In Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics Nick Ellison argues that the concept of equality is the cornerstone of the British socialist tradition. He examines the alternative understandings of equality which have divided the labour party since 1930 and traces the origins of the current shift away from concern for social and economic equality to an increasing emphasis on liberty and individual entitlement.
Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics is also concerned with contemporary attitudes within the Labour party, discussing the importance of the concept to debates about citizenship and market socialism.

When Neil Kinnock took over the leadership of the Labour Party in 1983, he inherited a divided organization, saddled with an array of unpopular left-wing policies. When he resigned in 1992, Labour was a radically different party, tightly organized and committed to working within the framework of a privately-owned market economy. "Crisis and Transformation: The Labour Party Since 1979" tells the story of Labour's struggle to survive during the turbulent years in opposition. The book charts the internal strife of the early 1980s, the transformation of Labour's structure, strategy and policies under Kinnock's leadership, and the party's rise to a position at the brink of power in the run-up to the 1992 election, at which its hopes were dashed again. Eric Shaw has provided the first systematic analysis of the evolution of Labour's policies, power structure and strategies during the 1980s and up until the present day. Using new sources and documents, he looks at how and why the transformation occurred, examining the pressures and constraints impeding the modernization process of the party, its shift to the political middle ground and the new professionalism of Labour's campaigning and o

Liberating Literature is, primarily, a bold and revealing book about feminist writers, readers, and texts. But is is also much more than that. Within this volume Maria Lauret manages to look with fresh vision at the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s; socialist women's writing of the 1930s; the emergence of the New Left; and the second wave women's movement and its cultural practices.
Lauret's historicisation of feminist political writing allows for a new definition of the genre, and enables her to illuminate the profound influence and importance of African-American women's writing. Well-grounded historically and theoretically, Liberating Literature speaks about and to a political and cultural tradition, and offers stunning new readings of both familiar and neglected novels within the feminist canon. Reader and students of feminist fiction cannot afford to be without this major new work.

"Liberating Literature" re-examines the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s; socialist women's writing of the 1930s; the emergence of the New Left; and the second wave women's movement and its cultural practices. This historical study of feminist political writing recognizes the profound influence and importance of African-American women's writing. It offers new readings of both familiar and neglected novels within the feminist canon.

A collection of essays on market socialism, originally published in Dissent between 1985 and 1993. Among other topics, they take issue with the traditional view that socialism means rejecting the use of markets to organise economic activities, and question the reliance upon markets.

This volume constitutes both an attack on modern left wing literary theory - the main product of the last Marxist renaissance in the past thirty years - and a defence of the one element of Marxism which, in the general collapse, modern theorists have been happiest to lose, its economic materialism. It traces Marxist theory from its beginnings in Hegelian idealism to its end in Althusser's structuralism, and concludes that while Marxist economics will not work, and the type of revolution prophesied was fantasy, the principle of historical materialism remains intact and defensible. This will be a key text in literary and cultural studies as well as being of interest to students on philosophy and sociology courses.

This is a collection of essays on market socialism, originally published in Dissent between 1985 and 1993. Among other topics, they take issue with the traditional view that socialism means rejecting the use of markets to organise economic activities, and question the reliance upon markets.

For Cuba's supporters, health is the most commonly cited evidence of the socialist system's success. Even critics often concede that this is the country's saving grace. Cuba's health statistics are indeed extraordinary. This small island outperforms virtually all of its neighboring countries and all countries of the same level of economic development. Some of its health statistics rival wealthy industrialized countries. Moreover, these health outcomes have resulted against all odds. Setting out to unravel this puzzle, the author finds that Cuba possesses an unusually high level of popular participation and cooperation in the implementation of health policy. This has been achieved with the help of a longstanding government that prioritizes public health, and has enough political influence to compel the rest of the community to do the same. On the other hand, popular participation in decision-making regarding health policy is minimal, which contrasts with the image of popular participation often promoted. Political elites design and impose health policy, allowing little room for other health sector groups to meaningfully contribute to or protest official decisions. This is a problem because aspects of health care that are important to those who use the system or work within it can be neglected if they do not fit within official priorities. The author remains, overall, supportive of health achievement in Cuba. The country's preventive arrangements, its collective prioritization of key health areas, the improvements in public access to health services through the expansion of health facilities and the provision of free universal care are among the accomplishments that set it apart. The sustainability and progress of these achievements, however, must involve open recognition and public discussion of weaker aspects of the health system.

