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.

This book is a collection of working papers, policy briefs and training modules, published by the International Poverty Centre in Brazil, which provides a comprehensives set of recommendations for alternative economic policies that can generate growth, employment and poverty reduction in developing countries.

The dominant news media is often accused of reflecting an 'elite bias', privileging and foregrounding the interests of a small segment of society, while ignoring the narratives of the majority. Tell Our Story investigates the problem of disproportionate media representation and offers a hands-on demonstration of listening journalism and research in practice to promote a more active engagement between journalists and local communities. In the process the authors dismiss the idea that some groups are voiceless, arguing that what is often described is a matter of those groups being deliberately ignored. The authors focus on three communities in South Africa, each presenting with differing but crucial historical, geographical and socio-political 'characteristics' of the post-1994 period. Adopting an audience-centred approach, the authors delve into the life and struggle narratives of each community. They expose the divides between the stories as told by the people in the community who have lived experience of these events, and the way in which these stories are understood and shaped by the media. The implications of the media's routine misrepresentation of the voices of the marginalised and poor for media diversity, media credibility and ethics, media education and training, as well as media research are unpacked and the authors offer a useful set of practical guidelines for journalists on the practice of listening journalism.

South Africa’s democracy is in trouble. The present situation is, in objective terms, a house divided; a house that is tottering on rotten foundations. Despite the more general advances that have been made under the ANC’s rule since 1994, power has not only remained in the hands of a small minority but has increasingly been exercised in service to capital. The ANC has become the key political vehicle – in party and state form as well as application – of corporate capital: domestic and international, black and white, local and national, and constitutive of a range of different fractions. As a result, ‘transformation’ has largely taken the form of acceptance of, combined with incorporation into, the capitalist ‘house’, now minus its formal apartheid frame.

What has happened in South Africa over the last 22 years is the corporatisation of liberation, the political and economic commodification of the ANC and societal development. Those in positions of leadership and power within the ANC have allowed themselves to be lured by the siren calls of power and money, to be sucked in by the prize of ‘capturing’ institutional sites of power, to be seduced by the egoism and lifestyles of the capitalist elite.

This book tells that ‘story’ by offering a critical, fact-based and actively informed holistic analysis of the ANC in power, as a means to: better explain and understand the ANC and its politics as well as South Africa’s post-1994 trajectory; contribute to renewed discussion and debate about power and democracy; and help identify possible sign-posts to reclaim revolutionary, universalist and humanist values as part of the individual and collective struggle for the systemic change South Africa’s democracy needs.

In 2009, T McKinley's brother committed suicide, and his first question to himself was why he hadn't done the same. In this moving and poignant memoir, McKinley takes the reader back through the events that led to a lifelong struggle with depression, shame, and inadequacy. Beginning with his own conception and birth and continuing through his parents' divorce and the fragmentation of his family, McKinley traces the origins and evolution of his deep-seated belief that everyone would have been better off if he had never existed at all. In this way, McKinley blamed, rejected, and buried his inner child, setting himself up for a lifetime of disconnection and depression. Years later, McKinley married, had two children, and soon saw that he was repeating the same toxic patterns that defined his own childhood. His feelings of hopelessness continued to increase until the family bought a fixer-upper house in suburban Virginia. As they sifted through the rubble of the dysfunctional family that had come before, McKinley was brought face-to-face with the pain that had buried him for far too long. He began to realize his own value to his family and reconnect with his own childhood-and the innocent child he had once been-in a more compassionate and loving way. He realized he was not broken, but that he did need to ask for help. Ultimately, through this experience, McKinley was able to find the hope that his brother never could. McKinley approaches difficult subjects with insight and humor, in a direct and disarming way. Readers are invited to approach their own issues with shame and depression with compassion instead of fear, and to confront their own patterns of disconnection and isolation with hope instead of powerlessness. McKinley had contemplated suicide often, but he learned that sometimes the greatest strength comes from admitting you need help. T. McKinley has an undergraduate degree in religious studies and a master's degree in folklore. He has worked a variety of jobs in his life, including short-order cook, towel boy at a YMCA, sperm donor, bartender, and professional cartoonist, and he spent six years working as a stand-up comic in Los Angeles. For the past eighteen years, he has taught English and theater in a variety of private middle and high schools. He is a suicide survivor who is happily married with two children.

This critique of the ANC and the liberation struggle in South Africa challenges conventional public perceptions of the organization and its rise to power. It maintains that the ANC failed to stay in touch with the South African masses and made fundamental compromises to gain political power.