Using Marxist critique, this book explores manifestations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education and demonstrates how it contributes to the functioning and existence of the capitalist university. Challenging the idea that AI is a break from previous capitalist technologies, the book offers nuanced examination of the impacts of AI on the control and regulation of academic work and labour, on digital learning and remote teaching, and on the value of learning and knowledge. Applying a Marxist perspective, Preston argues that commodity fetishism, surveillance, and increasing productivity ushered in by the growth of AI, further alienates and exploits academic labour and commodifies learning and research. The text puts forward a solid theoretical framework and methodology for thinking about AI to inform critical and revolutionary pedagogies. Offering an impactful and timely analysis, this book provides a critical engagement and application of key Marxist concepts in the study of AI's role in Higher Education. It will be of interest to those working or researching in Higher Education.

The project to create a ‘New Man’ and ‘New Woman’ initiated in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc constituted one of the most extensive efforts to remake human psychophysiology in modern history. Playing on the different meanings of the word ‘technology’ — as practice, knowledge and artefact — this edited volume brings together scholarship from across a range of fields to shed light on the ways in which socialist regimes in the Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe sought to transform and revolutionise human capacities. From external, state-driven techniques of social control and bodily management, through institutional practices of transformation, to strategies of self-fashioning, Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc probes how individuals and collectives engaged with — or resisted — the transformative imperatives of the Soviet experiment. The volume’s broad scope covers topics including the theory and practice of revolutionary embodiment; the practice of expert knowledge and disciplinary power in psychotherapy and criminology; the representation and transformation of ideal bodies through mass media and culture; and the place of disabled bodies in the context of socialist transformational experiments. The book brings the history of human ‘re-making’ and the history of Soviet and Eastern Bloc socialism into conversation in a way that will have broad and lasting resonance.

The Antifascist Chronicles of Aurelio Pego: A Critical Anthology collects and contextualizes Pego's 118 literary chronicles published between 1940 and 1967 in the periodical Espana Libre, New York. The satire of this household name in the US Spanish-language press lambasted Fascist Spain, lampooned American diplomatic relations with Francisco Franco, and mocked the Spanish exiles' unsuccessful efforts to liberate Spain from the dictator. Pego's journalism showed deep dedication to the public good with his publication of uncensored information about the regime that alerted readers of the civil rights infringements in Fascist Spain. However, Pego delivered the hard truths of Fascist Spain cloaked in mockery. Humor was crucial in this political culture not only because it facilitated communicating Spanish news but also avoided mythical and totalitarian rhetorical resistance. The fragility of the alternative periodicals' paper and the political persecution against dissident voices has caused that much of this antifascist print culture has been lost. However, Pego's chronicles prove that US Hispanic antifascism was vibrant. The anthology puts forward the understudied work of antifascists in the United States and provides evidence of their activism. Its preservation is an exercise of collective memory and a place of resistance to an elitist and fascist archive.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, considerable changes have taken place in Marxist theory, and the 21st century has seen the relevance of Marx called into question. Several wars, a global economic crisis, ecological disasters, political dysfunctions have either challenged, undermined, or strengthened various strands of leftist thought that emerged from Marxist thought. This collection of original essays by key thinkers in the field aims to update the literature on the state of Marxism today. It engages with significant areas of debates, from the political thought of Nussbaum and Zizek to the politics of development, liberalism, justice, the role of revolution, imperialism, and economic and technological determinism. A thorough investigation, it incorporates a diversity of approaches, including analytical philosophy (contribution from Norman Geras, e.g.) and postmodern influences (contributions from Ronaldo Munck or Stuart Sim). These different perspectives, which also correspond to the contrasting views on the nature of post-Marxist theory, will make this collection a valuable text for courses in political theory, Marxist studies, as well as international relations, post-colonialism, and development.

First published in 1990. The individual's obligation to obey the law, the state and the government is a fundamental part of contemporary political theory. The contributors to this volume, drawn from a variety of disciplines including philosophy, political science and law, take a fresh look at the dilemmas of political obligation. They discuss the extent to which we should allow the need for conformity to override individual liberties, and ask whether individualism is indeed feasible without a highly developed sense of the 'public interest' or the 'common good'. The contrast between individualism and communitarianism is examined throughout the book. The contributors also look at the various means through which the state can coerce or persuade the individual to be obedient. The emphasis throughout this collection is on the substantive problems themselves, rather than on the way these issues have been addressed in the history of political thought. The book offers a number of different perspectives on political obligation, and will be valuable to students of moral, political, social and legal philosophy.

