The word 'polarization' is on the lips of every commentator today, from mainstream journalists to the left, but the significance of this widely recognised phenomenon needs far more scrutiny than it has had. The 58th volume of the Socialist Register takes up the challenge of exploring how the new polarisations relate to the contradictions that underlie them, and how far 'centrist' politics can continue to contain them. Original essays examine the multiplication of polarised national, racial, generational and other identities in the context of growing inequality in income and wealth, new forms of regional and urban antagonism, 'vaccine nationalism', and the shifting parameters of great power rivalry.

Since the Great Financial Crisis swept across the world in 2008, there have been few certainties regarding the trajectory of global capitalism, let alone the politics taking hold in individual states. This has now given way to palpable confusion regarding what sense to make of this world in a political conjuncture marked by Donald Trump's `Make America Great Again' presidency of the United States, on the one hand, and, on the other, Xi Jinping's ambitious agenda in consolidating his position as `core leader' at the top of the Chinese state. * Is a major redrawing of the map of global capitalism underway? * Is an unwinding of globalization in train, or will it continue, but with closure to the mobility of labour? * Is there a legitimacy crisis for neoliberalism even while neoliberal practices continue to form state policy? * Are we witnessing an authoritarian mutation of liberal democracy in the 21st century? * Should the strategic issues today be posed in terms of `socialism versus barbarism redux'?

The word 'polarization' is on the lips of every commentator today, from mainstream journalists to the left, but the significance of this widely recognised phenomenon needs far more scrutiny than it has had. The 58th volume of the Socialist Register takes up the challenge of exploring how the new polarisations relate to the contradictions that underlie them, and how far 'centrist' politics can continue to contain them. Original essays examine the multiplication of polarised national, racial, generational and other identities in the context of growing inequality in income and wealth, new forms of regional and urban antagonism, 'vaccine nationalism', and the shifting parameters of great power rivalry.

This year's Socialist Register continues its coverage of the economic crisis. It deepens the analysis with essays on: * The global roots of the crisis * The place of the city as a site of capital accumulation and resistance * The dismantling of the public sector * The fraudulence of neoliberal "environmentalism" * The intensification of global austerity It extends regional coverage of the crisis, with essays on the United States, Latin America, China, Eastern Europe, Ireland, and the Middle East. The volume also opens up a debate on possible strategies for the Left, which it will continue in the forthcoming volume in 2013 on socialist strategy for the 21st century.

How is the class being transformed in the Global South? How are working people organising in the workplace and in the community? What are the forces shaping and reshaping workers' lives? Four essays focus on change amongst American workers. The failures of the US Left and the crisis of class, Adolph Reed & Mark Dudzik; The politics of US labour: paralysis and possibilities, Kim Moody & Charles Post; Organizing the whole worker - and the whole class, Jane McAlevey; Reorganizing the working class: don't be scared - be bold, Steve Williams & Rishi Awatramani.

The global economic crisis that closed the first decade of the twenty-first century has demonstrated that the contradictions of capitalism cannot be overcome. The challenge for socialist analysis is to reveal both the nature of these contradictions in the neo-liberal era of globalized finance, and their consequences in our time. Crises need to be understood as turning points that open up opportunities. How to facilitate this is the sharpest challenge posed to socialists by the most severe global economic crisis since the 1930s.

What implications does the crisis this time have in terms of capitalist economic and political restructuring? Does it portend the end of neo-liberalism? Can working classes reverse the pattern of defeat in recent decades, build new capacities, and impose their own template for types of economic and political renewal that can put back on the agenda the need to transcend capitalism itself? What additional costs will they be expected to bear as capitalists states prepare their 'exit strategies'? This edition of the "Socialist Register" addresses these questions and more with typically wide-ranging analysis from contributorsaround the globe.

