Critiques and Alternatives to Capitalism – serie

This book explores a variety of interconnected themes central to contemporary Marxist theory and its further development as a critical social theory. Championing the critique of political economy as a critical theory of society and rejecting Marxian economics as a contradiction in terms, it argues instead that economic categories are perverted social categories, before identifying the sheer unrest of life - the struggle to make ends meet - as the negative content of the reified system of economic objectivity. With class struggle recognised as the negative category of the cold society of capitalist wealth, which sees in humanity a living resource for economic progress, the author contends that the critique of class society finds its rational solution in the society of human purposes, that is, the classless society of communist individuals. A theoretically sophisticated engagement with Marxist thought, A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in critical theory and post-capitalist imaginaries.

This book explores a variety of interconnected themes central to contemporary Marxist theory and its further development as a critical social theory. Championing the critique of political economy as a critical theory of society and rejecting Marxian economics as a contradiction in terms, it argues instead that economic categories are perverted social categories, before identifying the sheer unrest of life - the struggle to make ends meet - as the negative content of the reified system of economic objectivity. With class struggle recognised as the negative category of the cold society of capitalist wealth, which sees in humanity a living resource for economic progress, the author contends that the critique of class society finds its rational solution in the society of human purposes, that is, the classless society of communist individuals. A theoretically sophisticated engagement with Marxist thought, A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in critical theory and post-capitalist imaginaries.

“Council democracy” is a particular form of democratic socialism that strives towards democratic self-governance on the basis of active, free, and associated individuals working cooperatively within a federated council system. Both in political practice and in social theory, “council democracy” has resurfaced periodically in the past, most notably in the interwar period, in the “long 1960s,” and since the turn of the 21st century. This book offers a novel theoretical and methodological approach to the study of “council democracy.” It focuses on the processes that led to the emergence of two of the foundational and most radical instances of “council democratic” movements in Germany during the German Revolution (1918-1919) and in Italy during the biennio rosso (1919-1920). With all their diversities, ambiguities, and shortcomings, these movements, in varying degrees, sought democratic alternatives to autocratic relations, from local to state levels, and to economic relations, from workplace to national levels. The book shows how the processes through which state-led war mobilization transformed the contours of class struggle laid the ground for the emergence of “council democratic” movements with specific characteristics in Germany and Italy and not in the United Kingdom and France.

“Council democracy” is a particular form of democratic socialism that strives towards democratic self-governance on the basis of active, free, and associated individuals working cooperatively within a federated council system. Both in political practice and in social theory, “council democracy” has resurfaced periodically in the past, most notably in the interwar period, in the “long 1960s,” and since the turn of the 21st century. This book offers a novel theoretical and methodological approach to the study of “council democracy.” It focuses on the processes that led to the emergence of two of the foundational and most radical instances of “council democratic” movements in Germany during the German Revolution (1918-1919) and in Italy during the biennio rosso (1919-1920). With all their diversities, ambiguities, and shortcomings, these movements, in varying degrees, sought democratic alternatives to autocratic relations, from local to state levels, and to economic relations, from workplace to national levels. The book shows how the processes through which state-led war mobilization transformed the contours of class struggle laid the ground for the emergence of “council democratic” movements with specific characteristics in Germany and Italy and not in the United Kingdom and France.

This book provides a lucid, rigorous and critical account of the commons, its history and its political potentialities as well as its limitations and ambiguities. In particular, The Commons analyses the relations of solidarity and conflict between the commons and public welfare policies, as well as the role the commons can play in the struggle against the global socioecological crisis that is threatening the very future of humanity.Over the past decade, various theories, concepts and political projects connected to the commons have become fundamentally important for social science and numerous social movements around the world. In sociology, economics, political science, history, geography, the law and anthropology, the study of the commons has inspired many important academic innovations. In parallel, community activists, labour unions, ecologists, feminists and cooperativists have discovered in the commons a powerful and thought-provoking toolkit with which to defend public services, guarantee access to cultural goods, organise reproductive and care work and more generally fight against commodification and ecological destruction. The first two chapters analyse the dual origin of the academic rediscovery of the commons. On one side, from the realm of political science and economics, the concept of the commons has been used to challenge the dominant paradigms founded on rational choice theory. On the other, from the fields of history, law and anthropology, analysis of the violent destruction of the commons has served to deepen our understanding of the coercive and antidemocratic processes that form the bedrock of capitalism and our current plight. The third and fourth chapters examine the role that the commons can play in emancipatory political projects aiming to deepen democracy in mass industrial societies.The Commons will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and academics with interests in social and political theory, the environment and sustainability, and political sociology.