This book puts forward a new perspective on the planned economies of communist Eastern Europe, demonstrating in detail how economic practice in such countries was shaped by the interplay among planners, managers and Party apparatchiks. Based on extensive original research, including interviews with former employees of industrial enterprises, the book argues that shortages, chronic over-capacities and erroneous planning decisions were present from the very beginning, rather than the consequences of later plan mistakes. They were the natural outcome of a profound conflict between leaders' attempt to adapt the basic laws of economics to their ideology and interests, and the requirements for rational bureaucracy of an increasingly sophisticated economy. The book discusses the evolution of and debates about the planned economy, considers the practice of plan development and implementation, and provides very detailed examples of how the planned economy actually worked at the level of the factory, at the point where plans and managers interacted with workers and production.

From a Marxist philosophical perspective, this collection of essays investigates the maturing self-consciousness and self-assertion of Chinese academia, especially within the humanities and social sciences, permitting more penetrating insights and critical engagement with the social reality of China. The author elaborates on the relationship between Hegel and Marx's philosophy and their concepts of reality, thereby accounting for the historic and philosophical conditions for the autonomy of Chinese academia. Drawing on intellectual resources from both Eastern and Western archives, including phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, Western Marxism, and China's pacifist tradition, the book refutes Huntington's speculation about Chinese imperialism and delineates how China's development can contribute to a fundamental critique of capitalist civilisation and a new paradigm of global governance. In addition, the book challenges the thinking of Chinese neo-liberals and nationalist-conservatives and their understandings of the history and social reality of China. Hence, the author advocates a reconstruction of the spiritual and intellectual realm within society based on Marxism, in order to counter Sinophobia, neo-liberalism, and nationalism at the same time. The book will appeal to readers interested in social and political philosophy, philosophy of history, Marxism, and China studies.

The Lao People's Democratic Republic is nearly fifty years old, and one of the few surviving one-party socialist states. Nearly five decades on from its revolutionary birth, the Lao population continues to build futures in and around a political landscape that maintains socialist rhetoric on the one hand and capitalist economics on the other. Contemporary Lao politics is marked by the use of cultural heritage as a source of political legitimacy. Researched through long-term detailed ethnography in the former royal capital of Luang Prabang, itself a UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Site since 1995, this book takes a fresh look at issues of legitimacy, heritage, and national identity for different members of the Lao population. It argues that the political system has become sufficiently embedded to avoid imminent risk of collapse but suggests that it is facing new challenges primarily in the form of rising Chinese influence in Laos.

Genocide denial not only abuses history and insults the victims but paves the way for future atrocities. Yet few, if any, books have offered a comparative overview and analysis of this problem. Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide? is a resource for understanding and countering denial. Denial spans a broad geographic and thematic range in its explorations of varied forms of denial-which is embedded in each stage of genocide. Ranging far beyond the most well-known cases of denial, this book offers original, pathbreaking arguments and contributions regarding: competition over commemoration and public memory in Ukraine and elsewhere transitional justice in post-conflict societies; global violence against transgender people, which genocide scholars have not adequately confronted; music as a means to recapture history and combat denial; public education's role in erasing Indigenous history and promoting settler-colonial ideology in the United States; "triumphalism" as a new variant of denial following the Bosnian Genocide; denial vis-a-vis Rwanda and neighboring Congo (DRC). With contributions from leading genocide experts as well as emerging scholars, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, genocide studies, anthropology, political science, international law, gender studies, and human rights.

This book evaluates the promise of human progress and secularism in grand political narratives of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, comparing counter-narratives of South Asia within the context of a fast-changing twenty-first century. The book embraces a broad range of sources and theoretical approaches that include political philosophy, film, and ideological discourse analysis. In the twenty-first century, global inequality and significant growth of religious and majoritarian nationalisms have been appended with a protracted economic slowdown and recession in many countries. Examining what went wrong in terms of secularism and distributive justice in India, this book critiques the Euro-American visions of democracy, global capitalism, and their so-called universality. As an alternative, it proposes a progressive politics of radical democracy for the Indian people. Reconsidering alternatives to capitalism, western secularism and the radical possibilities of Islamism, Political Theory and South Asian Counter-Narratives will appeal to students and scholars of political theory, international relations, global history, and South Asian politics.

This book analyzes key aspects of Marx's Capital with an eye towards its relevance for an understanding of issues confronting us in the 21st Century. The contributions to this volume suggest that while aspects of Marx's original analysis must be adjusted to take into account changes that have occurred since its initial publication in 1867, his overall perspective remains necessary for understanding the nature of crises in 21st century. Part I emphasizes the central concepts Marx employed in Capital, including exploitation, capital accumulation, commodity fetishism, and his use of dialectics as a method for baring the underlying relations that define capitalism. Parts II and III extend that focus by addressing the concept of value, fictitious capital, credit and financialization. Parts IV and V offer analyses of several concrete manifestations of contemporary crises from national contexts (Europe, Latin America, China, and the United States). The volume argues that we have to combat the imperatives of capitalism to move towards a more humane and egalitarian future.

