Search results for ""Author Ellen Meiksins Wood""

In The Origin of Capitalism, a now-classic work of history, Ellen Meiksins Wood offers readers a clear and accessible introduction to the theories and debates concerning the birth of capitalism, imperialism, and the modern nation state. Capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the relationship between humans and nature.

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In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory, from Plato to Rousseau. Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines their ideas not simply in the context of political languages but as creative responses to the social relations and conflicts of their time and place. She identifies a distinctive relation between property and state in Western history and shows how the canon, while largely the work of members or clients of dominant classes, was shaped by complex interactions among proprietors, labourers and states. Western political theory, Wood argues, owes much of its vigour, and also many ambiguities, to these complex and often contradictory relations.In the first volume, she traces the development of the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Middle Ages in the perspective of social history - a significant departure not only from the standard abstract history of ideas but also from other contextual methods. From the Ancient Greek polis of Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus and Sophocles, through the Roman Republic of Cicero and the Empire of St Paul and St Augustine, to the medieval world of Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, Wood offers a rich, dynamic exploration of thinkers and ideas that have indelibly stamped our modern world.In the second volume, Wood addresses the formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, which have all been attributed to the "early modern" period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, political discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day.

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Are we now in an age of "postmodernity"? Even as some on the right have proclaimed the "end of history" or the final triumph of capitalism, we are told by some intellectuals on the left that the "modern" epoch has ended, that the "Enlightenment Project" is dead, that all the old verities and ideologies have lost their relevance, that the old principles of rationality no longer apply, and so on. Yet what is striking about the diagnosis of postmodernity is that it has so much in common with older pronouncements of death, both radical and reactionary versions. What has ended, apparently, is not so much another, different epoch but the same one all over again. In response, today's intellectuals on the left seem to be returning to historical materialism, to class analysis. This collection reflects that move, pinning postmodernism in its place and time. It exposes the erroneous bases of "pro-mo" premises, by identifying the real problems to which the current intellectual fashions offer false - or no - solutions. In so doing, the contributors challenge the limits imposed on action and resistance by those who see liberating "new times" in the contradictions of contemporary capitalism.

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In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a "modern" state and political culture in Continental Europe, signaled the persistence of pre-capitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a "modern" state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe.

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Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of "postmodern" fragmentation, "difference", and contingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject it to critique. In this book she sets out to renew the critical programme of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democracy in both the ancient and modern world, examining its relation to capitalism, and raising questions about how democracy might go beyond the limits imposed on it.

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Big changes in the global economy and world politics have put new questions on the table for labour movements around the world. Can workers regain the initiative against the tidal wave of corporate downsizing and government cutbacks? Is labour rising from the ashes? Focusing upon recent developments in the United States, this volume sets these decisive questions about labour against a global backdrop, connecting and contrasting the new American scene to recent developments abroad - from Mexico to Asia, from Canada to Eastern Europe. It provides analysis of the key issues being debated by labour scholars and activists: the changing composition of the international working class; patterns of work under contemporary capitalism; the relationship of race and gender to class; the promise and limitations of recent eruptions of labour militancy; and the strategic options available to the labour movement in today's conditions.

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Are we now in an age of "postmodernity"? Even as some on the right have proclaimed the "end of history" or the final triumph of capitalism, we are told by some intellectuals on the left that the "modern" epoch has ended, that the "Enlightenment Project" is dead, that all the old verities and ideologies have lost their relevance, that the old principles of rationality no longer apply, and so on. Yet what is striking about the diagnosis of postmodernity is that it has so much in common with older pronouncements of death, both radical and reactionary versions. What has ended, apparently, is not so much another, different epoch but the same one all over again. In response, today's intellectuals on the left seem to be returning to historical materialism, to class analysis. This collection reflects that move, pinning postmodernism in its place and time. It exposes the erroneous bases of "pro-mo" premises, by identifying the real problems to which the current intellectual fashions offer false - or no - solutions. In so doing, the contributors challenge the limits imposed on action and resistance by those who see liberating "new times" in the contradictions of contemporary capitalism.

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This work constitutes an analysis of the political economy of the global communications revolution.

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