This book provides a lucid, rigorous and critical account of the commons, its history and its political potentialities as well as its limitations and ambiguities. In particular, The Commons analyses the relations of solidarity and conflict between the commons and public welfare policies, as well as the role the commons can play in the struggle against the global socioecological crisis that is threatening the very future of humanity.Over the past decade, various theories, concepts and political projects connected to the commons have become fundamentally important for social science and numerous social movements around the world. In sociology, economics, political science, history, geography, the law and anthropology, the study of the commons has inspired many important academic innovations. In parallel, community activists, labour unions, ecologists, feminists and cooperativists have discovered in the commons a powerful and thought-provoking toolkit with which to defend public services, guarantee access to cultural goods, organise reproductive and care work and more generally fight against commodification and ecological destruction. The first two chapters analyse the dual origin of the academic rediscovery of the commons. On one side, from the realm of political science and economics, the concept of the commons has been used to challenge the dominant paradigms founded on rational choice theory. On the other, from the fields of history, law and anthropology, analysis of the violent destruction of the commons has served to deepen our understanding of the coercive and antidemocratic processes that form the bedrock of capitalism and our current plight. The third and fourth chapters examine the role that the commons can play in emancipatory political projects aiming to deepen democracy in mass industrial societies.The Commons will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and academics with interests in social and political theory, the environment and sustainability, and political sociology.

What are the possibilities for a radical politics of universal humanity, at a time when the politics of identity increasingly defines the agenda of the left? What are the political and conceptual implications of such an emancipatory form of universality emerging through the struggles of Indigenous peoples on the extractive frontiers of global capitalism? How do such battles play out on the ground, and how should they be researched and conveyed?Extractivism and Universality takes an unorthodox approach to these timely questions. It tells the inside story of a spontaneous uprising in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 2017, in which mestizo, Black, and Indigenous workers and communities confronted the combined forces of a multinational oil company and a militarized state. The book documents a rapidly evolving battle that achieved a remarkable victory and captures the flourishing of an insurgent form of political universality in which racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions were suddenly and powerfully overcome. Intervening in debates on the resistances and alternatives developed by the inhabitants of resource extraction zones, it takes the reader deep inside a rebellion on an Amazonian oil frontier and offers a unique insight into insurgent universality in the lived reality of its material existence. It argues that the dominant decolonial dichotomy between Eurocentric universalism and an Indigenous pluriverse should be replaced by an approach that is attentive to manifestations of universality performed by diverse subaltern subjects. And it does so through a fast-paced fusion of radical political theory with the raw first-person style of gonzo journalism. It will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in political and social theory, social movements, labor relations, and the political ecology of extractivism.

What are the possibilities for a radical politics of universal humanity, at a time when the politics of identity increasingly defines the agenda of the left? What are the political and conceptual implications of such an emancipatory form of universality emerging through the struggles of Indigenous peoples on the extractive frontiers of global capitalism? How do such battles play out on the ground, and how should they be researched and conveyed?Extractivism and Universality takes an unorthodox approach to these timely questions. It tells the inside story of a spontaneous uprising in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 2017, in which mestizo, Black, and Indigenous workers and communities confronted the combined forces of a multinational oil company and a militarized state. The book documents a rapidly evolving battle that achieved a remarkable victory and captures the flourishing of an insurgent form of political universality in which racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions were suddenly and powerfully overcome. Intervening in debates on the resistances and alternatives developed by the inhabitants of resource extraction zones, it takes the reader deep inside a rebellion on an Amazonian oil frontier and offers a unique insight into insurgent universality in the lived reality of its material existence. It argues that the dominant decolonial dichotomy between Eurocentric universalism and an Indigenous pluriverse should be replaced by an approach that is attentive to manifestations of universality performed by diverse subaltern subjects. And it does so through a fast-paced fusion of radical political theory with the raw first-person style of gonzo journalism. It will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in political and social theory, social movements, labor relations, and the political ecology of extractivism.

