|
|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies
The credit crunch of 2008 produced an international recession in
2009. In this volume Claudio Katz and Michel Husson, both fellows
of the International Institute for Research and Education, and
Raphie de Santos lead an attempt not to only to describe the
present crisis, but also to understand its causes and debate
socialist solutions. Sean Thompson shows how neoliberal
globalisation has an inbuilt tendency towards deflation. As
explained in the article by Franois Sabado, the period since the
turn of the century has been a disaster for American capitalism;
first the catastrophe in Iraq and of the Bush government in
general, and now an economic collapse that has completely
undermined neoliberalism's 'Washington Consensus'. The ideologues
of capitalism are on the defensive. But the Marxist explanation of
the crisis has to be hammered home. Who caused this crisis? Why did
it occur? What is it in capitalism that leads to the globalisation
of poverty while a tiny elite become mega-wealthy? And what are
possible alternatives? This book is a signal contribution to making
those arguments.
Marx's oeuvre is vast but there are key elements of his ever
evolving, class-based contribution to social theory. Declining
usefulness for him of Hegelian philosophy and his deepening
confrontation with Ricardian political economy were expressions.
While the French edition of Capital is closest to Marx's mature
thought, Engels did not understand how work on Russia related to
Marx's evolution, and Engels distorted the outcome. Accumulation of
capital is particularly difficult conceptually, including use of
'primitive accumulation', and is carefully addressed, as is
composition of capital. After Marx, Luxemburg is the most
significant contributor to Marxism and her works on political
economy and on nationalism are highlighted here. The modern topic
of state conspiracies, too often avoided, concludes the book.
Troubling issues, however, remain.
One of TIME magazine's All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books One of
Times Literary Supplement's Hundred Most Influential Books Since
the War One of National Review's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the
Century One of Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Best Books of
the 20th Century How can we benefit from the promise of government
while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this
classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of
an immensely influential economic philosophy--one in which
competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving
economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.
First published in 1962, Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom is one
of the most significant works of economic theory ever written.
Enduring in its eminence and esteem, it has sold nearly a million
copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and
continues to inform economic thinking and policymaking around the
world. This new edition includes prefaces written by Friedman for
both the 1982 and 2002 reissues of the book, as well as a new
foreword by Binyamin Appelbaum, lead economics writer for the New
York Times editorial board.
In Co-operative Struggles, Denise Kasparian expands the theoretical
horizons regarding labour unrest by proposing new categories to
make visible and conceptualize conflicts in the new worker
co-operativism of the twenty-first century. After the depletion of
neoliberal reforms at the dawn of the twenty-first century in
Argentina, co-operativism gained momentum, mainly due to the
recuperation of enterprises by their workers and state promotion of
co-operatives through social policies. These new co-operatives
became actors not just in production but in social struggle. Their
peculiarity lies in the fact that they shape a socio-productive
form not structured on wage relations: workers are at the same time
members of the organisations. Why, how and by what cleavages and
groupings do these co-operative workers without bosses come into
conflict?
Women and Empire, 1750-1939: Primary Sources on Gender and
Anglo-Imperialism functions to extend significantly the range of
the History of Feminism series (co-published by Routledge and
Edition Synapse), bringing together the histories of British and
American women's emancipation, represented in earlier sets, into
juxtaposition with histories produced by different kinds of
imperial and colonial governments. The alignment of writings from a
range of Anglo-imperial contexts reveals the overlapping histories
and problems, while foregrounding cultural specificities and
contextual inflections of imperialism. The volumes focus on
countries, regions, or continents formerly colonized (in part) by
Britain: Volume I: Australia Volume II: New Zealand Volume III:
Africa Volume IV: India Volume V: Canada Perhaps the most novel
aspect of this collection is its capacity to highlight the common
aspects of the functions of empire in their impact on women and
their production of gender, and conversely, to demonstrate the
actual specificity of particular regional manifestations.
Concerning questions of power, gender, class and race, this new
Routledge-Edition Synapse Major Work will be of particular interest
to scholars and students of imperialism, colonization, women's
history, and women's writing.