Provisional Contributors: Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, Alfredo Saad Filho, Hugo Radice, Anwar Shaikh, David McNally, Doug Henwood, Johanna Brenner, Michael Moran, Julie Froud, Adriana Nilsson, Karel Williams, Riccardo Bellofiore, R. Taggart Murphy, Ho-Fung Hung, Adam Hanieh, Ben Fine, Samantha Ashman, Susan Newman, Susanne Soederberg, Larry Lohmann, Dick Bryan, Michael Rafferty, Ursula Huws, and Greg Albo.

This book reasserts the need for a bold and revolutionary social imagination, one aimed at saner ways of living and more rational ways of organising society.

Socialist Register 2013 seeks to explore and clarify strategy for the Left, in the light of new challenges, and new opportunities.Socialists today have to confront two realities - that they cannot avoid the question of reforms and a gradualist path out of capitalism; and that the organizational vehicles for socialism will most likely have to abide by different structures and principles than those that dominated left politics in the 20th century. Though solutions are not obvious, Socialist Register 2012 will interrogate these dilemmas and will the critique of some unhelpful radical thinking that obstructs the reconsideration of socialist strategy for the 21st century.

WHAT SHOULD THE LEFT AIM TO ACHIEVE TODAY? This book addresses the challenges facing socialists and the recent shift from protest to politics. It examines the limits and possibilities for class, party and state transformation and the democratic and socialist insurgencies inside the Labour Party in Britain, and the Democratic Party in the USA. One of the most unexpected aspects of politics today is the coming to the fore of socialists at leadership level in the British Labour Party and the US Democratic Party. Their class-focused political discourse is directed against the power of capitalists, corporations and banks - and against the state policies which reflect and sustain that power. This is more than mere left populism - the focus is on addressing the dynamics, structure, inequalities, and contradictions in capitalism, confronting ruling class privilege and power, and the systemic core of neoliberal globalization. There is a new will: to build the power, cohesion, and capacities of the working class; to struggle for broader and deeper reforms. New socialist movements know that they must offer systematic political education to realise their great potential, and to overcome the barriers that they face. The authors provide essential historical, theoretical and critical perspective. They stress the need for renewing working-class politics through new kinds of socialist parties.

What is the meaning of revolution in the twenty-first century?One hundred years ago 'October 1917' was a unique event inspiring socialists and oppressed peoples and became an inevitable point of reference for 20th century politics. Today the left needs both come to terms with this legacy and to transcend it, through a critical reappraisal of its broad effects - positive and negative - on political, intellectual and cultural life, considering also new revolutions after 1917. The main point of the volume is to look forward. Nowadays, when reform as it was understood in the 20th century appears to be as impossible as revolution, it is necessary to rethink the relationship between capitalist crises and both revolution and reform. Change needs to be understood in relation to the distinct trajectories of radical politics in different regions. Contributors will consider, interrogate and explore many issues:* Alternatives to neoliberal capitalism: Socialist strategies - or detours? * The immense ecological challenge to revolutionary political strategy.* Reframing revolution amidst accelerated technological change.* What is the salience today of the concept of the revolutionary party?* Questioning agency - of the working class and other oppressed groups. * Socialist feminist perspectives on the meaning of revolution today. * Revolutionary vision, including its artistic expression in the 21st century.

What are the forces at work in opposition to the American Empire? Are such forces, in the Islamic World and in Latin America, reactionary or progressive? What are the distinguishing features of neoliberalism today? What are its emerging contradictions? This volume surveys the key flashpoints of resistance today. The main arena of resistance to imperialism is the Middle East. Six essays explore the ambivalent nature of Islamic anti-imperialism, and the West's crucial role in making it so significant, as well as the different forms it takes as a political creed; and they provide particular insight into the relationship between religion and politics today in Iraq, Palestine and Turkey. Resistance to neoliberalism has been seen most clearly in the 'pink tide' in Latin America. Seven essays evaluate the potential - or lack of it - for a 21st century socialism across the region,

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.