This book explores the idea that alternatives to our present condition are available in the present, such that a search for alternatives must involve rigorous study of some of its central texts, events, and thinkers. Through engagement with selected modern thinkers, texts, and events, it imagines a different future from the position of the current postcolonial moment, indicating the possibilities that emerge from the present and which shape contemporary radical thinking. An invitation to imagine a possible future marked with alternative possibilities of conducting struggles, and living through contentions and social restructuring, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social and political theory, political philosophy, colonialism and postcolonialism, and historical materialism.

This book explores the idea that alternatives to our present condition are available in the present, such that a search for alternatives must involve rigorous study of some of its central texts, events, and thinkers. Through engagement with selected modern thinkers, texts, and events, it imagines a different future from the position of the current postcolonial moment, indicating the possibilities that emerge from the present and which shape contemporary radical thinking. An invitation to imagine a possible future marked with alternative possibilities of conducting struggles, and living through contentions and social restructuring, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social and political theory, political philosophy, colonialism and postcolonialism, and historical materialism.

Advancing an intersectional theory of hegemony, this book shows how various power relations interact through capitalist structures of othering. Going beyond the usual critiques of capitalism, it analyses the market itself as a principal cause of various forms of externalisation and domination. The book therefore calls for a dismantling of the market and its competitive economic structures through a transformation of the economy from below, greater democratisation (not least for the empowerment of suppressed identities), and the creation of commons as spaces based on inclusion rather than exclusion.In doing so, Overcoming Exploitation and Externalisation argues that co-operative possibilities can emerge for the transformation of ourselves and our society. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of social and political theory with interests in the commons and alternatives to capitalism.

Advancing an intersectional theory of hegemony, this book shows how various power relations interact through capitalist structures of othering. Going beyond the usual critiques of capitalism, it analyses the market itself as a principal cause of various forms of externalisation and domination. The book therefore calls for a dismantling of the market and its competitive economic structures through a transformation of the economy from below, greater democratisation (not least for the empowerment of suppressed identities), and the creation of commons as spaces based on inclusion rather than exclusion.In doing so, Overcoming Exploitation and Externalisation argues that co-operative possibilities can emerge for the transformation of ourselves and our society. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of social and political theory with interests in the commons and alternatives to capitalism.

Trade Fetishism argues that “trade” not only meets material goals, but also simultaneously works as a fantasy that seeks to satisfy and soothe our unconscious desires and anxieties. Countering the idea that trade is driven ultimately by rational economic, political, and strategic logics, it argues that non-rational beliefs and unconscious desires are equally motivating in our obsession with trade and its promises of enjoyment.Reassessing trade and trade politics, Fridell and Clark make a distinct contribution through systematic case studies that explore trade agreements in North America, between Europe and the Caribbean, and at the World Trade Organization. Drawing on case study research on specific trade agreements and trade justice movements, and engaging with a wide range of thinking about trade - from neoclassical economics and international law, to Marxist, feminist, postmodern, and other critical approaches – the book contends that trade and trade agreements are increasingly “fetishized”: offered up as near-magical objects that meet our desires, soothe our anxieties, and offer simple solutions to complex problems, even if they perpetually disappoint.An exploration of the desires and anxieties embedded in the widespread and enduring faith in global trade and free trade - a faith that persists despite abundant contradictions, gaps, and injustices – Trade Fetishism will appeal to scholars of sociology, social and political theory, and economics with interest in international trade and political economy.Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book advances a counter-intuitive thesis: modern attacks on the global ecological balance are exclusively the result of processes of social domination, whether they are based on class, gender or nation. If this is the case, then it follows that ecological struggle and social struggle are one and the same thing.The approach is inspired by Marx’s theory, as revisited through Bourdieu and Foucault, Rawls and Habermas, and Ostrom and Wallerstein. Based on a new concept, that of “metastructure” which defines the relationship between the structural and the symbolic, it confronts contemporary debates on class, gender andcoloniality, as well as on the state, the nation and the World-System. Global social-ecological destruction is thus analysed on three registers: that of capital, which produces for profit; that of (supposed) competent authority, which produces to produce; and that of the nation, which produces to conquer. Consumerism follows from productivism, not the other way around. The question of need takes precedence over that of desire.This metastructural configuration poses the imperative constantly renewed to counter the blind logic of capital with a rational logic of organisation, and, at the same time, to counter the logic of the organisers through a democratic discursive logic. This latter is the recourse of common people. The Global South is on the front line of this struggle; and women’s struggle bears its own decisive ecological impulse.

