Download or read book Challenge and Burden of Historical Time written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time written by István Mészáros and published by Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary new work by the leading Marxian philosopher of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time represents a breakthrough in the development of socialist thought. It can be seen both as a companion volume to his earlier pathbreaking Beyond Capital and a major theoretical contribution in its own right. Its focus is on the “decapitation of historical time” in today’s capitalism and the necessity of a new “socialist time accountancy” as a revolutionary response to the debilitating present. Extending Mészáros’s earlier analysis of capitalism as a social-metabolic system caught in an irreversible structural crisis, it represents a crushing refutation of the view that “there is no alternative” to the current social order. Mészáros’s wide-ranging analysis explores the forces behind the expansion of world inequality, the return of imperial interventionism, the growing structural crisis of the capitalist state, and the widening planetary ecological crisis—along with the new hope offered by the reemergence of concrete socialist alternatives. At the heart of his book is an examination of the preconditions of Latin America’s historic Bolivarian journey, which is producing new revolutionary transformations in Venezuela, Bolivia and elsewhere. The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time is a work of great political as well as philosophical importance, one that defines the challenges and burdens facing all those who are committed to a more rational, more egalitarian future.
Download or read book The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time written by István Mészáros and published by . This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading Marxian philosopher and the author of 'Beyond Capital', Mészáros here defines the challenges and burdens facing those committed to a more rational, egalitarian future. At the heart of the book is an examination of Latin America's Bolivarian journey.
Download or read book The Ecological Rift written by John Bellamy Foster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the delicate fabric of the biosphere. The economy and the earth are headed for a fateful collision—if we don't alter course. In The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth environmental sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a radical assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that the source of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in capitalist society, which expands individual riches at the expense of public wealth, including the wealth of nature. In the process, a huge ecological rift is driven between human beings and nature, undermining the conditions of sustainable existence: a rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature that is irreparable within capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of motion. Critically examining the sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and technologists, Foster, Clark, and York insist instead that fundamental changes in social relations must occur if the ecological (and social) problems presently facing us are to be transcended. Their analysis relies on the development of a deep dialectical naturalism concerned with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction with the economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable human development.
Download or read book Beyond Leviathan written by István Mészáros and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A field-defining masterwork, this posthumous publication maps the evolution of the idea of the state from ancient Greece to today István Mészáros was one of the greatest political theorists of the twentieth century. Left unfinished at the time of his death, Beyond Leviathan is written on the magisterial scale of his previous book, Beyond Capital, and meant to complement that work. It focuses on the transcendence of the state, along with the transcendence of capital and alienated labor, while traversing the history of political theory from Plato to the present. Aristotle, More, Machiavelli, and Vico are only a few of the thinkers discussed in depth. The larger objective of this work is no less than to develop a full-edged critique of the state, in the Marxian tradition, and set against the critique of capital. Not only does it provide, for the first time, an all-embracing Marxian theory of the state, it gives new political meaning to the notion of “the withering away of the state.” In his definitive, seminal work, Mészáros seeks to illuminate the political preconditions for a society of substantive equality and substantive democracy.
Download or read book Necroculture written by Charles Thorpe and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-24 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the author draws on Karl Marx’s writings on alienation and Erich Fromm’s conception of necrophilia in order to understand these aspects of contemporary culture as expressions of the domination of the living by the dead under capitalism. Necroculture is the ideological reflection and material manifestation of this basic feature of capitalism: the rule of dead capital over living labor. The author argues that necroculture represents the subsumption of the world by vampire capital.
Download or read book The Socialist Alternative written by Michael A. Lebowitz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A good society,“ Michael Lebowitz tells us, “is one that permits the full development of human potential.” In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a conflict between profits and human development, profits take precedence. Just ask the unemployed, those toiling at dead-end jobs, the sick and infirm, the poor, and the imprisoned. But if not capitalism, what? Lebowitz is also critical of those societies that have proclaimed their socialism, such as the former Soviet Union and China. While their systems were not capitalist and were capable of achieving some of what is necessary for the “development of human potential,” they were not “good societies.” A good society as Lebowitz defines it must be marked by three characteristics: social ownership of the means of production, social production controlled by workers, and satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Lebowitz shows how these characteristics interact with and reinforce one another, and asks how they can be developed to the point where they occur more or less automatically—that is, become both a society’s premises and outcomes. He also offers fascinating insights into matters such as the nature of wealth, the illegitimacy of profits, the inadequacies of worker-controlled enterprises, the division of labor, and much more.
