Böcker av Philippe Van Parijs

The essays collected in this book examine the structure and potential of historical materialism as a general theory of social change. They draw on the lessons of the failure of Marxist crisis theory, and show how a rejuvenated notion of exploitation can illuminate the analysis of the class structure of welfare state capitalism or the assessment of international migration.

Philippe Van Parijs is one of the world's leading political philosophers. In this book, he argues that the purpose of democracy should be to promote justice - we need not just democracy (in the sense of unqualified democracy) but a just democracy. Machiavelli and Rawls must be brought together. In a series of provocative and timely essays, he explores what creating such a just democratic political system would involve in order to tackle such issues as intergenerational justice, multiculturalism and linguistic diversity. He illustrates his arguments with examples drawn from the European Union and his native Belgium.

Providing a basic income to everyone, rich or poor, active or inactive, was advocated by Paine, Mill, and Galbraith but the idea was never taken seriously. Today, with the welfare state creaking, it is one of the world's most widely debated proposals. Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght present a comprehensive defense of this radical idea.