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One of the century's greatest and most influential thinkers, Karl
Popper reminds us that we must recognize our responsibilities in
preserving the democratic system we enjoy: it is our actions which
will create the world of tomorrow. In these interviews with
journalist Giancarlo Bosetti, Karl Popper ranges widely over
contemporary political and social issues. He reflects on many
topics, from the decline of the Soviet Union and the danger of a
Third World War, to our obligations to children and the potentially
harmful influence of television. He warns us that the increasing
violence and egotism of our society, if unchecked, will imperil our
civilisation. The volume also contains two talks on the theory of
democracy, arguing that democracy has never been the rule of the
people (nor can or should it be), but only the best method we know
for preventing tyranny.
In The Lesson of this Century Popper's purpose is to warn us
against the increasing violence and egoism of our society. What
solutions can we offer to the problems of the environment,
demography and corruption? How can we prevent the violence our
society engenders? How can we preserve our democratic system while
at the same time paving the way for global peace? Popper believes
that the philosopher has a duty to intervene in politics and he
utters a clear call to all of us to recognise our responsibilities.
He reminds us that it is our actions which will create the world of
tomorrow.
The interviews in this volume were originally given to the Italian
journalist Giancarlo Bosetti. The volume also includes the
transcript of an interview about the moral dangers of television
not previously available in English.
One of the century's greatest and most influential thinkers, Karl Popper reminds us that we must recognize our responsibilities in preserving the democratic system we enjoy: it is our actions which will create the world of tomorrow. In these interviews with journalist Giancarlo Bosetti, Karl Popper ranges widely over contemporary political and social issues. He reflects on many topics, from the decline of the Soviet Union and the danger of a Third World War, to our obligations to children and the potentially harmful influence of television. He warns us that the increasing violence and egotism of our society, if unchecked, will imperil our civilisation. The volume also contains two talks on the theory of democracy, arguing that democracy has never been the rule of the people (nor can or should it be), but only the best method we know for preventing tyranny.
All Life is Problem Solving consists of fifteen occasional pieces - lectures, seminar contributions, radio broadcasts and magazine articles - spanning the years from 1958 until 1993. All but three are published here in English for the first time. The volume is divided into two parts; theory of science and history and politics. The first contains pieces on Popper's key scientific interests, namely the evolution of human knowledge, his views on the body-mind problem, and a lecture on Kepler on the anniversary of his death. The second part consists of talks and articles on some of Popper's other characteristic preoccupations; the theory of liberty and democracy, the significance of the collapse of communism, the origins of the Germanic languages and the title piece on Popper's conception of life as a trial and error process of problem solving.
Winner of the Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr. Prize "The best large-scale
synthesis in any language of what we currently know and understand
about this multidimensional, cataclysmic conflict." -Richard J.
Evans, Times Literary Supplement In this monumental history of the
First World War, Germany's leading historian of the period offers a
dramatic account of its origins, course, and consequences. Joern
Leonhard treats the clash of arms with a sure feel for grand
strategy. He captures the slow attrition, the race for ever more
destructive technologies, and the grim experiences of frontline
soldiers. But the war was more than a military conflict and he also
gives us the perspectives of leaders, intellectuals, artists, and
ordinary men and women around the world as they grappled with the
urgency of the moment and the rise of unprecedented political and
social pressures. With an unrivaled combination of depth and global
reach, Pandora's Box reveals how profoundly the war shaped the
world to come. "[An] epic and magnificent work-unquestionably, for
me, the best single-volume history of the war I have ever read...It
is the most formidable attempt to make the war to end all wars
comprehensible as a whole." -Simon Heffer, The Spectator "[A] great
book on the Great War...Leonhard succeeds in being comprehensive
without falling prey to the temptation of being encyclopedic. He
writes fluently and judiciously." -Adam Tooze, Die Zeit "Extremely
readable, lucidly structured, focused, and dynamic...Leonhard's
analysis is enlivened by a sharp eye for concrete situations and an
ear for the voices that best convey the meaning of change for the
people and societies undergoing it." -Christopher Clark, author of
The Sleepwalkers
The Italian Communist Party was once one of the most powerful and
vibrant parties of the West. In this detailed and probing work,
Lucio Magri, one of the towering intellectual figures of the
Italian left, assesses the causes for its demise. The PCI survived
almost a century of Italian history, from its founding in 1921 to
the partisan resistance, the turning point of Salerno in 1944 to
the de-Stalinization of 1956, the long '68 to the "historic
compromise," and to the opportunity - missed forever - of
democratic transformation. With rigor and passion, The Tailor of
Ulm merges an original and enlightening interpretation of Italian
communism with the experience of a militant "heretic" into a
riveting read - capable of broadening our insights into
contemporary Italy and the twentieth-century communist experience.
