Democracy is being destroyed. This is a crisis that expresses itself in the rising authoritarianism visible in divisive and exclusionary politics, populist political parties and movements, increased distrust in fact-based information and news, and the withering accountability of state institutions. What is less obvious is that the sources of the democratic rot are integral to the systemic crisis generated by neoliberal capitalism, which assigns economic metrics to all aspects of life. In other words, the crisis of democracy is the political crisis of neoliberal capitalism. Over the last four decades, democracy has radically shifted to a market democracy in which all aspects of human, non-human and planetary life are commodified, with corporations becoming more powerful than states and their citizens.

Volume six of the Democratic Marxism series focuses on how decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded the global democratic project and how, in the process, authoritarian politics are gaining ground. Scholars and activists from the left focus on four country cases – India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States of America – in which the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled and highlighted the pre-existing crisis. They interrogate issues of politics, ecology, state security, media, access to information and political parties, and affirm the need to reclaim and re-build an expansive and inclusive democracy.

Destroying Democracy is an invaluable resource for the general public, activists, scholars and students who are interested in understanding the threats to democracy and the rising tide of authoritarianism in the global global South and global North.

Although Marx's writings on social transformation figured prominently in the global Left imagination for more than 150 years, by the late 20th century the relevance of Marxism was under question by both the Left (including Marxists) and the Right. Its revival in the second decade of the 21st century is finding new sources of inspiration and creativity from movements that believe that "another world is possible" through democratic, egalitarian, and ecological alternatives to capitalism built by ordinary people. The Marxism of many of these movements is not dogmatic or prescriptive, but open, searching, utopian. It revolves around four primary factors: the importance of democracy for an emancipatory project, the ecological limits of capitalism, the crisis of global capitalism, and the learning of lessons from the failures of Marxist-inspired experiments. This edited book introduces some contemporary approaches to Marxism. It shows how the 21st century has seen enormous creativity from movements that seek to overcome the weaknesses of the past by forging fundamentally new approaches to politics that draw inspiration from Marxism along with many other anticapitalist traditions such as feminism, ecology, anarchism, and indigenous traditions. Featuring leading thinkers from the Left, the book offers provocative ideas on interpreting our current world and will serve as an excellent reference book to introduce a new way of thinking about Marxism to students and scholars in the field.

Despite the transition from apartheid to democracy, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. Its extremes of wealth and poverty undermine intensifying struggles for a better life for all. The wide-ranging essays in this sixth volume of the New South African Review demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy, crippling the quest for social justice, polarising the politics, skewing economic outcomes and bringing devastating environmental consequences in their wake. Contributors survey the extent and consequences of inequality across fields as diverse as education, disability, agrarian reform, nuclear geography and small towns, and tackle some of the most difficult social, political and economic issues. How has the quest for greater equality affected progressive political discourse? How has inequality reproduced itself, despite best intentions in social policy, to the detriment of the poor and the historically disadvantaged? How have shifts in mining and the financialisation of the economy reshaped the contours of inequality? How does inequality reach into the daily social life of South Africans, and shape the way in which they interact? How does the extent and shape of inequality in South Africa compare with that of other major countries of the global South which themselves are notorious for their extremes of wealth and poverty? South African extremes of inequality reflect increasing inequality globally, and The Crisis of Inequality will speak to all those - general readers, policy makers, researchers and students - who are demanding a more equal world.

This book critically examines the responses of the working classes of the world to the challenges posed by the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy. Neoliberal globalisation, the book argues, has created new forms of polarisation in the world. A renewal of working class internationalism must address the situation of both the more privileged segments of the working class and the more impoverished ones. The study identifies new or renewed labour responses among formalised core workers as well as those on the periphery, including street-traders, homeworkers and other 'informal sector' workers. The book contains ten country studies, including India, China, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Canada, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil. It argues that workers and trade unions, through intensive collaboration with other social forces across the world, can challenge the logic of neoliberal globalization.

This fifth volume in the New South African Review series takes as its starting point the shock wave emanating from the events at Marikana on 16 August 2012 and how it has reverberated throughout politics and society. Some of the chapters in the volume refer directly to Marikana. In others, the infl uence of that fateful day is pervasive if not direct. Marikana has, for instance, made us look differently at the police and at how order is imposed on society. Monique Marks and David Bruce write that the massacre 'has come to hold a central place in the analysis of policing, and broader political events since 2012'. The chapters highlight a range of current concerns - political, economic and social. David Dickinson's chapter looks at the life of the poor in a township from within. In contrast, the chapter on foreign policy by Garth le Pere analyses South Africa's approach to international relations in the Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma eras. Anthony Turton's account, 'When gold mining ends' is a chilling forecast of an impending environmental catastrophe. Both Devan Pillay and Noor Nieftagodien focus attention on the left and, in different ways, ascribe its rise to a new politics in the wake of Marikana. The essays in NSAR 5: Beyond Marikana present a range of topics and perspectives of interest to general readers, but the book will also be a useful work of reference for students and researchers.

The second volume of the New South African Review (NSAR) continues a tradition of debate and critical, analytical scholarship about contemporary South Africa. Drawing on authors from academia and beyond, it aims to be informative, discursive and provocative.

In this volume, the New Growth Path (NGP) adopted by the South African government in 2010 provides the basis for a debate about whether ‘decent work’ is the best possible solution to South Africa’s problems of low economic growth and high unemployment. Rising inequality is explored against the backdrop of the failings of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). The NGP’s proposals for ‘greening the economy’ are discussed, with emphasis on the creation of ‘green jobs’ and biofuels.

The volume also includes investigations into the crisis of acid mine drainage on the Witwatersrand, and other persistent environmental challenges. Possibilities for participatory forms of government are surveyed, and civil society activism is explored in relation to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and environmental campaigns.

The crisis in child care in public hospitals, the difficulties that characterise attempts at building relationships between the police and a township community, and the problems related to the absence of legislation to govern the powers of traditional authorities over land allocation (through the experience of the Eastern Cape) are also featured.

Asking whether the NGP reflects a set of new policies or an attempt to re-dress old (com)promises in new clothes, this volume brings together different voices in debate about possibilities for alternatives to neo-liberal and capitalist development in South Africa.