This volume: * presents a comprehensive understanding of the basic theories and concepts of Marx * evaluates Marx as a political philosopher for present times * will be a key text for scholars and students of politics, philosophy, economics and history

This volume: * presents a comprehensive understanding of the basic theories and concepts of Marx * evaluates Marx as a political philosopher for present times * will be a key text for scholars and students of politics, philosophy, economics and history

Hope lies in our richness, in the joy of our collective creativity. But that richness exists in the peculiar form of money. The fact that we relate to on another through money causes tremendous social pain and destruction and is dragging us through pandemics and war towards extinction. Richness against money: this battle will decide the future of humanity. If we cannot emancipate richness from money-capital-profit, there is probably no hope. Money seems invincible but the constant expansion of debt shows that its rule is fragile. The fictitious expansion of money through debt is driven by fear, fear of us, fear of the rabble. Money contains, but richness overflows. In this final part of his ground-breaking trilogy, John Holloway expertly fuses anti-capitalism and anti-identitarianism, and brings hope into the critique of political economy and revolutionary theory, challenging us to find hope within ourselves and channel it into a dignified, revolutionary rage.

This book is a thematic history of the communist movement in Kerala, the first major region (in terms of population) in the world to democratically elect a communist government. It analyzes the nature of the transformation brought about by the communist movement in Kerala, and what its implications could be for other postcolonial societies. The volume engages with the key theoretical concepts in postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, and contributes to the debate between Marxism and postcolonial theory, especially its recent articulations. The volume presents a fresh empirical engagement with theoretical critiques of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, in the context of their decades-long scholarship in India. It discusses important thematic moments in Kerala's communist history which include - the processes by which it established its hegemony, its cultural interventions, the institution of land reforms and workers' rights, and the democratic decentralization project, and, ultimately, communism's incomplete national-popular and its massive failures with regard to the caste question. A significant contribution to scholarship on democracy and modernity in the Global South, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, specifically political theory, democracy and political participation, political sociology, development studies, postcolonial theory, Subaltern Studies, Global South Studies, and South Asia Studies.

More than 30 years after their momentous book "Projekt Mitteleuropa", which had been written before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Emil Brix and Erhard Busek revisit the political space between Germany, Russia and the Mediterranean. The volume explores the role of Central Europe in the 21st century, the importance of the European Union, the significance of a transforming Central Europe for European unity, and what happens when we marginalise Central Europe. The view of the authors is unequivocal: European integration will only succeed when the Central European countries from Poland to North Macedonia, from the Czech Republic to Romania and Moldova, will be seen as being at the heart of Europe. The European Union needs to build more common and fair ground between "old" and "new" member states. According to the authors, any further move towards a "Europe of two speeds" would lead to a break-up of the EU.

Marxist economic thought has had a long and distinguished history in Japan, dating back to the First World War. When interest in Marxist theory was virtually nonexistent in the United States, rival schools of thought in Japan emerged, and brilliant debates took place on Marx's Capital and on capitalism as it was developing in Japan. Forty years ago, Makoto Itoh's Value and Crisis began to chronicle these Japanese contributions to Marxist theory, discussing in particular views on Marx's theories of value and crisis, and problems of Marx's theory of market value. Now, in a second edition of his book, Itoh deepens his study Marx's theories of value and crisis, as an essential reference point from which to analyze the multiple crises that have arisen during the past four decades of neoliberalism. One contribution of the original Value and Crisis was to bridge Japan and the world in the field of Marxian political economy. Itoh's second edition demonstrates an even wider-ranging familiarity with major schools of Marxist thought, summarizing and assessing viewpoints of such theorists as Hilferding, Bauer, Kautsky, Bukharin, Luxemburg, Grossman, Sweezy, the Japanese Marxist Kozo Uno, together with the relevant parts of Capital and a section on the 1930's Great Depression. Given today's current emergencies of world capitalism and socialism, says Itoh, we need to work together to resolve new global problems, articulating new issues of Marx's theories of value and crisis. The promise of Marx's theories has not waned. If anything - given the failure of Soviet-style socialism and the catastrophe of neoliberalism - it grows daily.

Marxism and Decolonization in the 21st Century is a ground-breaking work that highlights the resurgence and insurgence of Marxism and decolonization, and the ways in which decolonization and decoloniality are grounded in the contributions of Black Marxism, the Radical Black tradition, and anti-colonial liberation traditions. Featuring leading and young scholars and activists, this book is a practical scholarly intervention that shows how democratic Marxism and decoloniality might converge to provoke planetary decolonization in the 21st century. At the centre of this process, enabled by both increasing human entanglements and the resilience of racism, the volume's contributors analyse converging forces of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-patriarchy, anti-sexism, Indigenous People's movements, eco-feminist formations, and intellectual movements levelled against Eurocentrism. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and intellectuals interested in Marxism, decolonization, and transnational activism.

