This book--as a history of the German labor movement--offers a critique of the traditional emphasis on organization and ideology both through a survey of the literature and a presentation of new evidence, including a study of working-class opinion on a wide range of political and social issues, based on reports compiled by police spies in the pubs and bars of Hamburg between 1892 and 1914.

Social democracy is clearly at a dead end, but is it actually dead? The Three Worlds of Social Democracy explores the historical and theoretical path of the social democratic parties from their inception to the present day through a series of essays by high-profile experts in the field. Looking at the international picture, the book highlights the movement's spread to the postcolonial and post-communist countries of the Global East and South such as Eastern Europe, Latin America, India, and South Africa at the time it was considered past its prime in the West, a shift which is often ignored by mainstream analyses. However, the authors are not optimistic about its future - despite the rise of popular parties such as Greece's Syriza, a combination of international economic stagnation combined with an overall weakening of popular left-wing movements and a terrifying rise of extreme rightist parties paints a gloomy picture for the future of social democracy. This is one of the first truly global explorations of the methods, meanings, and limits of social democracy. This book will be of lasting value to students of politics and will further the ongoing debate about the future of social democratic politics across the modern world.

Capitalism and Socialism in Cuba documents the history of the attempts by a small island nation to survive and gain respectability within an everchanging international political economy. Professor Ruffin presents a detailed account of the social, political, and economic forces affecting Cuba's prospects for development under both capitalism and socialism. Part one of the study focuses on Cuba's historical association with capitalism and the relationship that Cuba established with the United States. Part two of the study delineates the nature of Cuba-Soviet relations and deals exclusively with the question of socialist dependency. Professor Ruffin's study is a systematic analysis of the internal (race and class formations) and external (capitalism and socialism) factors that have thus far shaped Cuban history.

Articles from the early Soviet press on social and cultural issues in the struggle to forge new socialist women and men.

In this age of overlapping and mutually reinforcing deep global crises (financial convulsions, global warming, mass migrations, militarism, inequality, selfish nation-states, etc.), there needs to be more realistic dialogue about radical alternatives to the status quo. Most literature produced heretofore has focused on the surface causes of these crises without much attention given to the sorts of major societal changes needed in order to deal with the crises we face. This book moves the debate beyond the critiques and the false or not fully realised alternatives, to focus on what can be termed "practical utopias". The contributors to this book outline a range of practical proposals for constructing pathways out of the global economic, ecological and social crisis. Varieties of Alternative Economic Systems eschews a single blueprint but insists on dealing directly with the deep structural problems and contradictions of contemporary global capitalism. It provides a diverse array of complementary proposals and perspectives that can inform both theoretical thinking and practical action. This volume will be of interest to academics and students who study political science, ecological economics, international politics and socialism.

Almost 80 years after Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International, there are now Trotskyist organizations in 57 countries, including most of Western Europe and Latin America. Yet no Trotskyist group has ever led a revolution or built an enduring mass, political party. Contemporary Trotskyism looks in detail at the influence, resilience and weaknesses of the British Trotskyist movement, from the 1970s to the present day. The book argues that to understand and explain the development, resilience and influence of Trotskyist groups, we need to analyse them as bodies that comprise elements of three types of organization: the political party, the sect and the social movement. It is the properties of these three facets of organization and the interplay between them that gives rise to the most characteristic features of the Trotskyist movement: frenetic activity, rampant divisions, inter-organizational hostility, authoritarian and charismatic leadership, high membership turnover and ideological rigidity. Trotskyist groups have been involved in a wide range of important social movements including trade unions, student unions, anti-war, anti-racist and anti-fascist groups. While their energy and activity in civil society have had some success, their influence has never been reflected in votes or seats at elections even after the financial crisis. Drawing on extensive archival research, as well as interviews with many of the leading protagonists and activists within the Trotskyist milieu, this is essential reading for students, activists and researchers with an interest in the far left, social movements and contemporary British political history.

Almost 80 years after Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International, there are now Trotskyist organizations in 57 countries, including most of Western Europe and Latin America. Yet no Trotskyist group has ever led a revolution or built an enduring mass, political party. Contemporary Trotskyism looks in detail at the influence, resilience and weaknesses of the British Trotskyist movement, from the 1970s to the present day. The book argues that to understand and explain the development, resilience and influence of Trotskyist groups, we need to analyse them as bodies that comprise elements of three types of organization: the political party, the sect and the social movement. It is the properties of these three facets of organization and the interplay between them that gives rise to the most characteristic features of the Trotskyist movement: frenetic activity, rampant divisions, inter-organizational hostility, authoritarian and charismatic leadership, high membership turnover and ideological rigidity. Trotskyist groups have been involved in a wide range of important social movements including trade unions, student unions, anti-war, anti-racist and anti-fascist groups. While their energy and activity in civil society have had some success, their influence has never been reflected in votes or seats at elections even after the financial crisis. Drawing on extensive archival research, as well as interviews with many of the leading protagonists and activists within the Trotskyist milieu, this is essential reading for students, activists and researchers with an interest in the far left, social movements and contemporary British political history.

