The political nature of Absolutism has long been a subject of controversy within historical materialism. Developing considerations advanced in Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, this book situates the Absolutist states of the early modern epoch against the prior background of European feudalism. It is divided into two parts. The first discusses the overall structures of Absolutism as a state-system in Western Europe, from the Renaissance onwards. It then looks in turn at the trajectory of each of the specific Absolutist states in the dominant countries of the WestSpain, France, England and Sweden, set off against the case of Italy, where no major indigenous Absolutism developed. The second part of the work sketches a comparative prospect of Absolutism in Eastern Europe. The peculiarities, as well as affinities, of Eastern Absolutism as a distinct type of royal state, are examined. The variegated monarchies of Prussia, Austria and Russia are surveyed, and the lessons asked of the counter-example of Poland. Finally, the structureof the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans is taken as an external gauge by which the singularity of Absolutism as a European phenomenon is assessed. The work ends with some observations on the special position occupied by European development within universal history, which draws themes from both Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism andLineages of the Absolutist State together into a single argumentwithin their common limitsas materials for debate.
Verso's classic Mapping series, published in association with New Left Review, collects the most important writings on key topics in a changing world and delineates the controversies among the most important scholars in each field.
School Wars tells the story of the struggle for Britain's education system. Established during the 1960s and based on the progressive ideal of good schools for all, the comprehensive system has over the past decades come under sustained attack from successive governments.Now, with the growing inequalities of our current system, the damaging impact of spending cuts, the rise of ';free schools' and the growth of the private sector in education, the values embodied in the comprehensive ideal are under threat. The situation is expertly anatomized by journalist and educational campaigner Melissa Benn, who explores the dangerous example of US education reform, where privatization, punitive accountability and the rise of charter schools have intensified social, economic and ethnic divisions.The policies of successive British governments have been muddled and confused, but one thing is clear: that the relentless application of market principles signals a fundamental shift from the ideal of quality education as a public good, to education as market-controlled commodity. Benn ends by outlining some key principles for restoring strong educational values within a fair, non-selective public education system.
The Lives of Things collects Jos Saramago's early experiments with the short story form, attesting to the young novelist's imaginative power and incomparable skill in elaborating the most extravagant fantasies. Combining bitter satire, outrageous parody and Kafkaesque hallucinations, these stories explore the horror and repression that paralyzed Portugal under the Salazar regime and pay tribute to human resilience in the face of injustice and institutionalized tyranny.Beautifully written and deeply unsettling, The Lives of Things illuminates the development of Saramago's prose and records the genesis of themes that resound throughout his novels.
Blistering and timely interrogation of the politics and motives of an infamous ex-leftist
Originally published in 2012 to wide acclaim, this updated edition, Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, includes coverage of the most recent events in the wave of revolt and revolution sweeping the planetriots in Athens, student occupations in the UK, Quebec and Moscow, the emergence of the Occupy Movement and the tumult of the Arab Spring. Economic crisis, social networking and a new political consciousness have come together to ignite a new generation of radicals.BBC journalist and author Paul Mason combines the anecdotes gleaned through first-hand reportage with political, economic and historical analysis to tell the story of today's networked revolution. Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere not only addresses contemporary struggles, it provides insights into the future of global revolt.
In Marxism and Philosophy Korsch argues for a reexamination of the relationship between Marxist theory and bourgeois philosophy, and insists on the centrality of the Hegelian dialectic and a commitment to revolutionary praxis. Although widely attacked in its time, Marxism and Philosophy has attained a place among the most important works of twentieth-century Marxist theory, and continues to merit critical reappraisal from scholars and activists today.