During the years between the publication of the first of his two major works, The Structure of Social Action (1937), and the writing of his second, The Social System (1951), Talcott Parsons was primarily engaged in political activity through the Office of Strategic Services in its efforts to bring about the defeat of the Third Reich and to set the stage for a democratic reconstruction of postwar Germany. Beyond Parsons' analytic skills the essays reveal a dedicated liberal scholar, far removed from the stereotypes with which he came to be pilloried by later critics. The essays in this collection are the by-products of that special period of intense commitment. They reflect a single dominant theme: National Socialist Germany is seen as a tragically flawed social system but one requiring the same rigorous analysis Parsons brought to more normal and normative systems. Since virulent authoritarianism and even more virulent anti-Semitism were the dominant traits of that system as he saw it, Parsons dedicated many pages to each aspect. While he did not know the full horror of the Nazi "war against the Jews" he was able to develop a theoretical framework that continues to be a foundation stone for the analysis of national socialism. Gerhardt's editorial labors in the Parsons archive at Harvard have yielded nothing less than a "new book" by the foremost American sociological theorist of his time. This collection of both published and unpublished writings conveys Parsons' cohesive intent. To these otherwise fugitive and neglected essays Gerhardt contributes an introductory essay of her own: in part biography, in part intellectual and social history. She discovered Parsons work on National Socialism while studying his sociology of the professions and his use of medical practice to demonstrate how social science could become an antidote for fascism and authoritarianism. Uta Gerhardt is director of the Medical Sociology Unit at Justus Liebig University, Giessen. She has taught sociology at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Konstanz, the University of California at Berkeley, the San Francisco Medical School, the University of London, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The present volume comes out of her sabbatical year as Research Affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, of Harvard University.

"The American Radical" tells the story of American democracy from the late 18th century to the present, through the lives of the women and men who have fought to advance it. The original biographical portraits presented in this collection show how, in every period of history, Americans from various backgrounds have stood as activists, authors and artists to challenge the powerful. The editors have assembled a group of writers on the radical tradition, who introduce the movements, ideas and struggles of the revolutionaries, rebels and reformers important to the American national experience; they include independence fighters, Labourists, suffragists, socialists, feminists, pacifists, environmentalists, and campaigners for social justice and the civil rights of the oppressed.

The Labour governments of 1945-51 are among the most important and controversial in modern British history, and have been the focus of extensive research over the last fifteen years. In this study, Robert Pearce makes the results of this research available in a concise and accessible form, whilst encouraging students to formulate their own interpretations. He looks at the main political personalities of the period, sets their work in the context of Labour history since 1900, and examines their domestic, foreign and imperial achievements.

This text documents the economic development of East Asian countries in order to highlight the beneficial techniques used to increase growth. Socialist and capitalist structures are discussed, complete with an analysis of the future extent of interaction between East Asian countries.

This study describes and analyses the new social movements that have arisen in India over the past two decades, in particular the anti-caste movement (of both the untouchables and the lower-middle castes), the women's liberation movement, the farmers' movement (centred on struggles arising out of their integration into a state-controlled capitalist market), and the environmental movements (opposition to destructive development, including resistance to big dam projects and the search for alternatives). Rooted in participant observation, it focuses on the ideologies and self-understanding of the movements themselves. The central themes of this book are the origin of movements in the socio-economic contradictions of post-independence India; their effect on political developments, in particular the disintegration of Congress hegemony; their relation to "traditional Marxist" theory and Communist practice; and their groping toward a synthesis of theory and practice that constitutes a new social vision distinct from traditional Marxism.

'Tantalizing prose' - TLS Jean Jaures was the celebrated French Socialist Party leader, assassinated in 1914 for trying to use diplomacy and industrial action to prevent the outbreak of war. Published just a few years before his death, his magisterial A Socialist History of the French Revolution has endured for over a century as one of the most influential accounts of the French Revolution ever to be published. Written in the midst of his activities as leader of the Socialist Party and editor of its newspaper, L'Humanite, Jaures intended the book to serve as both a guide and an inspiration to political activity; even now it can serve to do just that. Jaures's verve, originality and willingness to criticise all players in this epic drama make this a truly moving addition to the shelf of great books on the French Revolution. Now available for the first time in paperback, Mitchell Abidor's abridged translation of Jaures's original six volumes makes this exceptional work truly accessible to an Anglophone audience.

The collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe continues to have profound and far-reaching implications. In the former socialist states, immediate concerns are largely economic and, in particular, the move to privatization. However, these implications are not restricted to Europe. They have also had a powerful effect on those countries which continue as one-party states under some form of communist government. In "Revitalizing Socialist Enterprise", the authors place privatization in the wider context of restructuring governments, industries, enterprises and management. The book also examines the similarities and differences between former Eastern European socialist countries and those which are still socialist but, nevertheless, are also engaged in revitalization. The problems of these two groups are clearly inter-connected. While the need for change across most countries has a common origin - an inability to make the communist economic system work well - the "triggers" for major change have been varied. Divided into three parts, the book introduces the subject, and looks at the process in seven of the former socialist states of Eastern Europe and the CIS.

The essays in this volume trace an intellectual odyssey, a search for a genuinely critical theory. The book begins with the question of why the Frankfurt School as well as other neo-Marxist and post-Marxist analysts, both in the West and in dissident circles in the East, failed to produce a critical theory of Soviet socialism or to establish a dynamic relationship with contemporary social movements. As the political struggle in Eastern Europe intensified, the author of this book disengaged from his own efforts to reconstruct a critical Marxism. Instead, he attempts a reconstruction of democratic theory based on civil society rather than class categories, and with a critical relevance not only to the transition from state socialism but more generally to the universal goal of emancipation.