Much loved in his own era, William Morris has inspired Prime Ministers (Clement Attlee), artists and eco-socialists (John Bellamy Foster). Ferociously opposed to capitalism and inequality, he sought to embrace humanity with passion, commitment, energy and belief working vigorously for a free, green and non-hierarchical future. All this - with his distrust of conventional politicians and with his belief that people can and must change the world - resonates in social movement politics today. This book offers a fresh perspective: a transhistorical approach presenting Morris's libertarian politics through exploring his intellectual and cultural heritage and considering practical-political issues, actions and aims. Today we see how class intersects with gender, politics with technology and economics, ecology with industry and economics, art with history. John Blewitt shows how these - and more - intersect with each other and with power, domination, resistance, emergence and transcendence. Morris helps us grapple with these challenges offering an ethics and a politics embracing socialism, communism, anarchism and feminism. Hark the rolling of the thunder! Lo the sun! and lo thereunder Riseth wrath, and hope, and wonder, And the host comes marching on.

The age of party democracy has passed, argues Peter Mair in Ruling the Void. The major parties have become so disconnected from society that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form. First published in 2013, Ruling the Void presciently observed that the widening gap between citizens and their political leaders posed a crisis of legitimacy for the governing class, and was fuelling populist mobilizations against it. Europe's political elites had remodelled themselves as a homogeneous professional class, withdrawing into state institutions that offer relative stability in a world of fickle voters. Meanwhile, non-democratic agencies and practices proliferated - not least among them the European Union itself. Mair weighs the impact of these changes, and offers an authoritative assessment of the prospects for popular political representation today, not only in the varied democracies of Britain and the EU but throughout the developed world. With a new Introduction by Chris Bickerton, author of The European Union: A Citizen's Guide.

Everyone knows that in socialism private companies are replaced by state enterprises which employ wage-workers in order to produce profits which accrue to the state. 'Not so!' say the authors of this book. In the nineteenth century, socialists as different as Marx and Kropotkin were agreed that socialism means a marketless, moneyless, wageless, classless, stateless world society. Subsequently this vision of non-market socialism has been developed by currents such as the Anarcho-Communists, Impossibilists, Council Communists, Bordigists and Situationists. By tracing this development, this book challenges the assumptions of both supporters and opponents of what is conventionally regarded as socialism.

An in-depth study of New Labour's model of government and the political challenges it faces. Joel Krieger analyses the interaction of global processes and domestic politics from the organization of production to the formation of class, ethnic and gender based collective identities. The book considers how these processes compromise sovereignty, complicate national identities, forge new political agendas, create electoral volatility and complicate the art of politics.

This widely acclaimed book is a comprehensive and authoritative account of the history and ideas of the Frankfurt School - the most important and influential group of leftist intellectuals, philosophers and social theorists in Germany this century.

Wiggershaus traces the history of the School from its establishment in the early years of the Weimar Republic, through the period of exile in America, to the post-war phase in Frankfurt and the emergence of a younger generation of critical theorists in the 1960s.

He combines biographical profiles of the key figures in the Frankfurt School - including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Fromm, Neumann, Pollock, Kirchheimer and Habermas - with a rigorous analysis of their main theories and ideas. Through the careful use of documentary material, much of which has only recently become available, Wiggershaus is able to shed new light on internal disputes and controversies among members of the School.

"The Frankfurt School "will be welcomed by students and researchers in the social sciences and philosophy, modern history and German studies, as well as anyone interested in the history and influence of the Frankfurt School.

"One of the most comprehensive and coherent restatements of Marx's theoretical position ever written." Saturday Review

This book explores the lives of young Bulgarians in the Cold War era when the Communist Party saw dance hits like "The Twist" as a menace to youth and society. It investigates the Party's efforts to shape youth into "socialist personalities" and to create a socialist mass culture in the face of "Westernization."

On the basis of biographical interviews, the author takes a critical look at the popular view of youth enthusiasm for Western rock and lifestyles as resistance. Young Bulgarians scarcely challenged the socialist order. But at the same time, the Party failed to impose its notion of conformity on the self-proclaimed "Beatles generation."

"Karin Taylor" is a researcher in history and cultural studies with a background in journalism and advertising. Her recent research focuses on Southeast Europe.

This book makes the case for an inclusive form of socialist feminism that puts women with multiple disadvantages at its heart. It moves feminism beyond contemporary disputes, including those between some feminists and some trans women. Combining academic rigour with accessibility, the book demystifies some key feminist terms, including patriarchy and intersectionality, and shows their relevance to feminist politics today. It argues that the analysis of gender cannot be isolated from that of class or race, and that the needs of most women will not be met in an economy based on the pursuit of profit. Throughout, the book asserts the social, economic and human importance of the unpaid caring and domestic work that has been traditionally done by women. It concludes that there are some grounds for optimism about a future that could be both more feminist and more socialist. -- .