This book advances a counter-intuitive thesis: modern attacks on the global ecological balance are exclusively the result of processes of social domination, whether they are based on class, gender or nation. If this is the case, then it follows that ecological struggle and social struggle are one and the same thing.The approach is inspired by Marx’s theory, as revisited through Bourdieu and Foucault, Rawls and Habermas, and Ostrom and Wallerstein. Based on a new concept, that of “metastructure” which defines the relationship between the structural and the symbolic, it confronts contemporary debates on class, gender andcoloniality, as well as on the state, the nation and the World-System. Global social-ecological destruction is thus analysed on three registers: that of capital, which produces for profit; that of (supposed) competent authority, which produces to produce; and that of the nation, which produces to conquer. Consumerism follows from productivism, not the other way around. The question of need takes precedence over that of desire.This metastructural configuration poses the imperative constantly renewed to counter the blind logic of capital with a rational logic of organisation, and, at the same time, to counter the logic of the organisers through a democratic discursive logic. This latter is the recourse of common people. The Global South is on the front line of this struggle; and women’s struggle bears its own decisive ecological impulse.

Through a variety of studies in the emerging field of attentional studies, this book examines and seeks alternatives to the current attention economy. Bringing together the work of leading scholars of ‘critical attention studies’ to reflect on issues such as techno-politics, socio-politics, and the politics of distraction, it offers a new and multi-disciplinary conceptualization of attention that emphasizes the connections between attention and curiosity, distraction, decoloniality and care. Above all, The Politics of Curiosity asks us to consider the nature and ambivalence of the curious forms of politics that might be taking shape in the shadow of our current attention economy.The “attention economy” has become a household name: we all know our attention is being harvested, commodified and packaged to be sold to advertisers by capitalist platforms. We all complain about it; some of us dream of disconnection; others call to fight back. By focusing on attentional deficits, and by reducing attention to being focused, however, the common view may miss wider stakes, and more promising opportunities. This collective volume provides a new frame of analysis based on three displacements. First, it relocates attentional issues within a triangulation that explores a continuum between attention, distraction and curiosity. Second, it invites us to investigate into the mental infrastructures that socially condition our perceptions and understandings of the world. Third, it points towards emancipatory politics of curiosity to provide alternatives to the attention economy. Contributions range from pedagogy to media theory, via digital studies, epistemology, sociology, political philosophy, literary history, aesthetics, film and dance studies. They gather some of the leading scholars who shaped the study of attention, questioned the values of distraction and explored the potentials of curiosity over the recent years. They extend across nine countries, four continents and seven languages, to provide a multicultural approach to these debates. Together, they help us understand how our current mental infrastructures have taken shape, under specific regimes of power and authority, in a world dominated by capital, colonialism and patriarchy. But they also sketch what can be done to redeploy them around imperatives of respect and care – from a better awareness of our mental biases, online behaviors and bodily movements, to our collective capacity to restructure classroom interactions, to launch alternative digital platforms, to build democratic movements.The first platform for discussion of the politics of attention and curiosity – and an essential point of reference for future debate – this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and psychology.