How do people acquire knowledge and understanding of the world they are in? Who has access to the resources and maps facilitating research and debate? How is power mobilised to shape ideas and ideologies? Socialist Register 2006 considers contemporary debate, policy-making, research, education, and scientific practice generally, and examines the role of the state in intellectual life, the press and the media. It investigates the management of scientific publications, the role of the internet, and the influence of foundations, think-tanks, political parties and the World Bank. What standards of integrity exist? How important are new intellectual currents? (including post-modernism) and what are their effects and after-effects? It investigates the quality of thought and ideas, the extent of freedom for critical and heterodox thought, and the formation of new intellectual cadres.

One hundred years ago, "October 1917" galvanized leftists and oppressed peoples around the globe, and became the lodestar for 20th century politics. Today, the left needs to reckon with this legacy--and transcend it. Social change, as it was understood in the 20th century, appears now to be as impossible as revolution, leaving the left to rethink the relationship between capitalist crises, as well as the conceptual tension between revolution and reform. Populated by an array of passionate thinkers and thoughtful activists, Rethinking Revolution reappraises the historical effects of the Russian revolution--positive and negative--on political, intellectual, and cultural life, and looks at consequent revolutions after 1917. Change needs to be understood in relation to the distinct trajectories of radical politics in different regions. But the main purpose of this Socialist Register edition--one century after "Red October"--is to look forward, to what might happen next. Acclaimed authors interrogate and explore compelling issues, including: - Greg Albo: New socialist strategies--or detours? - Jodi Dean: Are the multitudes communing? Revolutionary agency and political forms today. - Adolph Reed: Are racial minorities revolutionary agents? - Zillah Eisenstein: Revolutionary feminisms today. - Nina Power: Accelerated technology, decelerated revolution. - David Schwartzman: Beyond global warming: Is solar communism possible? - Andrea Malm: Revolution and counter-revolution in an era of climate change.

Various contributors ask and discuss: how does the new American Empire work?; who runs it?; how stable is it?; what is the new American Empire's impact throughout the world?; what is its influence on gender relations?; on the media?; on popular culture?

As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it refashioned both our ways of working and our ways of consuming, as well as our ways of communicating. And as the Covid-19 pandemic coursed through the world's population, adding tens of billions of dollars to the profits of high-tech corporations, its impact revealed grotesque class and racial inequalities and the gross lack of public investment, planning and preparation which lay behind the scandalously slow and inadequate responses of so many states.

Radical politics have been defined in modern times -- and distinguished from earlier traditions of protest -- by the idea that economic, social and political structures are contradictory. Systems of exploitation creates not only wealth and prosperity for the powerful, but at the same time bring into being the forces which ensure their own eventual downfall. But it is a large step from the general assertion that social forms contain their own contradictions to analysis of the specific contradictions which occur in a given historical context, their interaction and movement, and their possible historical outcomes.

This collection of essays examines social contradictions in the age of globalization in which old antagonisms often appear to be overcome, and new cracks are emerging in the facade of capitalist progress. Where do they occur? Where can they be expected to appear in future? How can they be grasped in a spirit of sober radicalism, which neither accepts the limits of the present nor overcomes them through wishful thinking alone? What possibilities do they offer for mobilizing resistance? These issues define an agenda which is critical for socialism in our time.

A World Turned Upside Down? poses two overarching questions for the new period opened by the Trump election and the continued growth of right-wing nationalisms. Is there an unwinding of neoliberal globalization taking place, or will globalization continue to deepen, but still deny the free cross-border movement of labor? Would such an unwinding entail an overall shift in power and accumulation to specific regions of the Global South that might overturn the current world order and foster the disintegration of the varied regional blocs that have formed? These questions are addressed through a series of essays that carefully map the national, class, racial, and gender dimensions of the state, capitalism, and progressive forces today. Sober assessment is crucial for the left to gain its political bearings in this trying period and the uncertainties that lie ahead.