Neo-Socialist Property Rights: The Predicament of Housing Ownership in China examines how urban dwellers' practices of acquiring and defending property rights reshape state-property-family relationality in China. Ubiquitous housing ownership has emerged together with a pervasive yet particularized rights discourse and practice in the past two decades. Ho Cheuk-Yuet considers them to be a condensation and vindication of the principles of family values and emergent "neo-socialist" governance. However, there are manifested and latent contradictions between rights as interests and rights as a moral principle. This book concludes that private property rights are at once enabling and disabling when understood in the light of both the rigorous pursuit of well-being in a market economy and the contestation by those who resist forced eviction or the infringement of owners' rights. In this book, Ho provides rarely available ethnographic record of the encounters between evictees and evictors engaged in housing demolition and approaches the topic of urban housing ownership from the investing perspective in contrast to most anthropologists' consumption-focus analysis. Neo-Socialist Property Rights links property rights practice to the broader human rights discourse as both a working hypothesis and a historical question.

This year's Socialist Register continues its coverage of the economic crisis. It deepens the analysis with essays on: * The global roots of the crisis * The place of the city as a site of capital accumulation and resistance * The dismantling of the public sector * The fraudulence of neoliberal "environmentalism" * The intensification of global austerity It extends regional coverage of the crisis, with essays on the United States, Latin America, China, Eastern Europe, Ireland, and the Middle East. The volume also opens up a debate on possible strategies for the Left, which it will continue in the forthcoming volume in 2013 on socialist strategy for the 21st century.

This book offers a reading of Bhimrao Ambedkar's engagement with the idea and practice of socialism in India by linking it to his lifelong political and philosophical concerns: the annihilation of the caste system, untouchability and the moral and philosophical systems that justify either. Rather than view his ideas through a socialist lens, the author suggests that it is important to measure the validity of socialist thought and practice in the Indian context, through his critique of the social totality. The book argues its case by presenting a broad and connected overview of his thought world and the global and local influences that shaped it. The themes that are taken up for discussion include: his understanding of the colonial rule and the colonial state; history and progress; nationalism and the questions he posed the socialists; his radical critique of the caste system and Brahmancal philosophies, and his unusual interpretation of Buddhism.

Millions of people across the globe face a precarious existence because of Covid-19, climate change, and the greatest wealth inequality in a century. In Britain, the pandemic has revealed critical failings in the social safety net, especially the damage to the National Health Service caused by years of underfunding and creeping privatisation. The role of the state in sustaining the economy with huge disbursements of funds has been thrown into sharp relief, showing how little truth there was in the phrase: 'There is No Alternative'. We do depend on each other. Funds can be found. Most Labour supporters confront the problems of poverty and social inequity with the ethical socialist values of collective solidarity, respect, and equality. How did these ideals develop? This book follows their evolution in Britain since Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists in the early twentieth century, and reviews developments over the last hundred years. The 1945 Labour government inspired hope that nationalisations were a 'first step' towards socialism, and for a time ended poverty and mass unemployment. It was followed by the Labour governments of 1964-1970, then Tony Benn, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn. Despite defeats and setbacks, ethical socialism still lives on in the Labour Party, inspired by historical events and social struggles. This book looks at the importance of socialist ideals for the challenge of building a fairer and more equal society, and a better world.

Ashford/LeCroy/Rankin's EMPOWERMENT SERIES: HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL PERSPECTIVE, 7th EDITION, is a comprehensive introduction to human behavior in the social environment that offers a multidimensional approach, with discussion of integrative practice, theory, treatment, diversity and services. You'll find solid coverage of foundation knowledge, material on the biopsychosocial dimensions for assessing social functioning, and case studies to illuminate the applied aspects of case formulation processes. This edition integrates the core competencies and recommended practice behaviors outlined in the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) set by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Study tables and concept maps clarify major phases of biopsychosocial development. This text's framework gives you a concrete tool for assessing human behavior from a social work professional perspective.

