Search results for ""Author Colin Leys""

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.

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The dream of contemporary capitalism is that everything should become a terrain of profitable enterprise, including most of what has been seen hitherto as the business of government. Like total war, total capitalism demands the subordination of everything to a single goal - national competitiveness, as defined by trans-national corporate elites. The result is a dramatic erosion of democracy, social cohesion and honesty in public life. The three essays collected here, which have been hailed as modern classics, summarise a decade of critical analysis of these dynamics: The 'Rise and Fall of Development Theory' shows how neoliberal globalisation put an end to the concept of development as a collective endeavour and marginalised the two-centuries-old intellectual tradition it rested on. 'Market-Driven Politics' analyses the determining features of the new politics Since the end of capital controls, the politics of once-sovereign states have become more and more integrated with market forces Voters no longer set the political agenda and the business of government becomes the business of adapting public opinion to the perceived interests of business. 'The Cynical State' analyses what happens to policy-making and the quality of public debate under total capitalism. The privatisation of public services is a cardinal element, producing a dynamic that is lethal to public accountability and social solidarity. Colin Leys lives in London. He is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and an Honorary Professor at the Centre for International Public Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh

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"Global Flashpoints" critically examines today's neoliberal order and the new resistance movements which it has sparked across the globe. This timely and panoramic work offers penetrating historical analysis of the role of politics, religion and imperialism in shaping the contemporary crisis in the Middle East and of the prospects for the Left throughout the Islamic world. "Global Flashpoints" also explores the present state of resistance movements in Europe and the United States and highlights developments in Latin America, including Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, the recent uprising in Oaxaca, indigenous agrarian movements in Bolivia, and Brazil's landless movement. "Global Flashpoints" offers a uniquely powerful and provocative account of the worldwide struggle against imperialism and neoliberalism in the new century.

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Can capitalism come to terms with the environment? How do market forces impact on the biosphere? What is the significance of the impasse over the Kyoto protocol? How far has socialist thought developed to help us understand the environmental dilemma? Has it answers? How can class and environmental politics be brought together? What are the shortcomings Green parties and 'green commerce'?

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This work examines issues of race and religion with essays from leading international commentators such as Peter Gowan, Mahmood Mamdani and Georgi Derluguian.

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This book reasserts the need for a bold and revolutionary social imagination, one aimed at saner ways of living and more rational ways of organising society.

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The workplace has been changed by the rise of digital technologies. This work examines this process by covering women in the workplace and at home. It explores changing categories of employment and modes of organization, and how new divisions of race and gender are created in the process.

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Thirteen critical essays on the economy and politics of the modern world are presented here. They include socialistic analyses of gobalization, the modern capitalist state, the "weightless economy", the ideology of neo-liberalism in Britain, and the economic crises in Southeast Asia.

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Students of armed liberation struggle should find much to challenge received wisdom. It took 23 years of armed struggle before Namibia could gain its independence from South Africa in March 1990. SWAPO's victory was remarkable in the face of an overwhelmingly superior enemy. How this came about, and at what cost,is the subject of this study which is based on unpublished documents and extensive interviews with a large range of the key activists in the struggle. The study should be of interest to everyone concerned with southern Africa. North America: Ohio U Press

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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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Jeremy Corbyn's rapid ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party, driven by a groundswell of popular support particularly among the young, was met at the time by a baffled media. Just where did Jeremy Corbyn come from? In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys argue that it is only by understanding Corbyn's roots in the Bennite Labour New Left's long struggle to transcend the limits of 'parliamentary socialism' and democratise the party, as a precondition for democratising the state, can you understand his surge to become leader of the party.Closely analyzing the forces inside the party aligned against Corbyn's leadership, Panitch and Leys explain what happened between the validation of the Corbyn project in the 2017 election, while advancing an ambitious programme of democratic socialist measures unmatched anywhere since the 1970s, and the electoral defeat amidst the Brexit conjuncture of 2019. They argue that while this defeat marked the farthest point to which the generation formed in the 1970s was able to carry the Labour new left project, it seems unlikely that the new generation of activists will quickly see any other way forward than continuing the struggle inside the Labour Party, so as to fundamentally change it. In the face of the contradictions being generated by twenty-first-century capitalism, and the need for discovering and developing new political forms adequate to addressing them, this book is required reading for democratic socialists, not just in Britain but everywhere.

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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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