The foremost collection of essays from one of Britain's most
important 20th century Marxist writers Considered by many to be the
most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century,
Christopher Caudwell was killed in the Spanish Civil War at the age
of 29. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and
crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until
reviews appeared of Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of
Poetry, which was published just after his death. A strikingly
original study of poetry's role, it explained in clear language how
the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change
and development. Caudwell had a powerful interest in how things
worked - aeronautics, physics, human psychology, language, and
society. In the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s he saw that
capitalism was a system that could not work properly and distorted
the thinking of the age. Self-educated from the age of 15, he wrote
with a directness that is alien to most cultural theory. Culture as
Politics introduces Caudwell's work through his most accessible and
relevant writing. Material will be drawn from Illusion and Reality,
Studies in a Dying Culture and his essay, "Heredity and
Development."
Building a capable public service is fundamental to postconflict
state building. Yet in postconflict settings, short-term pressures
often conflict with this longer-term objective. To ensure peace and
stabilize fragile coalitions, the imperative for political elites
to hand out public jobs and better pay to constituents dominates
merit. Donor-financed projects that rely on technical assistants
and parallel structures, rather than on government systems, are
often the primary vehicle for meeting pressing service delivery
needs. What, then, is a workable approach to rebuilding public
services postconflict? Paths between Peace and Public Service seeks
to answer this question by comparing public service reform
trajectories in five countries - Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra
Leone, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste - in the aftermath of conflict.
The study seeks to explain these countries' different trajectories
through process tracing and structured, focused methods of
comparative analysis. To reconstruct reform trajectories, the
report draws on more than 200 interviews conducted with government
officials and other stakeholders, as well as administrative data.
The study analyzes how reform trajectories are influenced by elite
bargains and highlights their path dependency, shaped by
preconflict legacies and the specifics of the conflict period. As
the first systematic study on postconflict public service reforms,
it identifies lessons for the future engagement of development
partners in building public services.
In the follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestseller Trump's War,
Michael Savage makes the case for President Trump in 2020.America
rolled into 2020 like a juggernaut, with the strongest economy in
its history and a renewed leadership role on the world stage.
President Trump was cruising to reelection on the strength of
record low unemployment, phase one of a historic trade deal, and a
more stable Middle East after the defeat of ISIS.Then, catastrophe
struck. A novel coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, swept the
world, taking hundreds of thousands of lives and wreaking economic
and social destruction. As America battled to its feet and prepared
to reopen its economy, the tragic death of George Floyd at the
hands of a police officer lit a powder keg of political tension
waiting to explode after months of lockdown. As the November
elections approach, America is at war with itself to decide if it
will remain a land of freedom and opportunity, or whether a radical
new vision will emerge.Americans are searching for answers. Was the
American lockdown necessary to defeat Covid-19 or was it a
politically motivated strategy to harm President Trump's reelection
chances? Does the death of George Floyd represent a systemic
problem with American police or is the Left exploiting the tragedy
for political purposes? Where does legitimate protest end and
insurrection begin?A trained scientist who studied epidemiology for
his PhD and one of America's most popular conservative radio hosts
for the past twenty-six years, Dr. Michael Savage is uniquely
positioned to answer these burning questions. In OUR FIGHT FOR
AMERICA: THE WAR CONTINUES, Savage cuts through the propaganda and
noise to present a clear analysis of the crises and the political
and scientific motivations behind them. Michael Savage tells the
truth even when nobody wants to hear it and presents a clear vision
of what Americans must do to survive our most turbulent period in
decades.
This is the first comprehensive critical study of the Organisation
Todt (OT), a key institution which oversaw the Third Reich’s vast
slave labour programme together with the SS, Wehrmacht and
industry. The book breaks new ground by revealing the full extent
of the organisation’s brutal and murderous operations across
occupied Europe and in the Reich. For the first time, Charles Dick
provides a strong voice for camp survivors overseen by the OT,
drawing on an extensive collection of personal accounts and
analysing the violence they endured. Builders of the Third Reich
shows Hitler used the OT, which had a labour force of around 1.5
million people in 1944, as an instrument of subjugation and
occupation to project German imperial power. Drawing on a broad
range of primary sources, it demonstrates how the organisation
participated in the plunder of Europe’s raw materials and
manpower, greatly boosting the German war economy. The book reveals
how OT staff shot, beat or worked tens of thousands of prisoners to
death, both within the SS-run concentration camp system and outside
it, with analysis of OT operations showing that where it had sole,
or very high levels of control over camps, prisoner death rates
were extremely high. Examining how engineers and builders,
individuals who fitted the category of ‘ordinary men’ as
precisely as any other group so far examined by historians,
perpetrated war crimes, this volume reflects on how few OT
personnel were interrogated or came to trial and how the
organisation passed largely under the radar of post-war
prosecutors, researchers and the general public.
The Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO), that became the
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in 1920 drew the Muslim elite into
its orbit and was a key site of a distinctively Muslim nationalism.
Located in New Dehli, the historic centre of Muslim rule, it was
home to many leading intellectuals and reformers in the years
leading up to Indian independence. During partition it was a hub of
pro-Pakistan activism. The graduates who came of age during the
anti-colonial struggle in India settled throughout the subcontinent
after the Partition. They carried with them the particular
experiences, values and histories that had defined their lives as
Aligarh students in a self-consciously Muslim environment,
surrounded by a non-Muslim majority. This new archive of oral
history narratives from seventy former AMU students reveals
histories of partition as yet unheard. In contrast to existing
studies, these stories lead across the boundaries of India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh. Partition in AMU is not defined by
international borders and migrations but by alienation from the
safety of familiar places. The book reframes Partition to draw
attention to the ways individuals experienced ongoing changes
associated with "partitioning"-the process through which familiar
spaces and places became strange and sometimes threatening-and they
highlight specific, never-before-studied sites of disturbance
distant from the borders.
Once assumed to be a driver or even cause of conflict,
commemoration during Ireland's Decade of Centenaries came to occupy
a central place in peacebuilding efforts. The inclusive and
cross-communal reorientation of commemoration, particularly of the
First World War, has been widely heralded as signifying new forms
of reconciliation and a greater "maturity" in relationships between
Ireland and the UK and between Unionists and Nationalists in
Northern Ireland. In this study, Jonathan Evershed interrogates the
particular and implicitly political claims about the nature of
history, memory, and commemoration that define and sustain these
assertions, and explores some of the hidden and countervailing
transcripts that underwrite and disrupt them. Drawing on two years
of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Belfast, Evershed explores
Ulster Loyalist commemoration of the Battle of the Somme, its
conflicted politics, and its confrontation with official
commemorative discourse and practice during the Decade of
Centenaries. He investigates how and why the myriad social,
political, cultural, and economic changes that have defined
postconflict Northern Ireland have been experienced by Loyalists as
a culture war, and how commemoration is the means by which they
confront and challenge the perceived erosion of their identity. He
reveals the ways in which this brings Loyalists into conflict not
only with the politics of Irish Nationalism, but with the
"peacebuilding" state and, crucially, with each other. He
demonstrates how commemoration works to reproduce the intracommunal
conflicts that it claims to have overcome and interrogates its
nuanced (and perhaps counterintuitive) function in conflict
transformation.
Value and Crisis brings together selected essays written by Alfredo
Saad-Filho, one of the most prominent Marxist political economists
today. This book examines the labour theory of value from a rich
and innovative perspective, from which fresh insights and new
perspectives are derived, with applications for the nature of
neoliberalism, financialisation, inflation, monetary policy, and
the contradictions, limitations and crises of contemporary
capitalism.
In Literary/Liberal Entanglements, Corrinne Harol and Mark Simpson
bring together ten essays by scholars from a wide range of fields
in English studies in order to interrogate the complex, entangled
relationship between the history of literature and the history of
liberalism. The volume has three goals: to investigate important
episodes in the entanglement of literary history and liberalism; to
analyze the impact of this entanglement on the secular and
democratic projects of modernity; and thereby to reassess the
dynamics of our neoliberal present. The volume is organized into a
series of paired essays, with each pair investigating a concept
central to both literature and liberalism: acting, socializing,
discriminating, recounting, and culturing. Collectively, the essays
demonstrate the vivid capacity of literary study writ large to
reckon with, imagine, and materialize durative accounts of history
and politics. Literary/Liberal Entanglements models a method of
literary history for the twenty-first century.