This volume of new, original essays reflects the lifelong concerns and writings of the person they honor, Professor Howard Sherman. Sherman wrote on a wide range of topics - the causes of recessions, depressions and mass unemployment under capitalism; the difficulties and challenges of establishing viable democratic planning systems under socialism; the down-to-earth realities of economic life in the United States, the Soviet Union and elsewhere; and the theoretical traditions he drew upon to inform these empirical studies, i.e. Keynesianism, institutionalism and, most especially, Marxism. The contributors follow in Sherman's tradition through their careful analysis of topics such as the long-term trends in contemporary global capitalism; the relationship between Marxism and institutionalism; debates over the usefulness of class analysis; the political economy of financial liberalization; lessons from the demise of socialism in the Soviet Union and China; and the possibilities for advancing a workable egalitarian economic agenda. This book demonstrates the continued vibrancy and relevance of radical political economy as a mode of social scientific analysis. Scholars and students in economics, sociology, history, philosophy and political science will find the essays thought-provoking and informative.

Socialist planning played an enormous role in the economic and political history of the twentieth century. Beginning in the USSR it spread round the world. It influenced economic institutions and economic policy in countries as varied as Bulgaria, USA, China, Japan, India, Poland and France. How did it work? What were its weaknesses and strengths? What is its legacy for the twenty-first century? Now in its third edition, this textbook is fully updated to cover the findings of the period since the collapse of the USSR. It provides an overview of socialist planning, explains the underlying theory and its limitations, looks at its implementation in various sectors of the economy, and places developments in their historical context. A new chapter analyses how planning worked in the defence-industrial complex. This book is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in comparative economic systems and twentieth-century economic history.

First published in 1980. This book covers areas of policy interest viewed from a social democratic perspective and each chapter takes a specific issue which would have been of concern to Labour in the 1980s, including some of the more controversial areas. The study reviews various problem areas and suggests policies which are realistic and applicable in the conditions of the 1980s. This title will be of interests to scholars and students of history and politics.

The Economic Theory of Socialism and the Labour-Managed Firm focuses on market socialism and the relevant debate among economic theorists. It argues that market socialism is the only rational form of socialism and that market socialism with labour-managed firms is by far the best form of market socialism. The book begins with a critical review of the contributions to the economic theory of socialism. The second part discusses the economic theory of labour-managed firms and pays particular attention to the adverse labour-supply curve, underinvestment, monitoring and the separation of ownership and control. The final chapters discuss problems such as the control of economic activity in labour-managed firms, worker motivation and incentives. This book will be of particular use to students and academics interested in comparative economic systems and to specialists in politics and sociology with an interest in alternative forms of economic organization.

The Anatomy of the New Poland examines the nature and scope of political change in the first years of post-communist politics in Poland. Poland is significant not only because events there triggered the downfall of Communism throughout the region, but also because of the bold economic experiments of the new Polish leadership. Covering the period from the Round table negotiations of 1989 to the second free parliamentary elections in September 1993, the book blends an examination of the general features of communist systems and the challenges for democratic development in Eastern Europe with a specific analysis of the situation in Poland. In an authoritative analysis, Frances Millard discusses the shaping of the new constitutional framework and the interplay of political institutions in Poland while highlighting the influences upon the development of political parties and the emergence of a new party system. The dilemmas and achievements of post-communist politics are illustrated with reference to topical issues of decommunization and privatization. Written in a clear, accessible style, this book links developments in Poland to general themes in political science. As an assessment of the factors that undermine, and those that further, the emergence of democratic politics, it will be welcomed by scholars and students of the development and transformation of post-communist societies.

Transforming Socialist Economies presents - for the first time - an account of the initial attempts to transform the centrally planned economies of Czechoslovakia and Poland into modern capitalist economies.Both countries have adopted 'shock therapy' aimed at the fastest possible transition but with disappointing results. Poland appears to be on the brink of permanent depression and political paralysis. Czechoslovakia is only now beginning to show the first signs of economic recovery and faces the prospect of partition. In seeking to explain these disappointing results, Dr Myant critically analyses recent economic performance and past attempts at economic reform. He shows the weaknesses in the theory behind 'shock therapy', considers the political processes that led to its adoption and analyses its impact on the economy, on relations in the workplace and on political life. The result is a provocative and enlightening view of economic reform which will be essential reading for economists and political scientists.

