Stephen Maher – författare

The current matrix of capitalaccumulation is shifting, but what is coming?New terms abound – plutocratic plunder, political capitalism, techno-feudalism,techno-futurism, etc. Some see a new ‘habitation economy’ of post-industrialismin which the provisioning of non-standardized services replaces commodityproduction. Others foresee an unstable interregnum of increasinglyauthoritarian states fusing with far-right movements. The common imagery is ofa capitalist class barricaded off in securitized enclaves from the disruptivestorms of climate change and the anger of dislocated and hyper-stressed workingclasses. It is important to untangle thesecontending themes and identify key social trends, contradictions, andlongstanding as well as emerging social conflicts in this ‘late-stagecapitalism’.  In what ways does the return of Donald Trump to the Americanpresidency represent this  new phase of capitalism? How are these changesbeing registered in state economic apparatuses, in institutional powers, and innew economic and political practices? How is the uneven insertion of statesinto the US empire and world market being reproduced and challenged in terms ofgeopolitical and military primacy and through  trade wars redrawingeconomic zones? And where is the left scratching out new political spacesamidst the economic ruins? These are the many questions the essays  inthis volume take on.

The current matrix of capitalaccumulation is shifting, but what is coming?New terms abound – plutocratic plunder, political capitalism, techno-feudalism,techno-futurism, etc. Some see a new ‘habitation economy’ of post-industrialismin which the provisioning of non-standardized services replaces commodityproduction. Others foresee an unstable interregnum of increasinglyauthoritarian states fusing with far-right movements. The common imagery is ofa capitalist class barricaded off in securitized enclaves from the disruptivestorms of climate change and the anger of dislocated and hyper-stressed workingclasses. It is important to untangle thesecontending themes and identify key social trends, contradictions, andlongstanding as well as emerging social conflicts in this ‘late-stagecapitalism’.  In what ways does the return of Donald Trump to the Americanpresidency represent this  new phase of capitalism? How are these changesbeing registered in state economic apparatuses, in institutional powers, and innew economic and political practices? How is the uneven insertion of statesinto the US empire and world market being reproduced and challenged in terms ofgeopolitical and military primacy and through  trade wars redrawingeconomic zones? And where is the left scratching out new political spacesamidst the economic ruins? These are the many questions the essays  inthis volume take on.

2017 International Thriller Writers Award — Shortlisted, Best Paperback Original NovelPhillip Scarnum must employ his cunning and seamanship to stay alive and out of prison in this fast-paced, gritty thriller.Phillip Scarnum is sailing along Nova Scotia’s South Shore when he finds an abandoned lobster boat smashed on the rocks. He risks his life to haul it in, hoping to collect a big salvage fee, but before he can cash in, a fisherman’s body full of bullet holes washes up on a nearby beach. The Mounties seize Scarnum’s prize and start asking tricky questions about how well he knows the fisherman's wild widow. Scarnum needs to find out what happened on the boat, but as soon as he starts to investigate, some heavily armed Mexican drug runners show up, looking for 100 kilos of missing cocaine. Scarnum needs to keep a step ahead of the police and the gangsters if he wants to stay alive and out of prison and get the salvage fee that’s coming to him.

2017 International Thriller Writers Award - Shortlisted, Best Paperback Original NovelPhillip Scarnum must employ his cunning and seamanship to stay alive and out of prison in this fast-paced, gritty thriller.Phillip Scarnum is sailing along Nova Scotia's South Shore when he finds an abandoned lobster boat smashed on the rocks. He risks his life to haul it in, hoping to collect a big salvage fee, but before he can cash in, a fisherman's body full of bullet holes washes up on a nearby beach. The Mounties seize Scarnum's prize and start asking tricky questions about how well he knows the fisherman's wild widow. Scarnum needs to find out what happened on the boat, but as soon as he starts to investigate, some heavily armed Mexican drug runners show up, looking for 100 kilos of missing cocaine. Scarnum needs to keep a step ahead of the police and the gangsters if he wants to stay alive and out of prison and get the salvage fee that's coming to him.