Download or read book Changing Schools written by Terry Wrigley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changing Schools places educational and social aims at the centre of a discussion of educational change. It draws on forteen case studies to explore school change which is oriented towards social justice and democracy. In an age of global mobility, economic polarization and unprecedented environmental and cultural challenges, the education of all children and young people to higher levels has become a key issue of international policy. Educational reform in such a context requires a serious rethinking and reworking of school and classroom practices. Social justice is integral to the challenge of raising standards, since this requires removing the ongoing influence of poverty on school success. This thoughtful book presents new thinking and practice for bringing about school change, drawn from diverse contexts around the world. It distils and compares the experiences and theories-in-action of engaged teachers, school principals and academics. It seeks to challenge the dominance that human capital theories of school improvement currently hold on policy making. The authors draw on contemporary innovations in practice and theory and also long-standing traditions of alternative thinking and practice. Linking together and articulating other ways of conceiving of and implementing school change, the collection bases its findings on values of equality and global citizenship. It shows how schools can work to make different languages, knowledge, narratives, and truths integral to the mainstream curriculum, everyday pedagogy, assessment and general culture of the school. Changing Schools is directed at all who are concerned with progressive school change and the promotion of democratic citizenship and social justice. It will prove an invaluable source of inspiration for all involved in schools, including teachers, head teachers, policy makers, and those currently studying for school leadership positions.
Download or read book The Marx Revival written by Marcello Musto and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international set of eminent scholars examine the contemporary relevance and continuing contribution of Marx's work. This indispensable volume presents Marx's theories in a new light, both for specialists who might think they already know everything about Marx and for a new generation of readers who are approaching his work for the first time.
Download or read book The End of Western Hegemonies written by Marie-Josée Lavallée and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of recent trends like growing authoritarianism and xenophobic nationalism, the rise of the Far Right, the explosion of economic and social inequalities, heightened geopolitical contest and global capitalism’s endless crisis, and the impacts of shocks like the Covid-19 pandemic, discourses about the ‘decline of the West’ no more look like mere ruminations of a handful of cultural depressives and politically disillusioned; they sound increasingly realistic. This volume addresses this issue by mapping and analyzing the forms, mechanisms, strategies, and effects, in the past, the present, and the future, of Western hegemonies, namely, asymmetrical relations that bring advantages or, at least, secure the superiority of Western state and non-state actors in politics, economics, and culture broadly understood. Over the past decades and centuries, Westerners never ceased claiming supremacy in all these spheres. A host of these relations were initiated through colonialism and imperialism, and perpetuated through informal imperialism, but there are other channels: political interference, inequalities between countries, and attempts at affirming the supremacy of the so-called Western way of life was also secured through the military might and economic power of great Western actors. This book explores sites of Western hegemonies and contributes to understanding the mechanisms through which international hierarchies are formed and maintained. Bringing together the research of scholars from various fields in the humanities and social sciences, political science, international relations, political philosophy, sociology, history, postcolonial studies, criminology, and linguistics, this volume develops a multidisciplinary outlook on the issue of Western hegemonies that allows uncovering resemblances between various forms of asymmetrical relations and their mechanisms.
Download or read book The Necessity of Social Control written by István Mészáros and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As John Bellamy Foster writes in his foreword to the present book, “István Mészáros is one of the greatest philosophers that the historical materialist tradition has yet produced. His work stands practically alone today in the depth of its analysis of Marx’s theory of alienation, the structural crisis of capital, the demise of Soviet-style post-revolutionary societies, and the necessary conditions of the transition to socialism. His dialectical inquiry into social structure and forms of consciousness—a systematic critique of the prevailing forms of thought—is unequaled in our time.” Mészáros is the author of magisterial works like Beyond Capital and Social Structures of Forms of Consciousness, but his work can seem daunting to those unacquainted with his thought. Here, for the first time, is a concise and accessible overview of Mészáros’s ideas, designed by the author himself and covering the broad scope of his work, from the shortcomings of bourgeois economics to the degeneration of the capital system to the transition to socialism.