'Never before has there been so many and such dreadful weapons in so many irresponsible hands.' - Karl Popper, from the Preface All Life is Problem Solving is a stimulating and provocative selection of Popper's writings on his main preoccupations during the last twenty-five years of his life. This collection illuminates Popper's process of working out key formulations in his theory of science, and indicates his view of the state of the world at the end of the Cold War and after the collapse of communism.
An innovative reassessment of the last writings and final years of
Karl Marx. In the last years of his life, Karl Marx expanded his
research in new directions—studying recent anthropological
discoveries, analyzing communal forms of ownership in precapitalist
societies, supporting the populist movement in Russia, and
expressing critiques of colonial oppression in India, Ireland,
Algeria, and Egypt. Between 1881 and 1883, he also traveled beyond
Europe for the first and only time. Focusing on these last years of
Marx's life, this book dispels two key misrepresentations of his
work: that Marx ceased to write late in life, and that he was a
Eurocentric and economic thinker fixated on class conflict alone.
With The Last Years of Karl Marx, Marcello Musto claims a renewed
relevance for the late work of Marx, highlighting unpublished or
previously neglected writings, many of which remain unavailable in
English. Readers are invited to reconsider Marx's critique of
European colonialism, his ideas on non-Western societies, and his
theories on the possibility of revolution in noncapitalist
countries. From Marx's late manuscripts, notebooks, and letters
emerge an author markedly different from the one represented by
many of his contemporary critics and followers alike. As Marx
currently experiences a significant rediscovery, this volume fills
a gap in the popularly accepted biography and suggests an
innovative reassessment of some of his key concepts.
A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation
of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a
world in transition. Jurgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has
been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond
conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era,
presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and
towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces
that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century,"
taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American
revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise
of Europe's transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by
nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a
world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, and
the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human
beings and nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the
role slavery and its abolition played in the emergence of new
nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth
century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, and much more.
This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly
successful and critically acclaimed German book, which is also
being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, and French.
Indispensable for any historian, The Transformation of the World
sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the
nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the
twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism,
liberalism, the trade union, and a host of other crucial
developments.
An innovative reassessment of the last writings and final years of
Karl Marx. In the last years of his life, Karl Marx expanded his
research in new directions-studying recent anthropological
discoveries, analyzing communal forms of ownership in precapitalist
societies, supporting the populist movement in Russia, and
expressing critiques of colonial oppression in India, Ireland,
Algeria, and Egypt. Between 1881 and 1883, he also traveled beyond
Europe for the first and only time. Focusing on these last years of
Marx's life, this book dispels two key misrepresentations of his
work: that Marx ceased to write late in life, and that he was a
Eurocentric and economic thinker fixated on class conflict alone.
With The Last Years of Karl Marx, Marcello Musto claims a renewed
relevance for the late work of Marx, highlighting unpublished or
previously neglected writings, many of which remain unavailable in
English. Readers are invited to reconsider Marx's critique of
European colonialism, his ideas on non-Western societies, and his
theories on the possibility of revolution in noncapitalist
countries. From Marx's late manuscripts, notebooks, and letters
emerge an author markedly different from the one represented by
many of his contemporary critics and followers alike. As Marx
currently experiences a significant rediscovery, this volume fills
a gap in the popularly accepted biography and suggests an
innovative reassessment of some of his key concepts.
Sir Karl Popper is acclaimed as one of the most influential
thinkers of our time. Born in Vienna in 1902, he fled the Nazis in
1937 and took up a university post in New Zealand. He followed an
academic career, teaching and lecturing all over Europe,
Australasia, India, Japan and the USA. He has written numerous
books, articles and essays. His publications appeared in some 30
languages. This study offers an introduction to the life and work
of this thinker. It charts the development of Popper's philosophy
and shows his political commitment to humanism and enlightenment.
At the center of Popper's thought stands rationality and a strong
belief in the power of the human mind to change things for the
better. Rationality thus serves as a guide both in his
philosophical considerations and for his political views.