2017 International Thriller Writers Award - Shortlisted, Best Paperback Original NovelPhillip Scarnum must employ his cunning and seamanship to stay alive and out of prison in this fast-paced, gritty thriller.Phillip Scarnum is sailing along Nova Scotia's South Shore when he finds an abandoned lobster boat smashed on the rocks. He risks his life to haul it in, hoping to collect a big salvage fee, but before he can cash in, a fisherman's body full of bullet holes washes up on a nearby beach. The Mounties seize Scarnum's prize and start asking tricky questions about how well he knows the fisherman's wild widow. Scarnum needs to find out what happened on the boat, but as soon as he starts to investigate, some heavily armed Mexican drug runners show up, looking for 100 kilos of missing cocaine. Scarnum needs to keep a step ahead of the police and the gangsters if he wants to stay alive and out of prison and get the salvage fee that's coming to him.

It is often remarked that critical - and especially Marxist - state theory began to lose its central place in the study of comparative politics in the 1980s. Ironically, this shift occurred just as neoliberal policies were transforming the social form and spatial scales of the state, radically restructuring the practices of state economic intervention, and extending the capabilities of the coercive arms of the state. This volume addresses the 'impoverishment of state theory' over the last decades and insists on the continued salience of class analysis to the study of states. The book's title, State Transformations, reflects several central themes in the comparative study of states: the neoliberal restructuring of capitalist states, the changing economic and political architecture of imperialism, and the prospects of a democratic transformation of capitalist states. The essays collected here are intended to honor the memory of Leo Panitch, whose influential body of work has shaped debates on the state, imperialism, and socialism over the past four decades.Contributors are: Clyde W. Barrow, Caio Bugiato, Frank Deppe, Ruth Felder, Ana Garcia, Sam Gindin, Doug Henwood, Martijn Konings, Colin Leys, Sebnem Oguz, Bryan D. Palmer, Dennis Pilon, Larry Savage, Charles Smith, Michalis Spourdalakis and Hilary Wainwright.

Nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing The first comprehensive biography of Justin Trudeau as prime minister—an honest, compelling story of his government’s triumphs and failures, based on interviews with over 200 insiders and Trudeau himself.As one of the longest-surviving prime ministers and son of the legendary Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau is near royalty in Canada. But how did this former high school teacher with no noteworthy accomplishments put together a team that managed to take over the Liberal Party and bring it from third place to a majority government in 2015? The Prince shows just that. In this first comprehensive history of the Justin Trudeau government, veteran journalist Stephen Maher takes readers behind the scenes of a tumultuous decade of Canadian politics. Through hundreds of interviews with political insiders, he describes how Trudeau—a Canadian prince—had the famous name, the political instincts, the work ethic, and the confidence to overcome errors in judgment and build a global brand, winning in the boxing ring and on the debate stage. And then things changed as key people left the Trudeau team and the government lost direction. Trudeau is an enigmatic figure—a politician who has been in the public eye since childhood and seeks attention but has always concealed his actual feelings from those around him. He has shown admirable strength and skill, deftly handling Donald Trump in trade deals and international meetings and in leading Canada through the COVID-19 pandemic. He has delivered substantial results for people within his political coalition—the most successful attack on poverty in a generation, real progress on climate change, and a sustained application of money and political capital to Indigenous reconciliation. Even as the government overcame major challenges, however, errors in judgment and personality conflicts wasted political capital. Trudeau has struggled to manage his own office, with devastating consequences, and alienated people outside his coalition, to the point where he can’t hold a public event without protesters screaming curses at him. The Prince takes readers behind the curtain as the government goes from triumph to embarrassment and back again, revealing the people, the conflicts, and the struggles both in the government and on the opposition benches. Above all, it traces why this ambitious government led by a global media darling is now so unpopular it is in danger of imminent collapse.

Nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political WritingThe first comprehensive biography of Justin Trudeau as prime minister—an honest, compelling story of his government’s triumphs and failures, based on interviews with over 200 insiders and Trudeau himself.As one of the longest-surviving prime ministers and son of the legendary Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau is near royalty in Canada. But how did this former high school teacher with no noteworthy accomplishments put together a team that managed to take over the Liberal Party and bring it from third place to a majority government in 2015? The Prince shows just that. In this first comprehensive history of the Justin Trudeau government, veteran journalist Stephen Maher takes readers behind the scenes of a tumultuous decade of Canadian politics. Through hundreds of interviews with political insiders, he describes how Trudeau—a Canadian prince—had the famous name, the political instincts, the work ethic, and the confidence to overcome errors in judgment and build a global brand, winning in the boxing ring and on the debate stage. And then things changed as key people left the Trudeau team and the government lost direction.Trudeau is an enigmatic figure—a politician who has been in the public eye since childhood and seeks attention but has always concealed his actual feelings from those around him. He has shown admirable strength and skill, deftly handling Donald Trump in trade deals and international meetings and in leading Canada through the COVID-19 pandemic. He has delivered substantial results for people within his political coalition—the most successful attack on poverty in a generation, real progress on climate change, and a sustained application of money and political capital to Indigenous reconciliation. Even as the government overcame major challenges, however, errors in judgment and personality conflicts wasted political capital. Trudeau has struggled to manage his own office, with devastating consequences, and alienated people outside his coalition, to the point where he can’t hold a public event without protesters screaming curses at him.The Prince takes readers behind the curtain as the government goes from triumph to embarrassment and back again, revealing the people, the conflicts, and the struggles both in the government and on the opposition benches. Above all, it traces why this ambitious government led by a global media darling is now so unpopular it is in danger of imminent collapse.

Nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing The first comprehensive biography of Justin Trudeau as prime minister—an honest, compelling story of his government’s triumphs and failures, based on interviews with over 200 insiders and Trudeau himself.As one of the longest-surviving prime ministers and son of the legendary Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau is near royalty in Canada. But how did this former high school teacher with no noteworthy accomplishments put together a team that managed to take over the Liberal Party and bring it from third place to a majority government in 2015? The Prince shows just that. In this first comprehensive history of the Justin Trudeau government, veteran journalist Stephen Maher takes readers behind the scenes of a tumultuous decade of Canadian politics. Through hundreds of interviews with political insiders, he describes how Trudeau—a Canadian prince—had the famous name, the political instincts, the work ethic, and the confidence to overcome errors in judgment and build a global brand, winning in the boxing ring and on the debate stage. And then things changed as key people left the Trudeau team and the government lost direction. Trudeau is an enigmatic figure—a politician who has been in the public eye since childhood and seeks attention but has always concealed his actual feelings from those around him. He has shown admirable strength and skill, deftly handling Donald Trump in trade deals and international meetings and in leading Canada through the COVID-19 pandemic. He has delivered substantial results for people within his political coalition—the most successful attack on poverty in a generation, real progress on climate change, and a sustained application of money and political capital to Indigenous reconciliation. Even as the government overcame major challenges, however, errors in judgment and personality conflicts wasted political capital. Trudeau has struggled to manage his own office, with devastating consequences, and alienated people outside his coalition, to the point where he can’t hold a public event without protesters screaming curses at him. The Prince takes readers behind the curtain as the government goes from triumph to embarrassment and back again, revealing the people, the conflicts, and the struggles both in the government and on the opposition benches. Above all, it traces why this ambitious government led by a global media darling is now so unpopular it is in danger of imminent collapse.

The Fall and Rise of American Finance traces the collapse and reconstitution of American financial power from the disintegration of robber baron J. P. Morgan's vast empire to the rise of finance behemoth BlackRock. Contrary to what is taken for common sense by figures from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, Maher and Aquanno insist that financialization did not imply the hollowing out of the "real" economy or the retreat of the state. Rather, it served to intensify competitive discipline to maximize efficiency, profits, and the exploitation of labor-with the support of an increasingly authoritarian state.

The Fall and Rise of American Finance traces the collapse and reconstitution of American financial power from the disintegration of robber baron J. P. Morgan''s vast empire to the rise of finance behemoth BlackRock. Contrary to what is taken for common sense by figures from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, Maher and Aquanno insist that financialization did not imply the hollowing out of the "real" economy or the retreat of the state. Rather, it served to intensify competitive discipline to maximize efficiency, profits, and the exploitation of labor-with the support of an increasingly authoritarian state.

This book advances an original conception of the relationship between state and corporate power in the United States. Using what he terms an Institutional Marxist framework, Maher argues that, far from passively responding to interest group pressures, the state has been a key agent in politically mobilizing business, and has played an active role in the organization of lobbying groups. Such business associations do not merely express the pre-existing interests of their corporate members, but are also mechanisms through which the state organizes the political power of the capitalist class. They form part of what the author refers to as an integral state—a wider network of state power which traverses and interpenetrates the state bureaucracy, the legislature, the industrial policy apparatus, and corporate governance. Based on extensive archival research, this book tracks the role of the General Electric Company as a pillar of the integral state in the United States from the finance capital period (1880 to 1930), through the managerial period (1930-1979), to the restructuring leading up to the age of neoliberalism (1979-present).