Kozo Uno's Theory of Crisis presents an unparalleled and systematic
demonstration of the inevitability of crisis under the capitalist
mode of production. Based on a radical re-interpretation of Marx's
Capital, Uno's theory of crisis emphasizes 'excess capital
alongside surplus populations' and 'the commodification of labour
power' at the heart of Marx's theory of crisis, and additionally
provides a concise overview of capitalist crises from the stage of
mercantilism to the imperialist stage of capitalism. Included are
two Appendix essays by Uno, which disentangle theoretical
difficulties related to the theory of crisis in Marx's Capital, and
two original and contemporary essays by Professors Makoto Itoh and
by Ken Kawashima and Gavin Walker. This book was originally
published in Japanese as Kyoko-ron by Iwanami Shoten, 1953.
Africa Reimagined is a passionately argued appeal for a rediscovery of our African identity. Going beyond the problems of a single country, Hlumelo Biko calls for a reorientation of values, on a continental scale, to suit the needs and priorities of Africans. Building on the premise that slavery, colonialism, imperialism and apartheid fundamentally unbalanced the values and indeed the very self-concept of Africans, he offers realistic steps to return to a more balanced Afro-centric identity.
Historically, African values were shaped by a sense of abundance, in material and mental terms, and by strong ties of community. The intrusion of religious, economic and legal systems imposed by conquerors, traders and missionaries upset this balance, and the African identity was subsumed by the values of the newcomers.
Biko shows how a reimagining of Africa can restore the sense of abundance and possibility, and what a rebirth of the continent on Pan-African lines might look like. This is not about the churn of the news cycle or party politics – although he identifies the political party as one of the most pernicious legacies of colonialism. Instead, drawing on latest research, he offers a practical, pragmatic vision anchored in the here and now.
By looking beyond identities and values imposed from outside, and transcending the divisions and frontiers imposed under colonialism, it should be possible for Africans to develop fully their skills, values and ingenuity, to build institutions that reflect African values, and to create wealth for the benefit of the continent as a whole.
Edouard Glissant was a leading voice in debates centering on the
postcolonial condition and on the present and future of
globalisation. Prolific as both a theorist and a literary author,
Glissant started his career as a contemporary of Frantz Fanon in
the early days of francophone postcolonial thought. In the latter
part of his career Glissant's vision pushed beyond the boundaries
of postcolonialism to encompass the contemporary phenomenon of
globalisation. Sam Coombes offers a detailed analysis of Glissant's
thought, setting out the reasons why Glissant's vision for a world
of intercultural interaction both reflects but also seeks to
provide a correction to some of the leading tendencies commonly
associated with contemporary theory today.
Loren Lomasky is a leading advocate of a rights-based libertarian
approach to political and social issues. This volume collects
fifteen of his articles that have appeared since his influential
volume Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (OUP, 1987)
alongside one new essay. The volume represents Lomasky's more
recent efforts at constructing the underpinnings of liberal rights
theory, in which he formulates a series of questions about the
nature and scope of rights and rights holders. Among the questions
Lomasky addresses: In what way is classical utilitarianism
fundamentally illiberal? To what extent might utilitarian
cost-benefit analyses be admissible within rights-upholding
political theory? Does it even make sense to speak of maximizing
liberty? How can this be understood in Hobbesian, Kantian, and
Rawlsian theoretical settings? In a world in which rights-talk is
ubiquitous, what is the role of traditional virtues such as loyalty
and charity? Is it inconsistent to espouse both an austere
classical liberalism and a social safety net? Liberalism is most
often presented as a theory about the internal contours of the
state, but how does it speak to the relationships between one state
and another? Between the state and would-be immigrants? In a world
displaying massive cross-border inequalities, does justice require
the extension of aid from the rich to the poor? The book opens with
an unpublished essay, "Everything Old is New Again: The Death and
Rebirth of Classical Liberalism," which features a history of the
century-long decline of traditional liberalism and its remarkable,
unanticipated return to vitality in the second half of the 20th
century. It then offers the prospectus for a libertarian research
program for the next half century. "Lomasky is one of the most
brilliant political philosophers of his generation and also has a
great gift with the pen. He instead picks away at bad arguments and
bad rhetoric whether in general agreement with his priors or not.
And he likes to entertain unusual twists on arguments. The upshot
is a wonderful journey through deep questions in political
philosophy and organization. "-Peter Boettke, University Professor
of Economics & Philosophy, George Mason University
|
|