Sir Karl Popper is acclaimed as one of the most influential
thinkers of our time. Born in Vienna in 1902, he fled the Nazis in
1937 and took up a university post in New Zealand. He followed an
academic career, teaching and lecturing all over Europe,
Australasia, India, Japan and the USA. He has written numerous
books, articles and essays. His publications appeared in some 30
languages. This study offers an introduction to the life and work
of this thinker. It charts the development of Popper's philosophy
and shows his political commitment to humanism and enlightenment.
At the center of Popper's thought stands rationality and a strong
belief in the power of the human mind to change things for the
better. Rationality thus serves as a guide both in his
philosophical considerations and for his political views.
Why and how systems of political financing and representation in
Europe and North America give outsized influence to the wealthy and
undermine democracy, and what we can do about it. One person, one
vote. In theory, everyone in a democracy has equal power to decide
elections. But it's hardly news that, in reality, political
outcomes are heavily determined by the logic of one dollar, one
vote. We take the political power of money for granted. But does it
have to be this way? In The Price of Democracy, Julia Cage combines
economic and historical analysis with political theory to show how
profoundly our systems in North America and Europe, from think
tanks and the media to election campaigns, are shaped by money. She
proposes fundamental reforms to bring democracy back into line with
its egalitarian promise. Cage shows how different countries have
tried to develop legislation to curb the power of private money and
to develop public systems to fund campaigns and parties. But these
attempts have been incoherent and unsystematic. She demonstrates
that it is possible to learn from these experiments in the United
States, Europe, and elsewhere to design a better system that would
increase political participation and trust. This would involve
setting a strict cap on private donations and creating a public
voucher system to give each voter an equal amount to spend in
support of political parties. More radically, Cage argues that a
significant fraction of seats in parliamentary assemblies should be
set aside for representatives from disadvantaged socioeconomic
groups. At a time of widespread political disenchantment, The Price
of Democracy is a bracing reminder of the problems we face and an
inspirational guide to the potential for reform.
In "The Delusions of Economics," Gilbert Rist presents a radical
critique of neoclassical economics from a social and historical
perspective. Rather than enter into existing debates between
different orthodoxies, Rist instead explores the circumstances that
prevailed when economics was "invented," and the resultant biases
that helped forge the construction of economics as a "science." In
doing so, Rist demonstrates how these various presuppositions are
either obsolete or just plain wrong, and that traditional economics
is largely based on irrational convictions that are difficult to
debunk due to their religious nature. As a result, we are prevented
from properly understanding the world around us and dealing with
the financial, environmental, and climatic crises that lie ahead.
Provocative and original, this essential book provides
incontrovertible proof that the construction of a new economic
paradigm - pluralistic, ecologically compatible, grounded in
reality - has now become a necessity.
Though best known now for his novels, this collection of pre-exile
short stories by the renowned Romanian author and "onirist" not
only show Dumitru Tsepeneag at his best, but provide a glimpse into
the secret history of surrealism uunder the brutal regime of
Nicolae Ceausescu. In these stories, life is both banal and
bizarre, on the verge of breaking down, like a film loop played
once too often, with the hot glare of irrationality always waiting
to burn through. Looking forward to "Vain Art of the Fugue" and
back to Breton, "Waiting" is a subversive delicacy.
Organized as a series of tightly linked, comparative assessments,
Mapping the West European Left provides a guide to the state of the
left in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Britain, France, Italy
and Spain. While all the essays are detailed historical
compositions-setting recent crises and dilemmas in a longer
perspective reaching back into the postwar settlement-they
articulate original insights into the contemporary political
conjuncture. Why did Swedish social democracy lose hegemony and
direction while its Norwegian counterpart showed unexpected
resilience? What was the background to the Danish rebellion against
Maastricht? What are the prospects for the SPD and the Greens in
post-unification Germany? Should the British Labour Party embrace
electoral reform? What propelled the French Socialist Party from
triumph to disaster? And why did the Italian left fail to fill the
vacuum created by the collapse of the Christian Democrats? Behind
the questions explored by the contributors to Mapping the West
European Left lie deeper issues concerning the future of radical
politics in Europe after the repudiation of Keynesianism and the
end of communism. With the individual country analyses synthesized
by the editors in a concise and comprehensive introductory essay,
this book provides key pointers to the social forces and
ideological platforms that offer lines of advance to the left
today.
A rich and suggestive analysis of military ways of seeing,
revealing the convergence of perception and destruction in the
parallel technologies of warfare and cinema.