Russian democracy in the post-totalitarian era is intimately bound up with the fate of its representative institutions. In Russia's Road to Democracy, Victor Sergeyev and Nikolai Biryukov assess why the Congress of People's Deputies, and the other newly elected institutions founded under perestroika, not only failed to prevent, but also seemed to speed up and provoke, the disintegration of the Soviet Union. By studying the early history of the Congress, the book seeks insights on the prospects for democracy in Russia.Following an inquiry into the roots of Soviet political culture and the implications for future representative institutions, the book then examines the genesis of the Congress of People's Deputies and attempts a hermeneutical reconstruction of the deputies' models of social reality, as expressed in the texts of their parliamentary debates. The authors argue that the adoption of the concept of sobornost - a belief in society's organic unity - as the basic model for this institution proved utterly inadequate to the challenges the country faced. Including substantial new source material which is being made available in English for the first time, Russia's Road to Democracy presents an in-depth analysis with conclusions that contradict the hitherto prevailing theoretical assumptions.

Socialist Economies in Transition provides a coherent critique of economic reform in Eastern Europe which, it is argued, will create not prosperity but high levels of unemployment and severe economic dislocation. The authors show how the application of neoclassical economic theory will, in reality, prove unsuccessful and explain why, despite the revolutionary upheavals of 1989 and the immense effort to discard the restraints of planning, the intuitive mechanisms and practices of the free market have been so slow to appear.This volume offers an alternative route to economic reform, based on post Keynesian and Kaleckian traditions that combine individual diversity with control over the key sectors of the economy to maintain an acceptable level of stability and growth. This exciting and provocative book will be essential reading for all those concerned with the political economy of Eastern Europe.

"Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister!" - Richard Crossman, "Diaries Vol. 1". As a politician and personality, Richard Crossman was anything but the deferential public servant he mocked so concisely. This revealing biography of the dedicated radical Labour politician offers the most complete picture of his colourful life and demonstrates many fascinating connections between his political thinking and the formation of New Labour. Richard Crosssman served as an MP from 1945 until shortly before his death in 1974 and is remembered as a fiery speaker, dedicated leftist and author of the controversial three-volume "Diaries of a Cabinet Minister" - published in the face of strong legal opposition from the government.This comprehensive new biography explores the connections between his personal history and his political convictions. His life not only highlights a formative period in British politics but also gives insights into contemporary British politics. Crossman's life not only highlights a formative period in British politics, but also gives insights into contemporary British politics. Weaving together the private and public, Honeyman unveils a politician who fought with dedication for his political beliefs while persistently trying to shake up the organisation of the Labour party. Over the course of his twenty-five years in Parliament, Crossman held various position, including Leader of the House of Commons, Chairman of the Labour Party, and Secretary of State for Social Services.In this new biography, Victoria Honeyman places Crossman in the context of his party and his times while also examining his impact on the development of the Labour party. Often dismissed as fickle, this portrait of Crossman reveals an intellectual politician who worked with conviction for the improvment of his party and country. His life not only highlights a formative period in British politics, but also gives insights into contemporary British politics. Crossman's chief interests included social democracy, international relations and constitutional reform. This biography details his tireless work on these issues and assesses his impact. Rather than the Crossman of popular myth, Honeyman has uncovered a dedicated politician who made serious intellectual contributions to his party's policy and whose influence is still felt today. This biography is essential reading for anyone interested in British contemporary political history.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2002

"Frost has created a usable past capable of enriching our understanding of the difficulties of democracy and the tough realities of American politics."
--"Peace & Change"

"The finest study to date on the ill-fated Economic research and Action Projecta].An outstanding work."
--"Choice"

"Frost contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the era and pushes past stereotypes of the sixties."
--"Journal of Social History"

"Frost has provided a coherent examination of the role of American women during the poor people's movement of the 1960s...there are many different things for scholars to admire about this book."
--"American Historical Review"

"I highly recommend this very accessible book...[it] includes rich archival and oral historical detail that should appeal to historians of the 1960s. For those of us interested in a more complex and intersectional analysis of the 1960s, this book is a welcome addition to the historical record."
-- "Contemporary Sociology"

.,."A solid contribution to the literature on the history of community organizing and radical resistance, one that can also add to contemporary debates about rebuilding public life and reviving democratic dissent and practice in America."
-- "The Journal of American History"

Community organizing became an integral part of the activist repertoire of the New Left in the 1960s. Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that came to be seen as synonymous with the white New Left, began community organizing in 1963, hoping to build an interracial movement of the poor through which to demand social and political change. SDS sought nothing less thanto abolish poverty and extend democratic participation in America.