George Orwell has had a profound influence on modern politics and culture. He is regularly invoked as an authority by journalists, commentators and politicians, and his works speak with increasing relevance to our polarised and media-saturated society. Stephen Ingle explores Orwell's character, his life and his beliefs by guiding the reader through the main events, private and public, that shaped his life and major works. This includes his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War as well as the writing of classics like Animal Farm and 1984. The book also reconsiders Orwell's legacy and contextualises his contemporary resonance. Orwell, it is argued, is more concerned with morality than ideology. This book will be of significant interest to students and other readers interested in Orwell's life as well as his profound contribution to the history of social and political thought and English literature.

This book makes the case for an inclusive form of socialist feminism that puts women with multiple disadvantages at its heart. It moves feminism beyond contemporary disputes, including those between some feminists and some trans women. Combining academic rigour with accessibility, the book demystifies some key feminist terms, including patriarchy and intersectionality, and shows their relevance to feminist politics today. It argues that the analysis of gender cannot be isolated from that of class or race, and that the needs of most women will not be met in an economy based on the pursuit of profit. Throughout, the book asserts the social, economic and human importance of the unpaid caring and domestic work that has been traditionally done by women. It concludes that there are some grounds for optimism about a future that could be both more feminist and more socialist. -- .

Analyzing the last 10 years of British parliament, contributors examine the age of Tony Blair as Prime Minister and the time of Labour Party dominance as it comes to an end. Comparing previous Labour Party governments to the current, scholars reflect on the past, present, and future of British politics and whether a Labour dominated government will outlast Blair's period in office. Offering opinions and political forecasting from some of the most respected experts in their fields, Blair's political history is examined and critiqued, contemplating the outcome and effects of his decisions and policies as Prime Minister since 1997.

The Triumph of Politics offers a comparative and historical interpretation of Venezuela's Chavez, Bolivia's Morales and Ecuador's Correa - South America's most prominent '21st century socialists'. It argues that the claims of these 21st century socialists should be taken seriously even though not necessarily at face value. The authors show how the consensual market oriented policymaking that characterized almost all of South America in the 1990s has now given way to something quite different. Polarization and intense political conflict have returned to much of the region. Although the Left has not always been the beneficiary of this changed pattern, the 21st century' governments of Chavez, Morales and Correa have been agenda setters. The questions raised by their emergence, style of governance and policy orientations resonate across Latin America and beyond. It is likely that the kind of politics with which they have been associated will be influential in the region for quite some time to come.

A new progressive generation is on the rise in the United States, reflected in the mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America (90,000 mostly twentysomething members), Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and perhaps most famously of all, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC and the Rise of a New American Left is the first book to look closely at this new politics. Propelled by interviews with AOC and the other key figures and organizations who have shaken up American politics, the book includes portraits of groups like Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement, and Justice Democrats, explaining who they are, where they come from, and what they want. Investigating the panopy of strategies employed by the new movements and their relationship to politicians from Bernie Sanders to Nancy Pelosi, the book describes how the generational focus on insurgent electoral campaigns both aims to transform the Democratic Party and threatens to be captured by it. Written with panache by a member of this rising generation, this book immerses the reader in a youth culture the likes of which haven't been seen since Sixties.

Circumstances impelled Victor Grossman, a U.S. Army draftee stationed in Europe, to flee a military prison sentence: especially the icy pressures of the McCarthy Era. Grossman – a.k.a. Steve Wechsler, a committed leftist since his years at Harvard and, briefly, as a factory worker – left his barracks in Bavaria one August day in 1952, and, in a panic, swam across the Danube River from the Austrian U.S. Zone to the Soviet Zone. Fate – i.e., the Soviets – landed him in East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic. There he remained, observer and participant, husband and father, as he watched the rise and successes, the travails, and the eventual demise of the GDR socialist experiment. A Socialist Defector is the story, told in rare, personal detail, of an activist and writer who grew up in the U.S. free-market economy; spent thirty-eight years in the GDR’s nationally owned, centrally administered economy; and continues to survive, given whatever the market can bear in today’s united Germany. Having been a freelance journalist and traveling lecturer – and the only person in the world to hold diplomas from both Harvard and the GDR’s Karl Marx University – Grossman is able to offer insightful, often ironic, reflections and reminiscences, comparing the good and bad sides of life in all three of the societies he has known. His account focuses especially on the socialism he saw and lived – the GDR’s goals and achievements; its repressive measures and stupidities – which, he argues, offers lessons now in our search for solutions to the grave problems facing our world. This is a fascinating and unique historical narrative; political analysis told with jokes, personal anecdotes, and without bombast.

For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People's Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.