Böcker utgivna av Verso Books

A striking account of the European Left in the twentieth century by one of its main protagonists

In The Notion of Authority, written in the1940s in Nazi-occupied France, Alexandre Kojeve uncovers the conceptual premisesof four primary models of authority,examining the practical application of theirderivative variations from the Enlightenment to Vichy France.This foundational text, translated here intoEnglish for the first time, is the missing piece in any discussion of sovereignty and politicalauthority, worthy of a place alongside the work of Weber, Arendt, Schmitt, Agambenor Dumezil. The Notion of Authority is a short andsophisticated introduction to Kojeve'sphilosophy of right. It captures its author'sintellectual interests at a time when he wasretiring from the career of a professionalphilosopher and was about to become oneof the pioneers of the Common Market and the idea of the European Union.

A history of the UK's regional inequalities, and why they matter

Here, in this fourth collection, Baudrillard's stance is less that of the interventionist intellectual analysing the world as critical subject, than of the barely participant observer, an "internal exile" watching the world with fierce insistence, yet registering our shortage of reality.

This volume shows that engineers are trained and organized quite distinctly in different national contexts. It includes case studies of engineers in six major industrial economies: Japan, France, Germany, Sweden, Britain and the United States.

Highlights the work of contemporary Brazilian photographers with an emphasis on images which reflect the dynamism and eclecticism of Brazilian society. The work of 21 of Brazilian photographers is shown, and the text describes the new uses of photography within the contemporary arts.

Politics in Britain is an original and powerful work of synthesis that is essential reading for students of the political scene in the UK today. Controversial when it was first published, the book's analysis of the changing face of British politics has been confirmed by events of the 1980s. This new edition, revised throughout, is brought up to date with substantial new material on the Thatcherite era.Leys provides a solid body of information on the central topics of British politics - not only on the nature of political parties and the evolution of the state, but also on the organisation of capital and labour, the role of social class in British politics, the transformation of local democracy, law and order, and other areas seldom discussed in more orthodox texts. The book also includes new accounts of Thatcher's programme of de-nationalisation, and of the changes to the Welfare State. Now more relevant than ever. Politics in Britain has yet to be surpassed as an introduction to its subject.

Stunned by the news of Sputnik in 1957, the American public were to be treated over the next dozen years to the spectacle of an all-out national crusade: the race to beat the Russians to the moon. What few understood at the time - and what has largely been obscured in popular representations of this episode in movies and bestsellers - was the key economic and technical role played by manned space exploration in post-war US capitalist expansion. From Potsdam to Cape Canaveral, the yellow brick road twisted and turned, but its ultimate goal remained clear: the Oz of global American economic and political domination.Taking off from that masterpiece of American fiction, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Dale Carter tells the lurid tale of the postwar boom, through the history of the manned space program. Salvaged from the ashes of Nazi Germany (Pynchon's 'Oven State'), as US officials rounded up the Third Reich's leading V-2 scientists, the American Rocket State embarked on an upward path that would culminate in the epochal voyage of Apollo XI in 1969. Following this path, Carter gives an innovative, brilliant account of American culture and society during the Cold War. He charts the ideological and political significance of a range of phenomena, from films like High Society, Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide to John F. Kennedy's rise to power, from the emergence of a new high-tech economy fueled by the NASA-led transformation of the aerospace industry to the last flight of the space shuttle Challenger. His highly original account of the star-spangled space age sets a new standard for the study of American culture.

Ralph Miliband is one of the major Marxist sociologists working today. His books, The State in Capitalist Society and Parliamentary Socialism, arc standard reference points in all debates on the nature of the state.Less widely known, and never before collected in one volume, are Miliband's contributions to the development of socialist politics. As an essayist, he deploys a wide political culture and clarity of argument with a sustained commitment to socialist values. The topics of the essays gathered here were sparked by the key occasions of socialist debate in the past twenty years. They include socialist democracy; the relation between class power and state power in the transition to socialism; the role of human agency in history, and the character of the Soviet Union. Kolakowski, Bahro, Medvedev and Bettelheim are among the figures whose contributions are soberly and constructively assessed. The lessons of the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile are drawn in a tour de force of controlled moral outrage and urgent analysis.All of Miliband's interventions in his famous debate with Nicos Poulantzas are brought together for the first time, along with his subsequent reflections on the questions it addressed. Finally, Miliband explores the special problems posed for socialists by the existence of powerful and inert labour parties in advanced capitalist countries, arguing powerfully for a recognition that contemporary conditions demand a rejection both of Leninist and of social-democratic strategies.Class Power and State Power is an impressive display of the depth and range of Ralph Miliband's writing of the past twenty years; it will confirm his status as one of the most important contemporary Marxist thinkers.

