In this book, first published in 1989, Ken Post and Phil Wright provide a critical analysis of socialist construction in underdeveloped countries. Pointing out that all the socialist revolutions of the twentieth century have occurred in underdeveloped peripheral capitalist countries, they focus on the relationship between socialism and underdevelopment. They bring together the insights of both development theory and the political economy of socialism, and draw upon their direct experience of the state socialist societies as diverse as North Korea, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union.

What's gone wrong with capitalism and how should governments respond? What does the future hold for the Left in the UK in the face of the austerity straitjacket around our politics and media? Anthony Crosland's The Future of Socialism (1956) provided a creed for governments of the centre left until the global banking crisis. Now Peter Hain presents an evidence-based case for a radical alternative to the neo-liberal economic agenda. A substantial new Afterword outlines what the Labour Party needs to do following the 2015 UK General Election to win again by returning to its core values of decency, social justice, equality and prosperity for all. A rousing alternative to the neoliberal, right-wing orthodoxy of our era, Hain's book is now even more essential reading for everyone interested in the future of the left.

The 2010s were a decade of foodbanks, riots, and the rebirth of political alternatives. Looking to escape a future of rising debt, falling living standards and climate meltdown, a set of movements were born across the globe, led by students, workers and the tent cities of Occupy. A new wave of optimistic, radical young people were building mass movements outside the political bubble, rejecting the neo-liberal consensus and the enrichment of the 1%, and laying the foundations of a new left. Eight years later, Bernie Sanders was favorite to clinch the Democratic Party nomination, and Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum had taken over the Labour Party in Britain, promising 'a new kind of politics'. But as the new left poured into Labour, it was overwhelmed by older, institutional forces on both left and right. Four years after Corbyn became leader, after bitter-infighting and a Brexit-fuelled strategic crisis, it all fell apart. This is the inside story of how the left came back to life in the 2010s, from a man who found himself at the centre of events - featuring unparalleled access and a range of interviews with key left-wing figures. Influential journalist and activist Michael Chessum explains how this movement was built, why it failed, and what it needs to do now.

Political parties with activists are in decline due to various external shocks. Societal changes, like the emergence of new technologies of communication have diminished the role and number of activists, while party elites increasingly can make do without grassroots activists. However, recent scholarship concerning different democracies has shown how activism still matters for representation. This book contributes to this literature by analyzing the unique case of the Uruguayan Frente Amplio (FA), the only mass-organic, institutionalized leftist party in Latin America. Using thick description, systematic process tracing, and survey research, this case study highlights the value of an organization-centered approach for understanding parties' role in democracy. Within the FA, organizational rules grant activists a significant voice, which imbues activists' participation with a strong sense of efficacy. This book is an excellent resource for scholars and students of Latin America and comparative politics who are interested in political parties and the challenges confronting new democracies.

Arguing that the hegemony of the neoliberal/capitalist nexus must be challenged if we are to address the proliferating challenges facing our world, this inspiring book explains how democracy can revive the political fortunes of the left. * Explores issues central to the civil uprisings that swept the world in 2011, drawing profound connections between democracy and neoliberalism in an urban context * Features in-depth analysis of key political theorists such as Gramsci; Lefebvre; Ranciere; Deleuze and Guattari; and Hardt and Negri * Advocates the reframing of democracy as a personal and collective struggle to discover the best in ourselves and others * Includes empirical analysis of recent instances of collective action

The New Labour Government has placed great emphasis on service delivery. It has provided performance information in the form of Annual Reports, Public Service Agreements, Performance Assessment Frameworks, and a host of other targets. But has New Labour delivered on its welfare reform? Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms: provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of the welfare reforms of New Labour's first term; compares achievements with stated aims; examines success in the wider context; contributes to the debate on the problems of evaluating social policy. It is essential reading for academics and students of social policy and provides important information for academics and students in a wide range of areas such as politics, sociology, public policy, public administration and public management interested in welfare reform and policy evaluation.

