Colin Leys – författare

"He has this wonderful and rare capacity to delineate the most complex of arguments in the most limpid prose. He never takes refuge in jargon. He demolishes pretentiousness. He is disarmingly honest. He hits you between the eyes. He is not afraid to be a lone voice as, increasingly, nowadays he is, the still small voice of humane sanity in an increasingly barbarous and market-oriented world. He makes immediate sense to anybody voting marginally to the left of Genghis Khan, Mrs. Thatcher or Newt Gingrich." —John Lonsdale, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.This book is a "stock-taking" of development theory at the end of the 20th century. It argues that the assumptions on which development theory has rested since the 1950s no longer hold. The postcolonial "third world" for which development theory was originally developed has fractured into increasingly diverse regions, while the end of the postwar regime of regulated international trade and capital movements has drastically curtailed the scope for state economic intervention. A much broader based, more historical and more explicitly political theoretical effort is now called for.

Originally published in 1969, this work gathers together essays on Third World development by nine social scientists with diverse academic interests. These contributions are united by a relative uncertainty in relation to development, derived from the broader critical reappraisal of the area which was occurring at the time, together with a need to create fresh methodologies for the advancement of their respective fields. The text is edited with an introduction by political scientist Colin Leys. This is a consummately researched collection, ambitious in scope, that will be of value to anyone with an interest in political science and theories of development.

When Namibia gained its independence in 1990 after 23 years of war, most of the eleven Namibians whose life histories make up this book were in their mid-thirties. To that point their whole adult lives had been lived in the struggle, more than half of them in exile. Few of them owned anything. None held prominent jobs. Most had endured hardship, hunger, sickness and fear, and witnessed terrible cruelty and suffering. All had lost family members or friends. Yet their outlook was triumphant and optimistic and their stories are full of enthusiasm, energy, determination and purpose. When you read their stories you are not surprised that they have since become well known in their chosen fields. Yet when they told these stories most of them were not well known. They just happened to be people we came to know and like in the course of our work (Brown as a journalist and development consultant, Leys as a social science researcher) and whom we asked if they would tell us their stories. They tell a story of a country as a whole during those years, a story of how a whole generation matured in the struggle, becoming skilled, disciplined, cosmopolitan and tough.

In 1924 Norman Leys shocked liberals by revealing the truth aboutsettler colonialism in a best-selling book called, simply, Kenya. Heshowed that settler colonialism had nothing to do with a ‘civilising mission’but meant the ruthless exploitation of African forced labour.  In 1910 he had exposed the duplicity of theGovernor of Kenya in moving the Maasai out of their traditional land to makeway for settlers. The Governor was forced to resign. Leys was demoted andexiled.  Leys campaigned tirelessly totry to change public opinion in Britain. He exposed the racism behind popularsupport for the settlers and was prepared to accept the unpopularity thiscaused.   The book tells the story of what made a medical doctor a champion ofAfrican liberation decades before it was fashionable, and why he had the impacthe had. With a Foreword by Paul Gilroy, two maps and one photos. Annexespresent selected original texts.

Students of armed liberation struggle should find much to challenge received wisdom.It took 23 years of armed struggle before Namibia could gain its independence from South Africa in March 1990. SWAPO's victory was remarkable in the face of an overwhelmingly superior enemy. How this came about, and at what cost,is the subject of this study which is based on unpublished documents and extensive interviews with a large range of the key activists in the struggle. The study should be of interest to everyone concerned with southern Africa.North America: Ohio U Press

Since 1964, the Socialist Register has brought together leading writers on the left to investigate aspects of a common theme. "Coming to Terms with Nature: Socialist Register 2007" examines whether capitalism can come to terms with today's ecological challenges and whether socialist thought has developed sufficiently to help us do so. The topics include: the ecological contradictions of capitalist accumulation and the growing social conflicts they create; the relationship between imperialism, markets, oil politics, and renewable energy; the significance of the impasse over the Kyoto protocol; and, whether market forces and technology can overcome the "limits to growth" while preserving the biosphere. These essays also analyze how deeply consumerism affects working class politics and the shortcomings of Green parties and "green commerce." In addition, they address the neeed to redefine standards of living, chiefly in the countries of the North, in order to allow for the global redistribution of wealth and income that are critical for development in the South.The international roster of contributors includes Mike Davis, Neil Smith, Enrique Leff, Joan Martinez-Alier, Elmar Altvater, and Michael Lowy.

"Global Flashpoints" critically examines today's neoliberal order and the new resistance movements which it has sparked across the globe. This timely and panoramic work offers penetrating historical analysis of the role of politics, religion and imperialism in shaping the contemporary crisis in the Middle East and of the prospects for the Left throughout the Islamic world. "Global Flashpoints" also explores the present state of resistance movements in Europe and the United States and highlights developments in Latin America, including Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, the recent uprising in Oaxaca, indigenous agrarian movements in Bolivia, and Brazil's landless movement. "Global Flashpoints" offers a uniquely powerful and provocative account of the worldwide struggle against imperialism and neoliberalism in the new century.

Jeremy Corbyn's rapid ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party, driven by a groundswell of popular support particularly among the young, was met at the time by a baffled media. Just where did Jeremy Corbyn come from? In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys argue that it is only by understanding Corbyn's roots in the Bennite Labour New Left's long struggle to transcend the limits of 'parliamentary socialism' and democratise the party, as a precondition for democratising the state, can you understand his surge to become leader of the party.Closely analyzing the forces inside the party aligned against Corbyn's leadership, Panitch and Leys explain what happened between the validation of the Corbyn project in the 2017 election, while advancing an ambitious programme of democratic socialist measures unmatched anywhere since the 1970s, and the electoral defeat amidst the Brexit conjuncture of 2019. They argue that while this defeat marked the farthest point to which the generation formed in the 1970s was able to carry the Labour new left project, it seems unlikely that the new generation of activists will quickly see any other way forward than continuing the struggle inside the Labour Party, so as to fundamentally change it. In the face of the contradictions being generated by twenty-first-century capitalism, and the need for discovering and developing new political forms adequate to addressing them, this book is required reading for democratic socialists, not just in Britain but everywhere.

This trenchant account of the last twenty-five years of the British Labour Party argues that Tony Blair's modernizing tendency was profoundly mistaken in asserting that the only alternative to traditional social democracy and narrow parliamentarianism was an acceptance of neo-liberalism. In blaming the Labour left, rather than the social-democratic right for the party's years in the electoral wilderness, the modernizers rejected the creativity and energy which the party's New Left had mobilized, and without which their own professed aim of democratic renewal was unlikely to be realized. In this new edition, the authors, in collaboration with David Coates, review the debate in light of the Blair government's first three years in office.

With the globalisation of the capitalist economy the economic role of national governments is now largely confined to controlling inflation and facilitating home-grown market performance. This represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and economics; it has been particularly marked in Britain, but is relevant to many other contexts.Market-Driven Politics is a multi-level study, moving between an analysis of global economic forces through national politics to the changes occurring week by week in two fields of public life that are both fundamentally important and familiar to everyone.television broadcasting and health care. Public services like these play an important role, because they both affect the legitimacy of the government and are targets for global capital. This book provides an original analysis of the key processes of commodification of public services, the conversion of public-service workforces into employees motivated to generate profit, and the role of the state in absorbing risk. Understanding the dynamics of each of these trends becomes critical not just for the analysis of market-driven politics but also for the longer-term defence of democracy and the collective values on which it depends.