in Marxist theory as developed and integrated by Jacques Lacan. * Opens up new possibilities of discourse within the academic field for considering Marxist economic, philosophical, epistemological, political and sociological concepts within the context of Lacan's readings. * Demonstrates the importance of Marxist concepts to Lacanian psychoanalytic practice. * Brings together a broad range of international contributors on the cutting edge of researching Marxist / Lacanian encounters. * Will appeal to psychoanalysts as well as academics and researchers in a broad range of fields.

The rise of authoritarian movements presents an increasing illiberal trend in international affairs. A rapidly modernizing China is at the vanguard of this phenomenon. Does this signal the demise of Western democracy and the dawn of an authoritarian era in world politics? In this book, Chris Ogden argues that the world is on the verge of a capitulation to China's preferred authoritarian order. As other world powers adopt such values, they are facilitating the normalization of this authoritarianism into a dominant global phenomenon. This shift, he says, will transform global institutions, human rights and political systems, and herald an authoritarian century.

Marxist discourse around automation has recently become waylaid with breathless techno-pessimist dystopias and fanciful imaginations of automated luxury communism. This collection of essays by both established veterans of the field and new voices is a refreshingly sober materialist reflection on recent technological developments within capitalist production. It covers a broad range of digital aspects now proliferating across our work and lives, including chapters on the digitalisation of agriculture, robotics in the factory and the labour process on crowdworking platforms. It looks to how 20th century Marxist predictions of the 'workerless factory' are, or are not, coming true, and how 'Platform Capitalism' should be understood and critiqued. Through rich empirical, theoretical and historical material, this book is necessary reading for those wanting a clear overview of our digital world.

The collective work deals with the problems of if, how, and why the histories of German Nazism and Soviet Communism should and could be situated within one coherent narrative. As historical phenomena, can Communism and Nazism fruitfully be compared to each other? Do they belong to the same historical contexts? Have they influenced, reacted to or learned from each other? Are they interpreted, represented and used together by posterity? The background of the book is twofold. One is external. There is an ongoing debate about the historical entanglements of Communism and Nazism, especially about Auschwitz and Gulag, respectively. Our present fascination with the evil history of genocide has situated the Holocaust as the borderline event in Western historical thinking. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet Communist regime do not have the same position but are considered more urgent in the East and Central European states that were subdued by both Nazi and Communist regimes. The other, internal background is to develop an analytical perspective in which the "comnaz" nexus can be understood. Using a complex approach, the authors investigate Communist and Nazi histories as entangled phenomena, guided by three basic perspectives. Focusing on roots and developments, a genetic perspective highlights historical, process-oriented connections. A structural perspective indicates an attempt to narrow down "operational" parallels of the two political systems in the way they handled ideology to construct social utopia, used techniques of terror, etc. A third perspective is genealogical, emphasizing the processing and use of Communist and Nazi history by posterity in terms of meaning and memory: What past is worth remembering, celebrating, debating-but also distorting and forgetting? The chapters of the book address phenomena such as ideology, terror, secular religion, museum exhibits, and denial.

Humanity faces epoch-making challenges arising from the convergence of demographic, social, economic, ecological and political megatrends, which are additionally superimposed by the fatal COVID-19 pandemic and the new Cold War. Traditional economic thought is not able to cope with them. In the conditions of irreversible globalization, these challenges are met by the original concept of a new pragmatism - a peculiar interface between economic theory and practical economic policy for sustainable development. Grzegorz W. Kolodko, an outstanding economist with a world-wide reputation, a public intellectual, successful politician and a globetrotter who has explored the world - clearly writes what is happening in the economy and why, on its links with society and politics, environment, security, culture and technology. The work devotes due attention to the rise of China and the consequences of its global expansion. The unique interdisciplinary approach to the issues discussed makes this book a fascinating read for all professionals interested in the future of a rapidly changing world.

This book adopts an innovative historical approach to Terrorism, focusing on the weaknesses of terrorist states and organizations as reflected in the ideologies, methodologies and propaganda of Russian populist, National Socialist and Islamic Terrorism. Drawing upon multilingual primary sources, the book challenges the oft repeated claim that the Nazi regime and Islamic State produced propaganda of superior quality, instead arguing that the manipulation of information is the Achilles heel of terrorist organizations. It offers a critical examination of the fears of terrorists themselves, as opposed to the traditional focus on the fear instilled by terrorist organizations in governments and citizens. Taking a multidisciplinary approach and long-term history perspective, the book provides a method for exploring the minds of terrorists and the inner workings of their organizations and traces the evolution of terrorist thought and methodology across time and place. This is the ideal volume for researchers of Terrorism within the fields of History, Politics, Security Studies, Religious Studies and Legal Studies.

Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

This book examines contemporary militant democracies in post-communist states in the European Union. Examining, through case studies, their broader relevance to political, legal, and social structures, this book looks in revealing detail at the struggles between these democratic and anti-democratic actors that share similar historical experiences of contentious politics, communism, and political transformation. It importantly unravels the tension between them, determining which are already authoritarian, and which are teetering on the brink of an anti-democratic breakthrough. Analysing regimes' continuance trajectories to capture how and what shaped the neo-militant aspects of democracies (neomilitancy) over time, the book accounts for why particular post-communist European neo-militant democracies emerge while others decline or transform into quasi-militant democracies despite transformation, how they differ from each other, what brings about the differences and similarities between them, and how and why they change over time. With right-wing populist parties coming to power on the back of fears associated with economic, social, and cultural globalisation and the misuse of state authorities to strengthen protective measures against threats to democratic institutions, the book represents a timely and important contribution. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Post-Soviet/Communist/East European Studies, Democratic Backsliding, European and Comparative Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, Democracy and Dictatorship, Public Comparative Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law and Political Theory.

This book, first published in 1964, collects a number of essays united by the general theme of national and social revolution. They examine features of revolutionary movements, and, particularly, revolutionary leadership in an analysis of the social conditions and personal motives which impel men towards forming revolutionary elites.

Over a hundred years after the first socialist revolution broke the global monopoly of capitalism, a new class of socialist-oriented socioeconomic development is coming to the fore. Capitalism is still dominant worldwide, although its hegemony is no longer undisputed, and humankind is now faced with a key existential challenge. This book proposes an alternative path to overcoming the worldwide crisis of globalized capitalism. It offers a novel, balanced and historically rooted interpretation of the successes and failures of socialist economic construction throughout the last century. The authors apply a multidisciplinary, holistic and purpose-based methodology to draw basic lessons from stylized facts, emerging in different areas of knowledge, ranging from political economy to biology, and from key national socioeconomic experiences, with a particular focus on China. The book is divided into three parts. The first is mainly theoretical and general in nature, identifying the major contributions bequeathed by the hard sciences to their social counterparts. Consistent with these findings, the authors offer a stylized interpretation of the contemporary state-of-the-art of the debate on the core concepts of economic science and advance a few elementary theories about what socialism in the 21st century could look like. The second and third parts analyze and discusses the core features of a few select experiences, which have evolved in certain countries since 1917, some of which are still unfolding. The book will find an audience among academics, researchers and students in the fields of economics, political science, history, and geography, as well as, policy makers, particularly in developing countries.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject. It engages the reader, and it is written in clear, accessible language free from technical talk and jargon. Written from beyond the Anglo-US academic environment it provides interesting interpretations and analysis of international relations from non-western perspectives. Covers a number of important theoretical approaches and paradigms that are sometimes overlooked. In particular, the chapter on institutionalism and the chapter dedicated to Marxist paradigms. Includes an introductory section on methodology and levels of analysis in international relations, which will help familiarize students with the main ontological and epistemological debates before delving into in-depth analyses of each particular theory. Chapters include summary sections to remind students of the key points. There are also quotation windows, recommended reading suggestions and questions for each chapter. The bulleted points in the concluding section are a useful stylistic addition and enhance the clarity of the chapters.

Jacob Gorender's (1923-2013) 1978 book, Colonial Slavery (O Escravismo Colonial), comes alive for English language readers thanks to Bernd Reiter and Alejandro Reyes's brilliant translation. Gorender argued that slave-holding societies produced an economic system sui generis, not fitting into any of the established societal categories offered by Karl Marx and Max Weber. As such, Gorender proposed a theory of colonial slavery as the structuring force of slave-holding societies. For him, slave-holding societies are different from other societies in that slavery structured them differently. This is of the utmost relevance to this day as it allows for a new and different way to explain contemporary racial inequalities in post-slavery societies. An accomplished interpreter of Brazilian social formation, Gorender was motivated by the need to understand the historical roots of class domination and the emergence of Brazilian capitalist society. His presentation of rich historical data, rigorous theoretical and analytical framework, and militant action as an active member of the Brazilian Communist Party are the hallmarks of his writing. Colonial Slavery: An Abridged Translation is a must-read for researchers, teachers, and students of history, sociology, economics, politics, as well as activists of the Black movement and other movements committed to anti-racism.

Jacob Gorender's (1923-2013) 1978 book, Colonial Slavery (O Escravismo Colonial), comes alive for English language readers thanks to Bernd Reiter and Alejandro Reyes's brilliant translation. Gorender argued that slave-holding societies produced an economic system sui generis, not fitting into any of the established societal categories offered by Karl Marx and Max Weber. As such, Gorender proposed a theory of colonial slavery as the structuring force of slave-holding societies. For him, slave-holding societies are different from other societies in that slavery structured them differently. This is of the utmost relevance to this day as it allows for a new and different way to explain contemporary racial inequalities in post-slavery societies. An accomplished interpreter of Brazilian social formation, Gorender was motivated by the need to understand the historical roots of class domination and the emergence of Brazilian capitalist society. His presentation of rich historical data, rigorous theoretical and analytical framework, and militant action as an active member of the Brazilian Communist Party are the hallmarks of his writing. Colonial Slavery: An Abridged Translation is a must-read for researchers, teachers, and students of history, sociology, economics, politics, as well as activists of the Black movement and other movements committed to anti-racism.