What has happened to the religious left? If there is a religious left, why don't we hear more about it? The academics and activists who write this rich volume, edited by Rebecca Alpert, argue passionately on topics that concern all of us. Quoting from the Bible, the Torah, the Qur'an, the teachings of Buddha, as well as Native American folklore, they make the voices of the religious left heard -- teaching lessons of peace and liberation. As this invaluable sourcebook shows, the religious left is committed to issues of human rights and dignity. Answering questions of identity and ideology, the essays included here stem from the \u0022culture wars\u0022 that have divided orthodox and liberal believers. Responding to the needs of and raised by marginalized social groups, the writers discuss economic issues and religious politics as they champion equal rights, and promote the teaching of progressive vision. Containing insightful perspectives of adherents to many faiths, Voices of the Religious Left makes it clear that there is a group dedicated to instilling the values of justice and freedom. They are far from silent. All of the essays in this collection \u0022...represent the power of the written word as a vehicle for advocacy and social change. ..It is my hope that the readers of these essays will themselves feel compelled to think more about the importance of taking a stand on issues from religious perspectives, and to act on something that compels them.\u0022 --Rabbi Rebecca Alpert

The 59th annual volume of the Socialist Register examines the growth of corporate power and other important organizational trends in global capitalism. It rejects such notions as stakeholder capitalism and reviews the organisation and strategies of unions and the left, and its current and potential practices, as it searches for new routes to socialism.

The 50th volume of the Socialist Register is dedicated to the theme of 'registering class' in light of the spread and deepening of capitalist social relations around the globe. Today's economic crisis has been deployed to extend the class struggle from above while many resistances have been explicitly cast in terms of class struggles from below. This volume addresses how capitalist classes are reorganizing as well as the structure and composition of working classes in the 21st century.

Historians of political history are fascinated by the rise and fall of political parties and, for twentieth-century Britain, most obviously the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberal Party. What is often overlooked in this political development is the work of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which was a formative influence in the growth of the political Labour movement and its leaders in the late nineteenth century and the early to mid-twentieth century. The ILP supplied the Labour Party with some of its leading political figures, such as Ramsay MacDonald, and moved the Labour Party along the road of parliamentary socialism. However, divided over the First World War and challenged by the Labour Party becoming socialist in 1918, it had to face the fact that it was no longer the major parliamentary socialist party in Britain. Although it recovered after the First World War, rising to between 37,000 and 55,000 members, it came into conflict with the Labour Party and two Labour governments over their gradualist approach to socialism. This eventually led to its disaffiliation from the Labour Party in 1932 and its subsequent fragmentation into pro-Labour, pro-communist and independent groups. Its new revolutionary policy divided its members, as did the Abyssinian crisis, the Spanish Civil War and the Moscow Show Trials. By the end of the 1930s, seeking to re-affiliate to the Labour Party, it had been reduced to 2,000 to 3,000 members, was a sect rather than a party and had earned Hugh Dalton's description that it was the 'ILP flea'. In the following monograph, Keith Laybourn analyses the dynamic shifts in this history across 25 years. This scholarship will prove foundational for scholars and researchers of modern British history and socialist thought in the twentieth century.

Although contemporary China is a repressive state, protests and demonstrations have increased almost tenfold between 2005 and 2015. This is an astounding statistic when one considers that Marxist-Leninist regimes of the past tolerated little or no public dissent. How can protests become more common as the state becomes more repressive? This collection helps to answer this compelling question through in-depth analyses of several Chinese protest movements and state responses. The chapters examine the opportunities and constraints for protest mobilization, and explains their importance for understanding contemporary Chinese society.

Socialism has made a dramatic comeback in the 21st century. In the wake of financial crisis, mounting inequality and social decay, it seems more relevant than ever. Nobody who seeks to understand contemporary politics can ignore it. In this book, leading scholar Peter Lamb identifies the key ideas and principles of socialism and explores different (often conflicting) interpretations that have appeared in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, from the early nineteenth century until today. He explores the different ways that socialist thinkers have conceptualised community, equality and liberty and shows how, despite overlap with other traditions, socialists have combined these ideas in common and distinct ways that make the socialist tradition uniquely valuable. Lamb goes on to trace the recent re-emergence of these ideas, and explain what will be required for such a revival to be popular, powerful and sustained. This book will be invaluable to any student or scholar interested in political theory, socialism, communism or political ideologies, as well as to general readers striving to understand contemporary politics throughout the world.

The success of Jeremy Corbyn's left-led Labour Party and Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign revived a political idea many had thought dead. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system look like today? In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin magazine, argues that socialism offers the means to achieve economic equality, and also to fight other forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. The book both explores socialism's history and presents a realistic vision for its future. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.