Over the next five years, organizers established a strong presence in numerous low-income, racially diverse urban neighborhoods in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, and Boston, as well as other cities. Rejecting the strategies of the old left and labor movement and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, activists sought to combine a number of single issues into a broader, more powerful coalition. Organizers never limited themselves to today's simple dichotomies of race vs. class or of identity politics vs. economic inequality. They actively synthesized emerging identity politics with class and coalition politics and with a drive for a more participatory welfare state, treating these diverse political approaches as inextricably intertwined. While common wisdom holds that the New Left rejected all state involvement as cooptative at best, Jennifer Frost traces the ways in which New Left and community activists did in fact put forward a prescriptive, even visionary, alternative to the welfare state.

After Students for a Democratic Society and its community organizing unit, the Economic Research and Action Project, disbanded, New Left and community participants went on to apply their strategies and goals to the welfare rights, women's liberation, and the antiwar movements. In her study of activism before the age of identity politics, Frost has given us the first full-fledged history of what was arguably the most innovative community organizing campaign in post-war American history.

For decades Stalinist literature, film, and art was almost exclusively deemed political propaganda imposed from on high, devoid of any aesthetic significance. In this book, Evgeny Dobrenko suggests an entirely new view: socialism did not produce Socialist Realism to "prettify reality"; rather, Socialist Realism itself produced socialism by elevating socialism to reality status, giving it material form. Without art, socialism could not have materialized. Bringing together the Soviet historical experience and Stalin-era art-novels, films, poems, songs, painting, photography, architecture, and advertising-Dobrenko examines Stalinism's representational strategies and demonstrates how real socialism was begotten of Socialist Realism. Socialist Realism, he concludes, was Stalinism's most effective sociopolitical institution.

Decades of Western Cold War propaganda were designed to depict socialism as inimical to genuine aesthetic acheivement. Now, in the wake of the Cold War, it is becoming possible to reassess the past and present cultural productions of artists with socialist inclinations. The essays in this volume begin such a reassessment, finding that socialist cultural production in the 20th century, both as the official culture of the socialist East and as an oppositional culture in the capitalist West, has been rich and varied.

The volume focuses on socialist culture in the industrialized world, primarily Eastern Europe and the West. An introductory essay overviews socialist cultural productions of the 20th century, while the chapters that follow address a wide range of topics. These include Soviet socialist realist fiction and film musicals, the socialist drama of Bertolt Brecht, and British and American leftist fiction. The volume demonstrates that propagandistic Cold War depictions of socialism as a threat to artistic expression were inaccurate and misleading.

During the Cold War, the West typically represented socialism as a threat to genuine aesthetic achievement. Nonetheless, socialist cultures have produced a rich and varied body of creative works, and socialism continues to be a living force in China and in many regions of the Third World. The essays in this volume begin to reassess the legacy of socialist cultural production in such areas of the world, which were outside the specific scope of influence of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War era.

The contributors give special attention to the strong anticolonial legacy of socialism and the important role played by socialism in subsequent attempts to build viable postcolonial cultural identities. Included are chapters on creative works from China, Africa, and the Caribbean, as well as the works of multicultural artists from the United States who stand in relation to Third World cultures. The essays show that global socialist cultural production was rich and varied during the twentieth century and continues to be so, despite the tribulations experienced by socialism itself. While some of the chapters address theoretical concerns central to all socialist cultures, the volume focuses primarily on socialist cultures in those parts of the globe that were never fully inside either the Soviet or the American bloc.

As global economic and population growth continues to skyrocket, increasingly strained resources have made one thing clear: the desperate need for an alternative to capitalism. In Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Real Utopia, Hans Baer outlines the urgent need to reevaluate historical definitions of socialism, commit to social equality and justice, and prioritize environmental sustainability. Democatic eco-socialism, as he terms it, is a system capable of mobilizing people around the world, albeit in different ways, to prevent on-going human socio-economic and environmental degradation, and anthropogenic climate change.