Through a variety of studies in the emerging field of attentional studies, this book examines and seeks alternatives to the current attention economy. Bringing together the work of leading scholars of ‘critical attention studies’ to reflect on issues such as techno-politics, socio-politics, and the politics of distraction, it offers a new and multi-disciplinary conceptualization of attention that emphasizes the connections between attention and curiosity, distraction, decoloniality and care. Above all, The Politics of Curiosity asks us to consider the nature and ambivalence of the curious forms of politics that might be taking shape in the shadow of our current attention economy.The “attention economy” has become a household name: we all know our attention is being harvested, commodified and packaged to be sold to advertisers by capitalist platforms. We all complain about it; some of us dream of disconnection; others call to fight back. By focusing on attentional deficits, and by reducing attention to being focused, however, the common view may miss wider stakes, and more promising opportunities. This collective volume provides a new frame of analysis based on three displacements. First, it relocates attentional issues within a triangulation that explores a continuum between attention, distraction and curiosity. Second, it invites us to investigate into the mental infrastructures that socially condition our perceptions and understandings of the world. Third, it points towards emancipatory politics of curiosity to provide alternatives to the attention economy. Contributions range from pedagogy to media theory, via digital studies, epistemology, sociology, political philosophy, literary history, aesthetics, film and dance studies. They gather some of the leading scholars who shaped the study of attention, questioned the values of distraction and explored the potentials of curiosity over the recent years. They extend across nine countries, four continents and seven languages, to provide a multicultural approach to these debates. Together, they help us understand how our current mental infrastructures have taken shape, under specific regimes of power and authority, in a world dominated by capital, colonialism and patriarchy. But they also sketch what can be done to redeploy them around imperatives of respect and care – from a better awareness of our mental biases, online behaviors and bodily movements, to our collective capacity to restructure classroom interactions, to launch alternative digital platforms, to build democratic movements.The first platform for discussion of the politics of attention and curiosity – and an essential point of reference for future debate – this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and psychology.

The familiar problems of democratic capitalism have given way to a deep crisis challenging the basic forms of governance introduced around the late 18th century and then gradually expanded and developed until the late 20th century. Associative Democracy and the Crises of Representative Democracies argues that we are in urgent need of normative guidelines and a strong understanding of a broad range of institutional options and innovative experiments in associative democracy in order to address the structural problems that existing institutional arrangements are confronted with whilst maintaining and strengthening democratic forms of government and governance.The argument is developed against the background of a thorough survey of empirical social scientific studies on the crises of capitalisms and representative democracies. This book focuses primarily on democratic alternatives, though it also works out principles and institutions of democratic socialism as alternatives to capitalism. After introducing the theoretical approach, the book illustrates the ways this framework of analysis can be of use, with particular focus on three issues that are highly topical when it comes to the challenges our institutions are confronted with: democratic governance in relation to ecological crises and uncertainty; the threats to democracy raised by the crisis of political parties and representative party-democracy, and the challenges related to privatization and marketization of public services, particularly in healthcare. The book concludes by exploring opportunities to democratize the economy, locating viable alternatives to capitalism in the tradition of democratic socialism.This urgent and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics and students in various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including political science, sociology, and economics.

The familiar problems of democratic capitalism have given way to a deep crisis challenging the basic forms of governance introduced around the late 18th century and then gradually expanded and developed until the late 20th century. Associative Democracy and the Crises of Representative Democracies argues that we are in urgent need of normative guidelines and a strong understanding of a broad range of institutional options and innovative experiments in associative democracy in order to address the structural problems that existing institutional arrangements are confronted with whilst maintaining and strengthening democratic forms of government and governance.The argument is developed against the background of a thorough survey of empirical social scientific studies on the crises of capitalisms and representative democracies. This book focuses primarily on democratic alternatives, though it also works out principles and institutions of democratic socialism as alternatives to capitalism. After introducing the theoretical approach, the book illustrates the ways this framework of analysis can be of use, with particular focus on three issues that are highly topical when it comes to the challenges our institutions are confronted with: democratic governance in relation to ecological crises and uncertainty; the threats to democracy raised by the crisis of political parties and representative party-democracy, and the challenges related to privatization and marketization of public services, particularly in healthcare. The book concludes by exploring opportunities to democratize the economy, locating viable alternatives to capitalism in the tradition of democratic socialism.This urgent and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics and students in various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including political science, sociology, and economics.