Although there is an established historiography on women's roles during the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), little has been written on Nationalist women in the Republican-held zones. Women were the anti-Republican resisters of the first hour in the capital but they have been largely overlooked in the historical record. During the bitter civil conflict a sector of dissident women helped to create a subversive and clandestine national Catholic space in the heart of Republican Madrid. By examining the vital and invisible role played by women within Madrid's 'fifth column' this monograph offers a new contribution to the gender historiography of the Spanish Civil War and re-evaluates the significance of women in the Nationalist war effort. It explores how and why a sector of Falangist and Catholic women decided to mobilise against the legally constituted Popular Front government in support of an undemocratic military coup. While women's subversive activities often involved the transgression of traditional gender norms, their social and political agency arose within the conditions and precepts of Catholicism and was conceptualised and imagined within new national-Catholic discourses of 'holy Crusade.'

What is socialism? Does it have a future, or has it become an outdated ideology in the 21st century? This Very Short Introduction considers the major theories in socialism, and explores its historical evolution from the French Revolution to the present day. Michael Newman argues that socialism has always been a diverse doctrine, while nevertheless containing a central core of interconnected values and goals: a critique of capitalism; an optimistic view of human beings; and the belief that it is possible to establish societies based on egalitarianism, social solidarity, and co-operation. In this new edition, he draws on case studies such as Cuba, Sweden, and Bolivia, to consider attempts to implement socialism in practice, before discussing New Left challenges to conventional notions of socialism on such questions as feminism, climate change, and direct action. Rejecting the widespread view that socialism is an out-dated doctrine, Newman argues that it remains ultimately relevant in today's world. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books ar the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

PRIVATE SECURITY focuses on practical, real-world concepts and applications and includes detailed coverage of everything from industry background and related law to premise, retail, business, employment, and information/computer security as well as investigation, surveillance, and even homeland security. Throughout, the emphasis is on giving readers a clear sense of the numerous career opportunities available in this rapidly expanding field - including real-world insight on how to get a job in private security, concrete information on the skills needed, and succinct overviews of day-to-day job responsibilities.

This ambitious volume examines revolutionary situations during a non-revolutionary historical conjuncture--the neoliberal era. The last three decades have seen an increase in the number of political upheavals that challenge existing power structures, many of them taking the form of urban revolts. This book compellingly explores a series of such upheavals--in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Indonesia, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, sub-Saharan Africa (including Congo, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso) and Egypt. Each chapter studies the ways in which protest movements developed into insurgent challenges to state power, and the strategies that regimes have deployed to contain and repress revolt. In addition to empirical chapters, the book engages in theorization of revolution, dealing with questions such as the patterning of revolution in contemporary history, the relationship between class struggle and social movements, and the prospects of socialist revolution in the twenty-first century.

This ground-breaking book weaves together insights from the children and youth studies literature and critical development studies. Debunking the idea of childhood and youth as self-evident social categories, the author unravels how these generational constructs are (re)constituted and experienced in relational terms in development contexts spanning both the Global South and the Global North. Running through these chapters is a fundamental concern with age, gender and generation as key principles of social differentiation. This is developed in Part 1 at a theoretical level, and applied to everyday contexts, including school, work, migration and the street in Part 2. Part 3 zooms in on the generational dynamics of development by exploring how prominent development interventions (conditional cash transfers, schooling) problems (gender discrimination) and questions (the generational question of farming) shape the (gendered) experience of being young and growing up.

In Reelpolitik Ideologies in American Political Film, Beverly Merrill Kelley examines more than a century of political movie history, providing a thorough historical background for diametrically opposed political ideologies in order to facilitate debate and dialectical learning. Kelley explores 185 American political movies (categorized by ideological themes and presented in chronological order) in order to illustrate the history of film as well as the history of the specific political ideology. Each chapter includes a case study which provides an in-depth analysis of the single film that best illustrates the ideology at hand, including: The Candidate (populism), Wall Street (elitism), The Godfather (fascism), All the President's Men (anti-fascism), Patton (interventionism), and M*A*S*H (isolationism). Reelpolitik Ideologies in American Political Film establishes a paradigmatic analysis of political films that details the cyclical nature of ideological dialectic throughout American history and identifies the values, attitudes, and beliefs of the voters who choose not to affiliate with Republicans and Democrats, and who often determine the outcomes of elections. The text also includes an extensive ideological filmology spanning more than 100 years of American cinema. This study represents a bold investigation of the political and social values of American film, and is an essential text in the study of the relationship between culture and politics.

