Search results for ""Author Leo Panitch""

Is this a new age of barbarism? The scale and pervasiveness of violence today calls urgently for serious analysis of: the war on terror and counter-insurgencies; terror and counter-terror; suicide bombings and torture; civil wars and anarchy; urban gang warfare; and the persistence of chronic violence against women.

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Various contributors ask and discuss: How does the new American Empire work? Who runs it? How stable is it?; What is the new American Empire's impact throughout the world?; What is its influence on gender relations? On the media? On popular culture?

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Crises have a way of clarifying things. The Left has always recognized that crises mean, first and foremost, untold suffering by the most vulnerable sections of society, the scars of which remain long after the crises abate. This is why serious socialists have never welcomed economic breakdown. But precisely because of their disruptive effects on business as usual, economic crises also present political opportunities. In previous crises, such as in the Great Depression, and even in the late 1960s and 1970s, economic dislocation became the occasion for massive social explosions and gains for the working people. Since the current crisis began, it is the ruling classes not labour movements which have seized the crisis as an opportunity. Even while the public stands disgusted with the speculative orgy that neoliberalism unleashed, even while the mythology of market fundamentalism has been discredited, and even while public sentiment is hostile to the bank bailouts - the response of capitalist states has been to shore up, however they can, the very model that brought the economy to ruins. It appears we are entering a new age of austerity. This portends a further assault on trade unions and the social entitlements of the working classes. The themes this volume encompasses include: - putting 'the crisis this time' in historical and theoretical perspective - analyzing the role of banks and derivatives in global financialization - interrogating Wall Street and City of London before and after the crisis - surveying the crisis in the US, the UK, Europe, Japan and South Africa - taking the measure of the impact of the crisis on working class families. - showing how 'exit strategies' are reviving neoliberalism - surveying the struggles against the new public austerity in Greece, Ireland, UK and US

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The 50th volume of the Socialist Register is dedicated to the theme of 'registering class' in the light of the spread and deepening of capitalist social relations around the globe. Today's economic crisis has been used to extend the class struggle from above while many resistances have been explicitly cast in terms of class struggles from below. This volume addresses how capitalist classes are reorganizing as well as the structure and composition of working classes in the 21st century.

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Fatal words that beckon people to support wars, and to identify with the ?we? opposed to the ?they?. This volume of the socialist register is not about terror, or ?the war on terror', but about the leading causes of terrorism and war today ? racism, religious fundamentalism and politicised ethnicity ? causes that must be clearly understood and addressed if we are to avert the acute dangers the world now conforts.

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Radical politics have been defined in modern times -- and distinguished from earlier traditions of protest -- by the idea that economic, social and political structures are contradictory. Systems of exploitation creates not only wealth and prosperity for the powerful, but at the same time bring into being the forces which ensure their own eventual downfall. But it is a large step from the general assertion that social forms contain their own contradictions to analysis of the specific contradictions which occur in a given historical context, their interaction and movement, and their possible historical outcomes.This collection of essays examines social contradictions in the age of globalization in which old antagonisms often appear to be overcome, and new cracks are emerging in the facade of capitalist progress. Where do they occur? Where can they be expected to appear in future? How can they be grasped in a spirit of sober radicalism, which neither accepts the limits of the present nor overcomes them through wishful thinking alone? What possibilities do they offer for mobilizing resistance? These issues define an agenda which is critical for socialism in our time.

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Socialist Register 2013 seeks to explore and clarify strategy for the Left, in the light of new challenges, and new opportunities. Socialists today have to confront two realities - that they cannot avoid the question of reforms and a gradualist path out of capitalism; and that the organizational vehicles for socialism will most likely have to abide by different structures and principles than those that dominated left politics in the 20th century. Though solutions are not obvious, Socialist Register 2013 will interrogate these dilemmas and will the critique of some unhelpful radical thinking that obstructs the reconsideration of socialist strategy for the 21st century. * How have the occupations of public squares around the world changed the political scene? * What are the most useful forms of political organization in the new conjuncture? * Which features of past organizational models should be retained? And which discarded? * How can working class organizations be revitalized and changed so as to develop socialist political capacities?

