Search results for ""Author Leo Panitch""

What is the meaning of revolution in the twenty-first century?One hundred years ago 'October 1917' was a unique event inspiring socialists and oppressed peoples and became an inevitable point of reference for 20th century politics. Today the left needs both come to terms with this legacy and to transcend it, through a critical reappraisal of its broad effects - positive and negative - on political, intellectual and cultural life, considering also new revolutions after 1917. The main point of the volume is to look forward. Nowadays, when reform as it was understood in the 20th century appears to be as impossible as revolution, it is necessary to rethink the relationship between capitalist crises and both revolution and reform. Change needs to be understood in relation to the distinct trajectories of radical politics in different regions. Contributors will consider, interrogate and explore many issues:* Alternatives to neoliberal capitalism: Socialist strategies - or detours? * The immense ecological challenge to revolutionary political strategy.* Reframing revolution amidst accelerated technological change.* What is the salience today of the concept of the revolutionary party?* Questioning agency - of the working class and other oppressed groups. * Socialist feminist perspectives on the meaning of revolution today. * Revolutionary vision, including its artistic expression in the 21st century.

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Investment banks have disappeared overnight, industrial firms have gone bankrupt, and the financial order has been shaken to the core: our world is in the grips of the most calamitous economic crisis since the Great Depression with its epicentre is the imperial USA. Many around may wonder if another world is possible, but few are mapping out potential avenues - and flagging wrong turns - en route to a post-capitalist future. In this groundbreaking analysis, renowned radical political economists Albo, Gindin and Panitch lay bare the roots of the crisis, which they locate in the dynamic expansion of capital on a global scale over the last quarter century - and in the inner logic of capitalism itself. In and Out of Crisis challenges the call by much of the Left for a return to a mythical Golden Age of economic regulation as a check on finance capital and shows how neo-liberal free markets have been sustained by massive state intervention. With clarity and erudition, they argue that given the balance of social forces regulation is not a means of fundamentally reordering power in society, but rather a way of preserving markets. Contrary to those who believe US hegemony is on the wane, Albo, Gindin and Panitch contend that the meltdown has, in fact, reinforced the centrality of the American state as the dominant force within global capitalism, while simultaneously increasing the difficulties entailed in managing its imperial role. In conclusion, the authors argue that it's time to start thinking about genuinely transformative alternatives to capitalism - and how to build the collective capacity to get us there. We should be thinking bigger and preparing to go further.

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WHAT SHOULD THE LEFT AIM TO ACHIEVE TODAY? This book addresses the challenges facing socialists and the recent shift from protest to politics. It examines the limits and possibilities for class, party and state transformation and the democratic and socialist insurgencies inside the Labour Party in Britain, and the Democratic Party in the USA. One of the most unexpected aspects of politics today is the coming to the fore of socialists at leadership level in the British Labour Party and the US Democratic Party. Their class-focused political discourse is directed against the power of capitalists, corporations and banks - and against the state policies which reflect and sustain that power. This is more than mere left populism - the focus is on addressing the dynamics, structure, inequalities, and contradictions in capitalism, confronting ruling class privilege and power, and the systemic core of neoliberal globalization. There is a new will: to build the power, cohesion, and capacities of the working class; to struggle for broader and deeper reforms. New socialist movements know that they must offer systematic political education to realise their great potential, and to overcome the barriers that they face. The authors provide essential historical, theoretical and critical perspective. They stress the need for renewing working-class politics through new kinds of socialist parties.

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From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living. The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada – an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada’s capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion – on force and on fear – to secure that subordination. From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics – of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.

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From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living. The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada – an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada’s capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion – on force and on fear – to secure that subordination. From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics – of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.

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The word 'polarization' is on the lips of every commentator today, from mainstream journalists to the left, but the significance of this widely recognised phenomenon needs far more scrutiny than it has had. The 58th volume of the Socialist Register takes up the challenge of exploring how the new polarisations relate to the contradictions that underlie them, and how far 'centrist' politics can continue to contain them. Original essays examine the multiplication of polarised national, racial, generational and other identities in the context of growing inequality in income and wealth, new forms of regional and urban antagonism, 'vaccine nationalism', and the shifting parameters of great power rivalry.

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