In "Imperialism and Global Political Economy" Alex Callinicos intervenes in one of the main political and intellectual debates of the day. The global policies of the United States in the past decade have encouraged the widespread belief that we live in a new era of imperialism. But is this belief true, and what does 'imperialism' mean?

Callinicos explores these questions in this wide-ranging book. In the first part, he critically assesses the classical theories of imperialism developed in the era of the First World War by Marxists such as Lenin, Luxemburg, and Bukharin and by the Liberal economist J.A. Hobson. He then outlines a theory of the relationship between capitalism as an economic system and the international state system, carving out a distinctive position compared to other contemporary theorists of empire and imperialism such as Antonio Negri, David Harvey, Giovanni Arrighi, and Ellen Wood.

In the second half of "Imperialism and Global Political Economy" Callinicos traces the history of capitalist imperialism from the Dutch East India Company to the specific patterns of economic and geopolitical competition in the contemporary era of American decline and Chinese expansion. Imperialism, he concludes, is far from dead.

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'The class war is over. But the struggle for true equality has only just begun, ' Tony Blair has declared. The world indeed enters the 21st century heaving with poverty and inequality. Just three super-rich men have a net worth equal to the income of the 36 poorest countries in the world. The gap between rich and poor is also growing in the advanced economies as well. 14 million people, a quarter of the population of the United Kingdom are currently classified as poor, compared to only four million in 1979.

In this important new book, Alex Callinicos explores the meaning of equality in the contemporary world. He traces its origins as a political ideal in the great democratic revolutions of the 17th and the 18th century, and in the efforts of the socialist movement to force capitalism to live up to its promise of liberty, equality and fraternity. Callinicos also shows how the theories of egalitarian justice developed over the past generation by philosophers such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen and G. A. Cohen have given a much more precise meaning to the ideal of equality. Individuals are entitled to be protected from the consequences of circumstances beyond their control - for example, the socio-economic position and the natural talents they inherit - in order to have equal freedom to pursue their own well-being.

The implications of egalitarian justice are radical. Callinicos critically reviews the versions of this ideal - equality of opportunity and social inclusion - by supporters of the Third Way such as Gordon Brown and Anthony Giddens. He argues that the strategy pursued by New Labour to increase equality is riddled with contradictions and contains anunderlying authoritarian dimension. Fundamentally, equality and the market are irreconcilable. Any attempt seriously to increase social equality will come into conflict with the logic of the capitalist economic system. Only a socialist society, organized along democratic and decentralized lines, can realize the ideal of equality.

This book will be of great interest to students of politics, philosophy and sociology, and all those interested in this key and controversial topic.

The great demonstrations at Seattle and Genoa have shown that we are in a new era of protest. The neo-liberal economic policies pursued by the Group of Seven leading industrial countries and the international institutions they control are provoking widespread resistance. Growing numbers of people in all five continents are rejecting the values of the market and the vision of a world made safe for the multinational corporations.

But what does the anti-globalization movement stand for? Is it, as its most common name suggests, against globalization itself? Is it opposed merely to the neo-liberal Washington Consensus that became dominant in the 1980s and 1990s, or is its real enemy the capitalist system itself? The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre has popularized the slogan 'Another World is Possible'. But what is that world?

Alex Callinicos seeks to answer these questions in "An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto," He analyses the development of the movement, distinguishes between the different political forces within it, and explores the strategic dilemmas - notably over violence and the nation-state - that it increasingly confronts. He argues that the movement is directed against capitalism itself. The logic of competitive accumulation that drives this system is not only increasing global inequality and economic instability, but threatens ecological catastrophe and appalling conflict. To meet the challenge of global capitalism the new protest movement requires, according to Callinicos, a creative synthesis of its own inclusive and dynamic style and the best of the classical Marxist tradition.

In Imperialism and Global Political Economy Alex Callinicos intervenes in one of the main political and intellectual debates of the day. The global policies of the United States in the past decade have encouraged the widespread belief that we live in a new era of imperialism. But is this belief true, and what does 'imperialism' mean?

It has become an intellectual commonplace to claim that we have entered the era of post-modernity'. Three themes are embraced in this claim - the poststructuralist critique by Foucault, Derrida and others of the philosophical heritage of the Enlightenment, the supposed impasse of the High Modern art and its replacement by new artistic forms, and the alleged emergence of 'post-industrial' societies whose structures are beyond the ken of Marx and other theorists of industrial capitalism.

'Against Postmodernism' takes issue with all these themes. It challenges the idealist irrationalism of poststructuralism. It questions the existence of any radical break separating Post-modern from Modern art. And it denies that recent socio-economic developments represent any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation.

Drawing on philosophy and cultural history, 'Against Postmodernism' takes issue with some of the most forthright critics of post-modernism - Jurgen Habermas and Frederic Jameson, for example. But it is most distinctive in that it offers a historical reading of these theories. Post-modernism, Alex Callinicos argues, reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right.

Social criticism has enjoyed a renaissance in the past few years. The anti-globalization protests at Seattle and Genoa and the great marches against the war in Iraq have put contestation of capitalism and imperialism back on the political and intellectual agenda. But how does social critique situate itself philosophically today, after the marginalization of Marxism and the impact of postmodernism? In "The Resources of Critique," Alex Callinicos seeks to address this question systematically. He does so, in the first part, by surveying some of the most influential contemporary critical theorists Alain Badiou, Jacques Bidet, Luc Boltanski, Pierre Bourdieu, Eve Chiapello, Jurgen Habermas, Antonio Negri and Slavoj Zižek.

The limitations of all these theorists perspectives prompts Callinicos in the second part of the book to outline an alternative approach whose main elements are a critical realist ontology, a Marxist theory of social contradiction, and an egalitarian conception of justice. The main thrust of his argument is to show that Marx's critique of political economy remains inescapable for anyone seeking to challenge the existing world order but only if it maintains an open but rigorous dialogue with other critical perspectives. "The Resources of Critique" is, above all, a contribution to this dialogue.