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What are the forces at work in opposition to the American Empire? Are such forces, in the Islamic World and in Latin America, reactionary or progressive? What are the distinguishing features of neoliberalism today? What are its emerging contradictions? This volume surveys the key flashpoints of resistance today. The main arena of resistance to imperialism is the Middle East. Six essays explore the ambivalent nature of Islamic anti-imperialism, and the West's crucial role in making it so significant, as well as the different forms it takes as a political creed; and they provide particular insight into the relationship between religion and politics today in Iraq, Palestine and Turkey. Resistance to neoliberalism has been seen most clearly in the 'pink tide' in Latin America. Seven essays evaluate the potential - or lack of it - for a 21st century socialism across the region, and especially in Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, and Argentina; while an interview with Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of Brazil's Landless People's Movement, provides a unique perspective on class struggles in that country. Three further essays look at recent reactions to neoliberalism and imperialism elsewhere - in Eastern Europe, in France, and in the heart of empire, the United States itself. The volume concludes with a symposium: three leading left economists analyse neoliberalism as a global regime of social and political control, and critically examine the left's response to it.

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How should we face the new imperial challenge presented by the US today? How should we understand imperialism and its relationship to globalized capitalism? Essays on the unique nature of the new US Empire and on the new economics of imperialism both develop and challenges classical Marxist theories. Is imperialism a response to capitalist crisis, or does it arise from the distinctive capacities of the dominant capitalist state? Is the American economy caught in fatal contradictions ? or is it, on the contrary, being strongly reinforced by the American state?s uniquely powerful position in the global capitalist system? What has caused the accelerated imperialist ?accumulation by dispossession? of the South, and what forces are at work among the dominant capitalist zones in the context of the neo-liberal mode of rule they all now share? Other essays explore the invasion of Iraq, the morality of the so-called military humanism behind it; the fact about US military strength and strategic planning; US dependence on imported oil.

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How do people acquire knowledge and understanding of the world they are in? Who has access to the resources and maps facilitating research and debate? How is power mobilised to shape ideas and ideologies? Socialist Register 2006 considers contemporary debate, policy-making, research, education, and scientific practice generally, and examines the role of the state in intellectual life, the press and the media. It investigates the management of scientific publications, the role of the internet, and the influence of foundations, think-tanks, political parties and the World Bank. What standards of integrity exist? How important are new intellectual currents? (including post-modernism) and what are their effects and after-effects? It investigates the quality of thought and ideas, the extent of freedom for critical and heterodox thought, and the formation of new intellectual cadres.

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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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A survey of the political economy of health. Morbid Symptoms focuses on the economic, social and political determinants of health under global capitalism, and on health care as an object of struggle between commercial forces seeking to make it into a field of profit, and popular forces fighting to keep it - or make it - a public service with equal access for all. Contributors survey structures of power and forces for change in national health care systems - from the UK, Germany and the USA to India, China, Sub-Saharan Africa and Cuba. They examine the impact of neo-liberal hegemony on the health industry, the WTO and the WHO; they consider key issues of international health policy: the marketisation of public health service HIV/AIDS in Africa; the control of medical research and training; the misuse of scientific data for commercial gain; the mistreatment of mental illness, the food industry's production of obesity and hunger, and the turning of genes into commodities.

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This year's Socialist Register continues its coverage of the economic crisis. It deepens the analysis with essays on: * The global roots of the crisis * The place of the city as a site of capital accumulation and resistance * The dismantling of the public sector * The fraudulence of neoliberal "environmentalism" * The intensification of global austerity It extends regional coverage of the crisis, with essays on the United States, Latin America, China, Eastern Europe, Ireland, and the Middle East. The volume also opens up a debate on possible strategies for the Left, which it will continue in the forthcoming volume in 2013 on socialist strategy for the 21st century.