In this major new book, AndreGorz expands on the political implications of his prescient and influential Paths to Paradise and Critique of Economic Reason. Against the background of technological developments which have transformed the nature of work and the structure of the workforce, Gorz explores the new political agendas facing both left and right. Each is in disarray: the right, torn between the demands of capital and the ';traditional values' of its supporters, can only offer illusory solutions, while the left either capitulates to these or remains tempted by regressive, ';fundamentalist' projects inappropriate to complex modern societies. Identifying the grave risks posed by a dual society with a hyperactive minority of full-time workers confronting a silenced majority who are, at best, precariously employed, Gorz proposes a new definition of a key social conflict within Western societies in terms of the distribution of work and the form and content of non-working time.Taking into account changing cultural attitudes to work, he re-examines socialism's historical projectwhich, he contends, has always properly been to lay down the rules and limits within which economic raitonality may be permitted to function, not to create some statist, productivist countersystem. Above all, he offers a vital fresh perspective for the left, whose objective, in his view, must be to extend the sphere to autonomous human activity, and increase the possibilities for individual self-fulfilment.
This book is the result of a research project begun by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two questions:First, what is the rationality of the economic systems that appear and disappear throughout historyin other words, what is their hidden logic and the underlying necessity for them to exist, or to have existed?Second, what are the conditions for a rational understanding of these systemsin other words, for a fully developed comparative economic science?The field of investigation opened up by these two questions is vast, touching on the foundations of social reality and on how to understand them. The author, being a Marxist, sought the answers, as he writes, ';not in philosophy or by philosophical means, but in and through examining the knowledge accumulated by the sciences.' The stages of his journey from philosophy to economics and then to anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book.Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle the question of rationality or irrationality of economic science and of economic realities from the angle of an a priori idea, a speculative definition of what is rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and disappearance of social and economic systems in history as being governed by a necessity ';wholly internal to the concrete structures of social life.
This volume contains the first complete translations of Wilhelm Reich's writings from his Marxist period. Reich, who died in 1957, had a career with a single goal: to find ways of relieving human suffering. And the same curiosity and courage that led him from medical school to join the early pioneers of Freudian psychoanalysis, and then to some of the most controversial work of this centuryhis development of the theory of the orgoneled him also, at one period of his life, to become a radical socialist.The renewed interest in Reich's Marxist writings, and particularly in his notions about sexual and political liberation, follows the radical critiques of Herbert Marcuse, Frantz Fanon and Paul Goodman, the political protest movements toward personal liberation in the present decade.
The concepts of modernity and modernism are amongst the most controversial and vigorously debated in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory. In this intervention, Fredric Jamesonperhaps the most influential and persuasive theorist of postmodernityexcavates and explores these notions in a fresh and illuminating manner.The extraordinary revival of discussions of modernity, as well as of new theories of artistic modernism, demands attention in its own right. It seems clear that the (provisional) disappearance of alternatives to capitalism plays its part in the universal attempt to revive ';modernity' as a social ideal. Yet the paradoxes of the concept illustrate its legitimate history and suggest some rules for avoiding its misuse as well.In this major interpretation of the problematic, Jameson concludes that both concepts are tainted, but nonetheless yield clues as to the nature of the phenomena they purported to theorize. His judicious and vigilant probing of both termswhich can probably not be banished at this late datehelps us clarify our present political and artistic situations.
Feuerbach's departure from the traditional philosophy of Hegel opened the door for generations of radical philosophical thought. His philosophy has long been acknowledged as the influence for much of Marx's early writings.Indeed, a great amount of the young Marx must remain unintelligible without reference to certain basic Feuerbachian texts. These selections, most of them previously untranslated, establish the thought of Feuerbach in an independent role. They explain his fundamental criticisms of the ';old philosophy' of Hegel, and advance his own humanistic thought, which finds its bases in life and sensuality. Feuerbach's contemporaneity as an existentialist, humanist, and atheist is clearly presented, and the reader can readily grasp the liberating influence of this too-long neglected philosopher.Professor Zawar Hanfi has written an excellent introduction establishing Feuerbach's environment, importance, and relevance and his translations surpass most previous Feuerbach translators.