A melancholy tale of searching-for documents, for truth, for
coffee-from the Romanian master A splendid, violent spring suddenly
grips Bucharest in the 1980s after a brutal winter. Tolea, an
eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his
job as a high school teacher on "moral grounds," is investigating
his father's death forty years after the fact, and is drawn into a
web of suspicion and black humor. Norman Manea's enigmatic and
artful novel-set against the backdrop of life under the repressive
Ceausescu regime-depicts the chaos and deprivation of Tolea's
existence, and his tenuous grip on reality.
Thinking Geographically offers students and faculty alike an
elegant, concise, and thorough overview of contemporary theoretical
concerns in geography. Easily accessible to those unfamiliar with
social theory, this volume "pushes the envelope" of understanding
by sketching the contours of post-structuralist spatial thought,
including such critical emerging topics as geographies of text, the
body, money, and globalisation. Brief biographies of influential
theorists demonstrate how ideas are embodied and personified. This
volume is highly useful for courses in human geography, the history
and status of the discipline, and will stand as a milestone in the
discipline's conceptual understanding over the next decade or
more." Barney Warf, Florida State University. The last decade has
seen Geography transformed by an astonishing range of cultural and
philosophical concepts and approaches. Thinking Geographically is
designed for students as an accessible and enjoyable introduction
to this new landscape of geographical ideas. The book takes the
reader through the history of geographic thought up to a survey of
the present. Contemporary theory is then used to explore real world
issues drawn from across the discipline of social, cultural,
political and economic geography. Entertainingly written and packed
with examples and with profiles of key theorists, the book is an
ideal introduction for any student who wants to discover the
potential of thinking geographically.
In this landmark text, Gilbert Rist provides a comprehensive and
compelling overview of what the idea of development has meant
throughout history. He traces it from its origins in the Western
view of history, through the early stages of the world system, the
rise of US hegemony, and the supposed triumph of third-worldism,
through to new concerns about the environment and globalization.
Assessing possible postdevelopment models and considering the
ecological dimensions of development, Rist contemplates the ways
forward. Throughout, he argues persuasively that development has
been no more than a collective delusion, which in reality has
resulted only in widening market relations, whatever the intentions
of its advocates. A classic development text written by one of the
leaders of postdevelopment theory.
In this landmark text, Gilbert Rist provides a comprehensive and
compelling overview of what the idea of development has meant
throughout history. He traces it from its origins in the Western
view of history, through the early stages of the world system, the
rise of US hegemony, and the supposed triumph of third-worldism,
through to new concerns about the environment and globalization.
Assessing possible postdevelopment models and considering the
ecological dimensions of development, Rist contemplates the ways
forward. Throughout, he argues persuasively that development has
been no more than a collective delusion, which in reality has
resulted only in widening market relations, whatever the intentions
of its advocates. A classic development text written by one of the
leaders of postdevelopment theory.
In his latest book in the study of power, Giacomo Marramao focuses
on the work of two great Central European writers, Elias Canetti
and Herta Muller, each of whom, in different periods and contexts,
offered a philosophical genealogy of forms of domination and a
radical diagnosis of power, command and law. To grasp the meaning
of the transformations of power, it is necessary to go to the
roots: to the arche that originated it as a factor common to all
human cultures and all historical periods. Power cannot be
suppressed: any attempt to 'overcome' it (by eliminating one or
another form of its exercise) has done no more than strengthen it.
Power must, however, be 'uprooted' or subverted in its logic of
identity, which is activated in the boundless character of desire
and the paranoid scene of fear and the death of the Other. In the
midst of today's global world, to trace a line of opposition to
power means to free ourselves from the alibi of objectivity and to
focus instead on subjects and their potential for
metamorphosis/regeneration. This is possible only if we detach
ourselves from the ground noise of actuality and recover the broken
thread of solitary and extreme works.
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State, Power, Socialism (Paperback)
Nicos Poulantzas; Introduction by Stuart Hall; Translated by Patrick Camiller
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R657
R572
Discovery Miles 5 720
Save R85 (13%)
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Developing themes of his earlier works, Poulantzas here advances a
vigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories of the state,
arguing against a general theory of the state, and identifying
forms of class power crucial to socialist strategy that goes beyond
the apparatus of the state. This new edition includes an
introduction by Stuart Hall, which critically appraises
Poulantzas's achievement.
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