Refusing Ecocide: From Fossil Capitalism to a Liveable World provides a critical analysis of the central role of fossil capitalism in causing climate change and argues that only alternatives based upon democratic eco-socialism can prevent the deepening of the climate crisis.Employing three core concepts within historical materialism – capitalist accumulation, imperialism and hegemony – it locates the existential threat of our changing climate in the drive for increasing profit and growth, the domination of advanced capitalist states that strip resources and exploit cheap labour, and the consent to the capitalist way of life in the global North. With attention to the ways in which, powered by fossil fuels, capital has subjected the world to its predatory logic, this book charts this history and surveys the damage from the Industrial Revolution to today’s deep civilizational crisis, arguing that the market-based and purely technological solutions of ‘climate capitalism’ are too little, too late.A call for a multifaceted and multi-scalar shift away from capitalist accumulation, imperialism and class hegemony and instead towards democratic eco-socialism, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in political and social theory, the environment and sustainability.

Refusing Ecocide: From Fossil Capitalism to a Liveable World provides a critical analysis of the central role of fossil capitalism in causing climate change and argues that only alternatives based upon democratic eco-socialism can prevent the deepening of the climate crisis.Employing three core concepts within historical materialism – capitalist accumulation, imperialism and hegemony – it locates the existential threat of our changing climate in the drive for increasing profit and growth, the domination of advanced capitalist states that strip resources and exploit cheap labour, and the consent to the capitalist way of life in the global North. With attention to the ways in which, powered by fossil fuels, capital has subjected the world to its predatory logic, this book charts this history and surveys the damage from the Industrial Revolution to today’s deep civilizational crisis, arguing that the market-based and purely technological solutions of ‘climate capitalism’ are too little, too late.A call for a multifaceted and multi-scalar shift away from capitalist accumulation, imperialism and class hegemony and instead towards democratic eco-socialism, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in political and social theory, the environment and sustainability.

Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case presents a new conceptual framework of socialism and applies it to the study of socialist development in China, shedding new light on modern China and signposting novel directions in socialist thought.Based on a Marxian-Polanyian approach, the book develops a new conceptual framework of socialism by taking the liberal and the communist challenges seriously. In doing so, Brie develops a liberal and a communist formula of socialism based upon two owners of socialist property (the individuals and the society), different forms of possession (public, common, associative, and individual) meditating the interests of the two opposite owners, and democracy as an expression of the will of the many and of all together in common. This formula is then applied to socialist development in China, analysing its booming centrally directed economy and the political ways to safeguard democracy as the rule of, for, and by the people under the Chinese Communist Party.With an analysis of the means by which China has pursued a unique form of socialist development, Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case will appeal to scholars of modern China, political theory, political sociology, and socialist thought.

Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case presents a new conceptual framework of socialism and applies it to the study of socialist development in China, shedding new light on modern China and signposting novel directions in socialist thought.Based on a Marxian-Polanyian approach, the book develops a new conceptual framework of socialism by taking the liberal and the communist challenges seriously. In doing so, Brie develops a liberal and a communist formula of socialism based upon two owners of socialist property (the individuals and the society), different forms of possession (public, common, associative, and individual) meditating the interests of the two opposite owners, and democracy as an expression of the will of the many and of all together in common. This formula is then applied to socialist development in China, analysing its booming centrally directed economy and the political ways to safeguard democracy as the rule of, for, and by the people under the Chinese Communist Party.With an analysis of the means by which China has pursued a unique form of socialist development, Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case will appeal to scholars of modern China, political theory, political sociology, and socialist thought.

This book argues for a twofold transformation to mitigate environmental catastrophe, avert war and overcome poverty and authoritarianism: a struggle for democratic, peace-oriented, social and ecological changes within the framework of a post-neoliberal, but still bourgeois-capitalist society, and a drive towards entry-level projects aimed at a great transformation beyond capitalism. Calling for the embrace of core values and institutions aligned with solidarity as opposed to capitalism, it advances four guiding ideas for the pursuit of such a path: redistribution of life chances and power, socio-ecological restructuring, redesign of democratic institutions, and reversal from confrontation to peace through international cooperation and solidarity. A presentation of the fundamental elements of a left strategy for socioecological transformation, this volume will appeal to scholars of social, political and economic theory with interests in post-capitalist futures.