The Labour Church was an organisation fundamental to the British socialist movement during the formative years of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and Labour Party between 1891 and 1914. It was founded by the Unitarian Minister John Trevor in Manchester in 1891 and grew rapidly thereafter. Its political credentials were on display at the inaugural conference of the ILP in 1893, and the Labour Church proved a formative influence on many pioneers of British socialism. This book provides an analysis of the Labour Church, its religious doctrine, its socio-political function and its role in the cultural development of the early socialist arm of the labour movement. It includes a detailed examination of the Victorian morality and spirituality upon which the life of the Labour Church was built. Jacqui Turner challenges previously held assumptions that the Labour Church was irreligious and merely a political tool. She provides a new cultural picture of a diverse and inclusive organisation, committed to individualism and an individual relationship with God. As such, this book brings together two major controversies of late-Victorian Britain: the emergence of independent working-class politics and the decline of traditional religion in a work which will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of the labour movement.

This book presents a systematic challenge to the widely-held view that Marxism is unable to deal adequately with environmental issues. Jonathan Hughes responds to criticisms of Marx's theory of history from environmental theorists, and offers an interpretation and reconstruction of key Marxian concepts, designed to show that the theory need not have harmful ecological consequences. He argues that the communist principle "to each according to his needs" must rest on a conception of needs that may be satisfied by a modest and ecologically-feasible expansion of productive output.

This book is a meticulous argument for the contemporary value of Marx's democratic theory as an interpretive key for the postmodernism debates. Landry uses the works of Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard to represent the poststructuralist camp and the writings of Habermas to represent the rationalist camp. Viable social critique, argues Landry, mediates between pure social constructivist and pure realist metaphysics. Postmodernism, although critical of Marx, aided the broader project of critical social theory, particularly Marx's critique of social-material contexts of oppression. Indeed, significant positive affiliations among Marx, Habermas, and the poststructuralists are found in their commitment to criticizing ideological aspects of bourgeois Enlightenment rationality and modernity.

Landry employs a fruitful tension strategy as seeking rapprochement among the modern and postmodern positions on hotly debated contemporary issues such as subjectivity, criticism, and the nature of reason. Marxism continues to provide critical tools for articulating productive conflict within the postmodernism debates, advancing of strategies of critique beyond identity politics toward a more self-reflective ideological discussion of the multiple axes of power and oppression in political struggles over democracy. In this unique study, complex philosophical issues are described lucidly and their relevance for today is established compellingly.

In an age when innovative scholarly work is at an all-time high, the academy itself is being rocked by structural change. Funding is plummeting. Tenure increasingly seems a prospect for only the elite few. Ph.D.'s are going begging for even adjunct work. Into this tumult steps Cary Nelson, with a no- holds-barred account of recent developments in higher education.

Eloquent and witty, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical urges academics to apply the theoretical advances of the last twenty years to an analysis of their own practices and standards of behavior. In the process, Nelson offers a devastating critique of current inequities and a detailed proposal for change in the form of A Twelve-Step Program for Academia.

Using the cheap desktop publishing techniques of 'zine culture, and supplementing them with an extensive presence on the World Wide Web, the Bad Subjects Production Team has produced one of the only successful political 'zines in the US, as well as one of the first--and longest-running--on-line publications in the world.

Bad Subjects offers a critique of the post-1960s left in the United States, and attempts to reclaim a utopian vision for a political movement which has become fragmented and cynical about the possibility of social transformation. Indeed, Bad Subjects itself is simultaneously a valuable resource and an inspiration, a record of what politically-engaged cultural criticism can achieve, and an example of a progressive political community making use of new technologies.

Offering a way out of vulgar multiculturalism--based on separatism and the idea of "authenticity"--into a critical identity politics founded on coalitions, hybridity, and class consciousness, Bad Subjectsspeaks to readers both in and outside of the academy. Taking their cue from the feminist slogan, "the personal is political," and from Marxist injunctions to study "everyday life," Bad Subjects covers everything from popular culture and high technology to economic restructuring and political organizing, from Raymond Williams to The Dead Kennedys.

In the terrain of cultural criticism, Bad Subjects is an off-road vehicle roaring away from the beaten path.