The clearest, boldest and most systematic statement of Simon Critchley's influential views on philosophy, ethics, and politics, Infinitely Demanding identifies a massive political disappointment at the heart of liberal democracy. Arguing that what is called for is an ethics of commitment that can inform a radical politics, Critchley considers the possibility of political subjectivity and action after Marx and Marxism, taking in the work of Kant, Levinas, Badiou and Lacan. Infinitely Demanding culminates in an argument for anarchism as an ethical practice and a remotivating means of political organization.
"Once again, Lynne Segal cuts through feminist ambivalence about sex with great intelligence, verve, and courage. "Straight Sex" is not only a masterful analysis of sexuality and gender, but a stunning manifesto of sexual liberation."--Barbara Ehrenreich
A groundbreaking contribution to debates on women's oppression and consciousness, and the connections between socialism and feminism, this foundational text shows how the roles women adopt within the capitalist economy have shaped ideas about family and sexuality. Examining feminist consciousness from various vantage points social, sexual, cultural and economic Sheila Rowbotham identifies the conditions under which it developed, and how the formation of a new ';way of seeing' for women can lead to collective solidarity.
First systematic presentation and assessment of the groundbreaking journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse.
First systematic presentation and assessment of the groundbreaking journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse.
The first no-holds-barred expose of the exploitative and divisive world of internships.
Cahiers du Cinema was the single most influential project in the history of film. Founded in 1951, it was responsible for establishing film as the ';seventh art,' equal to literature, painting or music, and it revolutionized film-making and writing. Its contributors would put their words into action: the likes of Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer were to become some of the greatest directors of the age, their films part of the internationally celebrated nouvelle vague.In this authoritative new history, Emilie Bickerton explores the evolution and impact of Cahiers du Cinema, from its early years, to its late-sixties radicalization, its internationalization, and its response to the television age of the seventies and eighties. Showing how the story of Cahiers continues to resonate with critics, practitioners and the film-going public, A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema is a testimony to the extraordinary legacy and archive these ';collected pages of a notebook' have provided for the world of cinema.
A classic examination of the role of black working class struggles throughout the twentieth century
Proletarian Nights, previously published in English as Nights of Labor and one of Ranciere's most important works, dramatically reinterprets the Revolution of 1830, contending that workers were not rebelling against specific hardships and conditions but against the unyielding predetermination of their lives. Through a study of worker-run newspapers, letters, journals, and worker-poetry, Ranciere reveals the contradictory and conflicting stories that challenge the coherence of these statements celebrating labor.This updated edition includes a new preface by the author, revisiting the work twenty years since its first publication in France.
In this set of devastating essays, Gareth Peirce analyzes the corruption of legalprinciples and practices in both the US and the UK that has accompanied the';War on Terror'. Exploring the few cases of torture that have come to light, such asthose of Guantnamo detainees Shafiq Rasul and Binyam Mohamed, Peirce arguesthat they are evidence of a deeply entrenched culture of impunity among thoseinvestigating presumed radicals among British Muslim nationals and residents,who constitute the new suspect community in the UK. Peirce shows that theBritish government has colluded in a whole range of extrajudicialactivitiesrendition, internment without trial, tortureand has gone toextraordinary lengths to conceal its actions. Its devices for maintainingsecrecy are probably more deep-rooted than those of any other comparabledemocracy. If the government continues along this path, Peirce argues, it willdestroy the moral and legal fabric it claims to be protecting.
From the ruins of communism, Boris Groys emerges to provoke our interest in the aesthetic goals pursued with such catastrophic consequences by its founders. Interpreting totalitarian art and literature in the context of cultural history, this brilliant essay likens totalitarian aims to the modernists' goal of producing world-transformative art. In this new edition, Groys revisits the debate that the book has stimulated since its first publication.
Leader of the Frankfurt School on the music of modernism.
A collection of essays by the leading French thinker
Fascinating study of the relationship between the philosopher and the psychoanalyst by major Slovenian scholar.
The existentialist philosopher chronicles his time in the Resistance in the Second World War.
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