This text brings together black activists and scholars, including two former mayors of American cities, to analyze the theoretical and practical problems currently facing the black community in the United States

Why were Hungarians, including those who would be considered radical in the West, happy to see the introduction of a market economy? Why was there no real opposition to the dismantling of socialist achievements like universal free education and health care? Nigel Swain's topical book answers these questions through one of the most thorough analyses to date of a socialist economy in practice and dissolution.Carefully tracing Hungary's postwar economic history, Swain shows why both Stalinist central planning and 'feasible' market socialism failed. He argues that these failures were caused not by imperfections in the Hungarian model, but by crucial problems inherent in the socialist project itself. Far from a eulogy to free-market capitalism, yet offering a sobering account of the consequences of socialist economic errors - technological backwardness, corruption and declining morale - Hungary will be a major contribution to political and economic debate on the left.

This volume explores the social forces that are currently shaping the new South Africa and provides detail on the political and ideological rifts in the liberation movement, including analysis of the "homelands" parties, the trade unions and the ANC.

Over recent years James Dunkerley has established a reputation as one of the most thoughtful and eloquent writers on Latin America. In his latest book he investigates the high incidence of political suicide in the subcontinent. A sensitive and revealing essay details a number of case studies: the still disputed death of Chilean President Salvador Allende during Pinochet’s storming of the Moneda Palace in 1973; the case of the Salvadorean guerrilla leader Salvador Cayetano Carpio who shot himself in the heart in April 1983; the death of Brazilian President Getulio Vargas, who declared in April 1954 that he would only leave the presidential palace dead—and a few days later did so; Bolivian President German Busch, who died at his own hand aged thirty-five in 1939; and the dramatic end of Eduardo Chibas, founder of the Cuban People’s Party, who shot himself live on Havana radio in 1951. in the pieces which follow, Dunkerley employs his customary acuity to range over the implications of the Sandinista defeat in Nicaragua, the plight of El Salvador, the modern history of Bolivia, the experience of postwar Guatemala and, in a coruscating broadside, the politics of the Peruvian novelist and the presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa.

What happens when ‘life’s simple joys’ become complicated? When pleasure is transformed as a function of consumption, the innocent comforts of food, nature and place are embedded in complex practices of distribution and exploitation. Exotic and diverse objects of pleasure are made available only at the price of a heightened awareness of their origins, genealogies and possible effects; ‘authenticity’ recedes behind objects produced as pleasures.Troubled Pleasures considers the ways in which modern pleasure is fraught with unhappy implications, at the same time as contemporary critical arguments put into question the touchstones of identity, morality, subjectivity and desire. It brings together writings which explore the sources of pleasure’s ‘loss of innocence’, and which argue the case for a scrupulous ‘alternative hedonism’. Including essays on human needs, socialism and gender, a feminist response to Joyce’s Ulysses, and a fictional reflection on appetite and excess, Troubled Pleasures plots an Epicurean path between righteous asceticism and conspicuous consumption.

In this dramatic, month-by-month chronicle of a tumultuous period, Boris Kagarlitsky bears witness to the eruption of open political discussion in the Soviet Union during the 'hot summer' of 1988

Since the appearance of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's first essays in the 1950s, his work has provided an incisive and eloquent commentary on the progress not only of Germany, but of western societies as a whole. Political Crumbs shows Enzensberger at his best, popularizing intellectual debate with a sharp wit and a willingness to make links between apparently disparate subjects and approaches. From reflections on the delusions of intellectuals, the unpredictability of the political process, the creativity of everyday life, the mysteries of German politics and the anarchy of the normal, two major themes emerge: the consequences for left politics of the breakdown of dogmatism, and the 'ungovernability' of complex institutions.

Epic new biography of Karl Marx for the 200th anniversary of his birthIn this essential new biographythe first to give equal weight to both the work and life of Karl MarxSven-Eric Liedman expertly navigates the imposing, complex personality of his subject through the turbulent passages of global history. A World to Win follows Marx through childhood and student days, a difficult and sometimes tragic family life, his far-sighted journalism, and his enduring friendship and intellectual partnership with Friedrich Engels.Building on the work of previous biographers, Liedman employs a commanding knowledge of the nineteenth century to create a definitive portrait of Marx and his vast contribution to the way the world understands itself. He shines a light on Marx's influences, explains his political and intellectual interventions, and builds on the legacy of his thought. Liedman shows how Marx's masterpiece, Capital, illuminates the essential logic of a system that drives dizzying wealth, grinding poverty, and awesome technological innovation to this day.Compulsively readable and meticulously researched, A World to Win demonstrates that, two centuries after Marx's birth, his work remains the bedrock for any true understanding of our political and economic condition.

This work studies television reporting of the US at war since World War II, including detailed coverage of television's role in the Gulf. Cumings offers insights into the everyday operations of the media and assesses the possibilities of mobilizing them for political purposes.

This reference combines commentary and explanation with a detailed chronology to illuminate the period of 1987 to 1993 in Central America. It offers a succinct overview of pacification and democracy in the region, including criticism of the structuralist approaches like those of Chomsky and Petras.