This book argues for a twofold transformation to mitigate environmental catastrophe, avert war and overcome poverty and authoritarianism: a struggle for democratic, peace-oriented, social and ecological changes within the framework of a post-neoliberal, but still bourgeois-capitalist society, and a drive towards entry-level projects aimed at a great transformation beyond capitalism. Calling for the embrace of core values and institutions aligned with solidarity as opposed to capitalism, it advances four guiding ideas for the pursuit of such a path: redistribution of life chances and power, socio-ecological restructuring, redesign of democratic institutions, and reversal from confrontation to peace through international cooperation and solidarity. A presentation of the fundamental elements of a left strategy for socioecological transformation, this volume will appeal to scholars of social, political and economic theory with interests in post-capitalist futures.

This volume presents an interdisciplinary and international revaluation of urban Marxisms.Bringing together the main critical Marxist perspectives from around the world on contemporary urban studies, it engages with a range of issues connected to the “urban question,” such as urban sprawl, housing, and increasing rates of urbanization across the globe. With attention to the manner in which the three axes of class, gender, and race play a fundamental role in contemporary social phenomena, it interweaves different issues that are inextricably linked in matters of urban inequality. The book bridges a significant gap between urban studies and Marxists theories by reviving Marx and Engels’ ideas in the context of analyzing urban studies in the twenty-first century. The objective is to bring together diverse perspectives and directions of the ongoing debate on the “urban question.” Although there are multiple Marxisms and theoretical currents inspired by Marxism that seek to understand the urban and spatial transformations of today, there has been a lack of comprehensive scholarship that systematically brings them together to frame this debate. The goal is to unite the main critical Marxist perspectives on contemporary urban studies.Reimagining Urban Marxisms will therefore appeal to scholars across disciplines with interests in Marxist analyses of contemporary urban and spatial transformations, and the phenomenon of planetary urbanization.

This book explores possible and realistic alternatives to a capitalism that is no longer sustainable, whether economically, socially, or for a habitable planet. Arguing that these alternatives can only be of socialist orientation, the author moves from a discussion of works that attempted to explain the failure of the socialisms of the 20th century, to a consideration of models for a new socialism.Through consideration of issues including the role of public services, the functions of public enterprises, the creation of a socialized sector, planning, and different forms of democracy, this volume espouses a model of economic democracy capable of dealing with market mechanisms without being dominated by them, as new world geopolitics emerge.A synthesis of proposals for socialist alternatives to today’s hegemonic form of shareholder capitalism, Ten Essays for a 21st Century Socialism will appeal to scholars of sociology, political theory and economics with interests in contemporary socialism.

This volume engages with the work of Heidegger to argue that the modern environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of understanding Life, resulting from the symbolic codification of the world from the Logos of Greek philosophy to the rationality of the modern world and resulting in a metaphysics that privileges ontological thinking on the "question of being" over the environmental question and the concern for the conditions of life.Exploring the work of the three principal thinkers of the Lebensphilosophie— Bergson, Dilthey, and Husserl—it charts the itinerary of Heidegger’s work and exposes its conflicts with the work of Marx, Plessner, Haar, and Derrida. A critical argument against the colonization of the world by Eurocentric reason and for the deconstruction of Capital, Heidegger in the Face of the Environmental Question draws on Latin American environmental thought to re-think the conditions for life on Earth.It will therefore appeal to scholars of philosophy, political theory, and political sociology with interests in environmental philosophy, political ecology, and socioeconomic transformation.

This volume engages with the work of Heidegger to argue that the modern environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of understanding Life, resulting from the symbolic codification of the world from the Logos of Greek philosophy to the rationality of the modern world and resulting in a metaphysics that privileges ontological thinking on the "question of being" over the environmental question and the concern for the conditions of life.Exploring the work of the three principal thinkers of the Lebensphilosophie— Bergson, Dilthey, and Husserl—it charts the itinerary of Heidegger’s work and exposes its conflicts with the work of Marx, Plessner, Haar, and Derrida. A critical argument against the colonization of the world by Eurocentric reason and for the deconstruction of Capital, Heidegger in the Face of the Environmental Question draws on Latin American environmental thought to re-think the conditions for life on Earth.It will therefore appeal to scholars of philosophy, political theory, and political sociology with interests in environmental philosophy, political ecology, and socioeconomic transformation.