Download or read book Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness Volume 1 written by István Mészáros and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new work (the first in a two-volume series) by the leading Marxian philosopher of our day is a milestone in human self-understanding. It focuses on the location where action emerges from freedom and necessity, thefoundation of all social science. Today, as never before, the investigation of the close relationship between social structure—defined by Marx as "arising from the life-process of definite individuals"—and the various forms of consciousness is particularly important. We can only perceive what is possible by first identifying the historical process that constrains consciousness itself and therefore social action. The relationship between social structure and forms of consciousness discussed in this volume is multifaceted and profoundly dialectical. It requires the presentation of a great wealth of historical material and the assessment of the relevant philosophical literature, from Descartes through Hegel and the Liberal tradition to the present, together with their connections with political economy and political theory. István Mészáros moves beyond both abstract solutions to the surveyed methodological questions and one-sided structuralist evaluation of the important substantive issues, bringing the process of our understanding of social structure and consciousness to a level not previously attained. Above all, in the spirit of the Marxian approach, even the most complicated problems are always analyzed in relation to the major practical concerns of our time. The primary aim of this work is to outline the dialectical intelligibility of historical development toward a viable societal reproductive order. Social Structures and Forms of Consciousness is of the highest importance as both a political and philosophical work, illuminating the place from where we must act, today.
Download or read book The Structural Crisis of Capital written by István Mészáros and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lays bare the exploitative structure of modern capitalism. Argues that the economies of the world are on a social and ecological precipice, and that unless we take decisive action to radically transform our societies we will find ourselves thrust headfirst into barbarism and environmental catastrophe. From publisher description.
Download or read book Bandung Global History and International Law written by Luis Eslava and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 735 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1955, a conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia that was attended by representatives from twenty-nine nations. Against the backdrop of crumbling European empires, Asian and African leaders forged new alliances and established anti-imperial principles for a new world order. The conference came to capture popular imaginations across the Global South and, as counterpoint to the dominant world order, it became both an act of collective imagination and a practical political project for decolonization that inspired a range of social movements, diplomatic efforts, institutional experiments and heterodox visions of the history and future of the world. In this book, leading international scholars explore what the spirit of Bandung has meant to people across the world over the past decades and what it means today. It analyzes Bandung's complicated and pivotal impact on global history, international law and, most of all, justice struggles after the end of formal colonialism.
Download or read book The Neoliberal Undead written by Marc James Léger and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Neoliberal Undead describes the frightening world of class restoration, neoliberal austerity, ecological meltdown, and neo-imperialism a disaster capitalism that breeds mutant ideological justifications for itself and the inevitability of disorder, poverty and suffering. What role does culture play in this world of markets and how do new contestatory forms enable a leftist solidarity that can move cultural radicalism beyond the postmodern obsession with new subjectivities? Rather than become the symptoms of democratic materialism, signing up for endless culture wars, The Neoliberal Undead argues for a rethinking of radical cultural leftism against the terms of the dominant global situation. The relentless reduction of art criticism and art production under capitalist relations requires that the living separate themselves from the abstractions of globalization and reconnect with revolutionary theory. ,
Download or read book Official Gazette written by Philippines and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 994 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Capitalism in the Anthropocene written by John Bellamy Foster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last 11,700 years, during which human civilization developed, the earth has existed within what geologists refer to as the Holocene Epoch. Now science is telling us that the Holocene Epoch in the geological time scale ended, replaced by the onset of a new, more dangerous Anthropocene Epoch, which began around 1950. The Anthropocene Epoch is characterized by an “anthropogenic rift” in the biological cycles of the Earth System, marking a changed reality in which human activities are now the main geological force impacting the earth as a whole, generating at the same time an existential crisis for the world’s population. What caused this massive shift in the history of the earth? In this comprehensive study, John Bellamy Foster tells us that a globalized system of capital accumulation has induced humanity to foul its own nest. The result is a planetary emergency that threatens all present and future generations, throwing into question the continuation of civilization and ultimately the very survival of humanity itself. Only by addressing the social aspects of the current planetary emergency, exploring the theoretical, historical, and practical dimensions of the capitalism’s alteration of the planetary environment, is it possible to develop the ecological and social resources for a new journey of hope.