Assessing the political dimensions of Anthony Giddens' work from the 1970s to the present, this book highlights new directions for politics distinct from his Third Way. Kolarz provides an assessment of Giddens' political relevance and utility for present-day political endeavours, reflecting on the approach to critical social theory found in his early work, notably his theory of structuration and critique of historical materialism, and his consequent utopian realist analysis of late modernity. Giddens and Politics beyond the Third Way extracts from his work a rationale for global redistributive action, as well as an integrative approach to policymaking, suggesting that coherence of centre-left emancipatory politics requires coordination of policy areas previously thought of as separate.

Transnational Socialist Networks in the 1970s argues that western European socialist parties' transnational cooperation across national borders significantly influenced politics and policy-making in what was the European Communities (EC). It focuses on the network-like informal structures that characterised transnational cooperation between the party members and leaders of different socialist parties involved in European affairs. Taking the example of two case studies, namely EC development aid policy and EC southern enlargement policy, the book demonstrates that the socialist parties strengthened their informal transnational network structures for the purposes of debating ideological and programmatic issues and finding policy solutions to common challenges in both policy fields. Moreover, it shows that the networks developed various functions to influence European governance. Against this background, the analysis in this book makes not only a significant contribution to the study of transnational networks of western European socialist parties and the history of European integration, but also adds to the understanding of the role of transnational networks in European politics and policy-making.

This book poses a major revisionist challenge to 20th century British labour history, aiming to look beyond the Marxist and Fabian exclusion of working class experience, notably religion and self-help, in order to exaggerate ‘labour movement’ class cohesion. Instead of a ‘forward march’ to secular state-socialism, the research presented here is devoted to a rich diversity of social movements and ideas. In this collection of essays, the editors establish the liberal-pluralist tradition, with the following chapters covering three distinct sections. Part One, ‘Other Forms of Association’ covers subjects such as trade unions, the Co-operative Party, women’s community activism and Protestant Nonconformity. Part Two, ‘Other Leaders’, covers employer Edward Cadbury; Trades Union Congress leader Walter Citrine; and the electricians’ leader, Frank Chapple. Part Three, ‘Other Intellectuals’, considers G.D.H. Cole, Michael Young and left libertarianism by Stuart White. Readers interested in the British Labour movement will find this an invaluable resource.

In an uprising heard around the world, people in Argentina took to the streets on December 19th & 20th, 2001, shouting "!Que se vayan todos!" These words (All of them out!), and the thousands of people banging pots and pans, opened a period of intense social unrest and political creativity that led to the collapse of government after government. Neighborhoods organized themselves into hundreds of popular assemblies across the country, the unemployed workers movement acquired a new visibility, workers took over factories and businesses. Deeply involved in these movements were the activists who made up Colectivo Situaciones. With the embers of that December's aftermath still burning, Colectivo Situaciones militantly researched and wrote 19 and 20. Locating themselves among the "horizontally organized subjectivities that insisted on not being represented by politicians but maintaining and developing their own powers of political expression" that Micheal Hardt notes in his introduction, Colectivo Situaciones gathers, interrogates, and offers forth the words of unemployed workers, factory occupiers, insurgent intellectuals, and children of the disappeared. From their investigations is revealed the birth of a new social protagonism and the de-institutional power (potencia) they wield. 19 and 20 has been praised as this generation's 18th Brumaire and as Marx's analysis of that struggle helped set the stage for, twenty years later, the Paris Commune we find ourselves here. Revisiting and exploring the forms of counterpower that emerged from the shadow of neoliberal rule we find the book's potencia has only grown. In the intervening years the analysis of Colectivo Situaciones has been passed from hand to hand and multitudes of citizens from different countries have learned their own ways to chant !Que se vayan todos!, from Iceland to Tunisia, from Spain to Greece, from Tahrir Square to Black Lives Matter. Colectivo Situaciones' practice of militant research--of engaging with movements' own thought processes--resonates with everyone seeking to think current events and movements, and through that to gather the foundation of a commune for the 21st century.

'the first man from the midst of the working class who completely understood them, completely championed them ...never deserted them, never turned his back on a single principle which he had professed, never drifted away from his class in thought, in feeling or in faith.' John Bruce Glasier'France had her Jaures, Germany her Bebel and Liebknecht, Austria her Victor Adler, Russia her Lenin. Britain produced, and continues to produce, men to carry on the struggle of the poor, but no one who more personifies the spirit of that struggle than the miner from the coalfields of Lanarkshire.' James Maxton