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Over the past decade the Socialist Register has been widely recognised as providing the most distinctive investigations on the left today of the contradictions of globalisation, the internationalisation of the state, progressive competitiveness, the new imperialism and popular global mobilisations against it. Among the well known writers whose essays have built the Register's reputation for this are Robert Cox, Harry Magdoff, Andrew Glyn, Bob Sutcliffe, Immanuel Wallerstein, Stephen Gill, Leo Panitch, Manfred Beinefeld, Gregory Albo, Arthur MacEwan, Frances Fox-Piven, Jim Crotty, Gerald Epstein, Elmar Altvater, Doug Henwood, David Harvey, Hugo Radice, Ursula Huws, Constantine Tsoukalas, Wally Seccombe, David Coates, Joachim Hirsch, Boris Kagarlitsky, Colin Leys, Henry Bernstein, Beverly Silver, Giovanni Arrighi, Gerard Dumenil, Naomi Klein, Birgid Mahnkopf and Brigitte Young. This anthology provides: - The most searching analyses of the political, economic and cultural contradictions of globalisation available - essential reading for students in troubled times - The best set of readings on the role of states - and especially the American state - in making globalisation happen, and on the problems they now confront in trying to keep it going.

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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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How is the class being transformed in the Global South? How are working people organising in the workplace and in the community? What are the forces shaping and reshaping workers' lives? Four essays focus on change amongst American workers.

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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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As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it refashioned both our ways of working and our ways of consuming, as well as our ways of communicating. And as the Covid-19 pandemic coursed through the world’s population, adding tens of billions of dollars to the profits of high-tech corporations, its impact revealed grotesque class and racial inequalities and the gross lack of public investment, planning and preparation which lay behind the scandalously slow and inadequate responses of so many states.

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Since the Great Financial Crisis swept across the world in 2008, there have been few certainties regarding the trajectory of global capitalism, let alone the politics taking hold in individual states. This has now given way to palpable confusion regarding what sense to make of this world in a political conjuncture marked by Donald Trump’s `Make America Great Again’ presidency of the United States, on the one hand, and, on the other, Xi Jinping’s ambitious agenda in consolidating his position as `core leader’ at the top of the Chinese state. • Is a major redrawing of the map of global capitalism underway? • Is an unwinding of globalization in train, or will it continue, but with closure to the mobility of labour? • Is there a legitimacy crisis for neoliberalism even while neoliberal practices continue to form state policy? • Are we witnessing an authoritarian mutation of liberal democracy in the 21st century? • Should the strategic issues today be posed in terms of `socialism versus barbarism redux’?

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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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As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it refashioned both our ways of working and our ways of consuming, as well as our ways of communicating. And as the Covid-19 pandemic coursed through the world’s population, adding tens of billions of dollars to the profits of high-tech corporations, its impact revealed grotesque class and racial inequalities and the gross lack of public investment, planning and preparation which lay behind the scandalously slow and inadequate responses of so many states.

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How can we build a future with better health and homes, respecting people and the environment? Connecting with and going beyond classical socialist themes, each essay in this volume combines analysis of how we are living now with plans and visions for new strategic, programmatic, manifesto-oriented directions for alternative ways of living.

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How can we build a future with better health and homes, respecting people and the environment? Connecting with and going beyond classical socialist themes, each essay in this volume combines analysis of how we are living now with plans and visions for new strategic, programmatic, manifesto-oriented directions for alternative ways of living.

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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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How is the class being transformed in the Global South? How are working people organising in the workplace and in the community? What are the forces shaping and reshaping workers' lives? Four essays focus on change amongst American workers. The failures of the US Left and the crisis of class, Adolph Reed & Mark Dudzik; The politics of US labour: paralysis and possibilities, Kim Moody & Charles Post; Organizing the whole worker - and the whole class, Jane McAlevey; Reorganizing the working class: don't be scared - be bold, Steve Williams & Rishi Awatramani.

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