The 1992 Earth Summit clearly demonstrated the reluctance of Western capitalism to change the ideology and practices which perpetuate environmental degradation and social injustice. The green movement itself has largely lost direction whilst Marxism no longer appears a tenable solution to global inequality.
Beginning from the shared objective of Marxism, Anarchism and deep ecology, that people must control their own lives and their relationship with their environment, Eco-Socialism presents a broad and incisive analysis of how these differing approaches can be synthesized into a new radical green politics.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203423364

First published in 1993. This title is the product of a conference designed to throw light on some central questions about the phase of programmatic renewal from the 1950s to the then-present-day. The evidence presented in this volume pursues to demonstrate the existence of a European 'wave' of social democratic programmatic renewal effort during the 1980s, the sweep of which, the author argues, being broader than the previous renewal wave in the 1950s.

Central planning might be disappearing from large parts of what was the socialist world but viable economic systems are yet to emerge to take its place. Integrating these countries within the international economic system and developing market economies within them are likely to remain amongst the most pressing of economic problems for the forseeable future. "The Socialist Economies and the Transition to the Market" is unique in providing a detailed account of each of the individual socialist countries as well as an analysis of the various routes they might take to the market. Whilst some problems are common to all command economies, others are confined to particular countries. Consequently this unique work of reference includes chapters which outline the main feature of Soviet-type economies, foreign trade and its reform, and the various schemes which have been put forward for the transformation of these economies. But it also includes chapters on individual countries, ranging from Cuba and Albania to the Soviet Union and China.

First published in 1993. This title is the product of a conference designed to throw light on some central questions about the phase of programmatic renewal from the 1950s to the then-present-day. The evidence presented in this volume pursues to demonstrate the existence of a European 'wave' of social democratic programmatic renewal effort during the 1980s, the sweep of which, the author argues, being broader than the previous renewal wave in the 1950s.

The essays in this volume address the industrial, commercial, urban and regional reforms of China's planned economy during the 1980s. The emphasis is on the dominating institutional and bureaucratic presence of the state even as it sought to loosen the pre-1979 vertically structured centralised command system and to introduce some market principles to stimulate economic activity. The essays fall into four categories: theoretical and policy discussions and debates at the central leadership level; reform of the urban economy and of inter-regional relations; industrial and commercial reforms; and the rise and position of the new entrepreneurial class. Many of the essays draw on interviews with Chinese economic officials in the Central China city of Wuhan and therefore this is the only study that uses local data on actual operations of reforms from a Chinese city; the other sources are the Chinese press and Chinese official and scholarly journals. In each of the categories there are pieces from different points in the chronological process of reform. This study begins with the first theoretical discussions among China's economists and top political leaders in the late 1970s and concludes with experiments with bankruptcy and stock markets in the late 1980s. The countervailing heavy presence of the state at both the policy and the practical levels throughout the reform decade is its unifying theme.

Originally published in 1895, this title provides fascinating insights into the development of socialism in the decades prior to the explosion of 20th century socialist revolutions. Kaufmann examines the influences of Christian ideas and European society on socialism to give a fuller picture of the movement at the turn of the century as well as offers his predictions for the future of socialism in Europe. This title is ideal for students of sociology and history, particularly students interested in the development of modern intellectual movements.

Featuring the most important and enduring works from Marx's enormous corpus, this collection ranges from the Hegelian idealism of his youth to the mature socialism of his later works. Organized both topically and in rough chronological order, the selections (many of them in the translations of Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat) include writings on historical materialism, excerpts from Capital, and political works.

With close reference to a range of Shaw's texts - Fabian tracts to the plays and prefaces - Gareth Griffiths draws out the central theoretical messages of the master intellectual's epic engagement with politics. Shaw's intentions, his methods and the levels of abstraction of his thought are related by Griffiths both to his writings and to the dominant questions and movements of the day.
Part One is an intellectual biography and an account of Shaw's key concerns and of his Fabianism. Part Two looks at areas approached by him as long-standing historical dramas that demanded immediate action, and includes a challenging exposition of his attitude to women in his writings, in society and in contemporary politics.


eBook available with sample pages: 0203210832

The work of Raymond Williams has inspired radical intellectuals engaged in cultural politics and influenced many academic disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. This book examines the assumptions and limitations of Williams's political vision and commitments. In the spirit of appreciative criticism, this international collection of essays analyzes the neglected yet central tensions in Williams's thought. The contributors explore the implications of his work for a wide range of disciplines including education, cultural studies, history, literature, mass communication, and drama. The first section, "Culture is Ordinary" examines Williams's deconstruction of the false division between what he considers "common culture" and a "whole way of life". The second part, "Education From Below", explores Williams's conception of meaningful democratic participation in cultural institutions such as schools, taking into account the dilemmas that Leftist and feminist educators experience in the varied national and regional contexts of neo-conservatism. The final section is entitled "Culture's Others: Culture or Cultural Imperialism".