This book tells the story of the dissident imaginary of samizdat activists, the political culture they created, and the pivotal role that culture had in sustaining the resilience of the oppositional movement in Poland between 1976 and 1990. This unlicensed print culture has been seen as one of the most emblematic social worlds of dissent. Since the Cold War, the audacity of harnessing obsolete print technology known as samizdat to break the modern monopoly of information of the party-state has fascinated many, yet this book looks beyond the Cold War frame to reappraise its historical novelty and significance. What made that culture resilient and rewarding, this book argues, was the correspondence between certain set of ideas and media practices: namely, the form of samizdat social media, which both embodied and projected the prefigurative philosophy of political action, asserting that small forms of collective agency can have a transformative effect on public life here and now, and are uniquely capable of achieving a democratic new beginning. This prefigurative vision of the transition from communism had a fundamental impact on the broader oppositional movement. Yet, while both the rise of Solidarity and the breakthrough of 1989 seemed to do justice to that vision, both pivotal moments found samizdat social media activists making history that was not to their liking. Back in the day, their estrangement was overshadowed by the main axis of contention between the society and the state. Foregrounding the internal controversies they protagonized, this book adds nuance to our understanding of the broader legacy of dissent and its relevance for the networked protests of today.

The book is part of the recent effort to catch up with the research on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Despite its omnipresence and pivotal role in running the country, there has been a conspicuous shortage of references to the Party in most studies related to China. In its stead, the academic literature as well as popular discussions has too often treated the CCP as a type of regime destined to the dustbin of history. The inadequacy of research in this area is understandable because CCP is a tightly organised Leninist party which has kept much of its internal affairs confidential. This book examines the key aspects of the transformation of CCP in the rapidly changing national and global context. It highlights the problems faced by the ruling Leninist party in adapting to a capitalistic environment that its organisations cannot fully control and its ideology cannot effectively rationalise. It also examines CCP's strategies for adaptation in the areas of ideological reformulation, party-society relations and the ways of exercising power and maintaining internal cohesion. In addition to helping the readers understand how China is ruled and how the Chinese system operates, the book also highlights the evolutionary dynamics of Chinese politics in the environment created by CCP's reform and open-door policies.

The Prison House of Alienation is an exploration of the humanist theme of alienation that Marx theorized in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. It relates this theme of alienation with the themes of haunting in the Manifesto of the Communist Party and accumulation of capital that he outlined in his magnum opus Capital. The volume claims that humanity plagued by ghosts is dwelling in a prison house from which there seems no escape. Yet humanity seeks to escape from this prison house. The essays are a consequent journey in dramaturgy where science and art truly meet to create emancipatory politics that goes well beyond the entire discourse of twentieth-century socialism. The volume begins with Hamlet's lament in Shakespeare's tragedy, who, struck by alienation, is haunted by the ghost of his dead father. It then discusses how instead of creating a radical theory for creating a socialist alternative, 'haunting' gave way to interpretation as an estranged hermeneutical act that displaces revolutionary theory and praxis. This displacement of revolutionary praxis in turn gave way to violence. This volume therefore also analyzes violence from Clausewitz to Mao, revealing that a rigorous line must be drawn between Stalinism and Maoism on one side, and authentic Marxism on the other side. It concludes by questioning the very idea of ideology, suggesting that ideology is not merely a false consciousness, but a terrible psychotic act that would devour the entire emancipatory project of Marxism itself. Placing the human condition at the centre for alternative twenty-first-century politics, The Prison House of Alienation reveals that there can be no science without art and no politics without humanity. It will be of great interest to scholars of philosophy and politics. The essays were originally published in various issues of Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

This book argues that capitalism cannot be said to be truly democratic and that a system of producer cooperatives, or democratically managed enterprises, is needed to give rise to a new mode of production that is genuinely socialist and fully consistent with the ultimate rationale underlying Marx's theoretical approach. The proposition that firms should be run by the workers on their own was endorsed by John Dewey, the greatest social thinker of the twentieth century, but is also shared by Marxists such as Anton Pannekoek, Karl Korsch, Angelo Tasca, Antonio Gramsci and Richard Wolff. This book explores the history of this argument, taking into account concepts from economic and political thought including historical materialism, cooperation, utopianism and economic democracy. The book will be of significant interest to scholars and students of political economy, Marxism, socialism, history of economic thought and political theory.