Download or read book The Radical Left and Social Transformation written by Robert Latham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive collection draws upon and reengages with a long history of Marxian-anchored thought to analyze the potential for social transformation through a reinvigorated radical Left, all within the context of the ascendance of an increasingly ethnonationalist, patriarchal, and authoritarian far Right worldwide. The authors identify and reflect on strategies, tactics, and possibilities for analyzing and intervening in advanced capitalist societies by increasing and deepening popular participation and support on the far Left. The chapters are framed in terms of conceptualizing the capitalist present, organizing "the people" and reimagining the radical Left. Together, in diverse ways that draw upon both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the authors evaluate the difficulties of augmentation across multiple planes, from the tension between migrants and citizen workers, to the uneasy relationship between sovereignty and class, to the contradictions operating across international versus domestic dynamics. How and why (if at all) should the radical Left reexamine its understanding of political consciousness, identity, ideology, and institutions, as they relate to Marxian analysis and various threads of critical theory? The authors suggest new approaches for understanding what the radical Left is up against and how problematic barriers might be torn down, thus disrupting unhelpful binaries such as state versus capital, national versus international, worker versus migrant, activist versus candidate, and freedom versus necessity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Global Discourse.

Download or read book Educating for Radical Social Transformation in the Climate Crisis written by Stuart Tannock and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks how education can be developed to facilitate the radical social, cultural and economic transformations needed to deal with the ongoing climate emergency. The author illuminates important links between the work currently being done in climate change and education and the broader and older theories of radical education: an area of education theory and practice that has long grappled with the question of how to use education to create a more just society. Highlighting both current work and long traditions that include popular, progressive, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial education, the author draws on interdisciplinary research to make the case for how radical education can help tackle the climate change crisis. It will have direct relevance for scholars of environmental education and radical education as well as activists and practitioners.

Download or read book Transformations of the Radical Left in Southern Europe written by Myrto Tsakatika and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political parties are alleged to be turning their backs to civil society; they are said to discourage the active participation of their members and to distance themselves from the privileged relations to affiliated social organisations they once prized. Instead, parties are broadly believed to be directing their efforts towards capturing government office and the resources that come with it, neglecting linkage to their social roots. Transformations of the Radical Left in Southern Europe questions this widely shared view. Exploring the social linkage strategies of the most relevant radical left parties in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus in depth, this book demonstrates that the members of the European radical left party family continue to prioritise social linkage, despite their increasingly office-seeking orientation. Between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the current economic crisis they have been tirelessly experimenting with diverse new forms of party organisation that have enabled them to return to their social roots. The main lesson drawn from the studies in this book is that party ideology and a party’s position in the national political arena go a long way towards explaining the extent to which political parties prioritise social linkage. This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

Download or read book Latin America s Radical Left written by Steve Ellner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-03-24 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book explores the unique challenges facing the left in Latin America today. The contributors offer clear and comprehensive assessments of the difficult conditions and conflicting forces that have brought to power the current leftist regimes in Latin American and the Caribbean and are shaping their development. Avoiding the widely accepted but simplistic dichotomy of “good” and “bad” left or democratic and antidemocratic left, the book first sets the theoretical and historical context for understanding the rise of the left in the region. It then provides case studies of the radical left in power in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador and its influence in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba. Thematic chapters consider social and labor movements and debates over problems arising from the democratic transition to socialism. The book points to concrete circumstances in which theoretical issues related to reform and change have played out in nations where the left is in power. These include prioritization of social over economic objectives, the role of the state in the democratic road to socialism, and ecological as opposed to developmentalist strategies. Finally, the book examines the opposition to radical governments in power coming not only from the right but also from movements to their left. With its balanced and thorough assessment, this study will provide readers with a deep and nuanced understanding of the complexity of the political, economic, and sociocultural reality of contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean. Contributions by: Marc Becker, Roger Burbach, George Ciccariello-Maher, Héctor M. Cruz-Feliciano, Steve Ellner, Federico Fuentes, Marcel Nelson, Hector Perla Jr., Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, Thomas Purcell, Diana Raby, William I. Robinson, and Kevin Young

Download or read book The European Radical Left written by Giorgos Charalambous and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical analysis of radical left parties and movements in Europe spanning the late 1960s to the anti-austerity movements of the late 2000s

Download or read book Radical Left Movements in Europe written by Magnus Wennerhag and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, it was seen by some as proof of the final demise of the ideas and aspirations of the radical left. Not many years passed, however, before the critique of social inequalities and capitalism was once again a main protest theme of social movements. This book provides an account of radical left movements in today’s Europe and how they are trying to accomplish social and political change. The book’s international group of leading experts provide detailed analysis on social movement organizations, activist groups, and networks that are rooted in the left-wing ideologies of anarchism, Marxism, socialism, and communism in both newly democratized post-communist and longstanding liberal-democratic polities. Through a range of case studies, the authors explore how radical left movements are influenced by their situated political and social contexts, and how contemporary radical left activism differs from both new and old social movements on one hand, and the activities of radical left parliamentary parties on the other. Ultimately, this volume investigates what it means to be ‘radical left’ in current day liberal-democratic and capitalist societies after the fall of European state socialism. This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in European politics, contemporary social movements and political sociology.

Download or read book Radical Ambition written by Dan Geary and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociologist, social critic, and political radical C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) was one of the leading public intellectuals in twentieth century America. Offering an important new understanding of Mills and the times in which he lived, Radical Ambition challenges the captivating caricature that has prevailed of him as a lone rebel critic of 1950s complacency. Instead, it places Mills within broader trends in American politics, thought, and culture. Indeed, Daniel Geary reveals that Mills shared key assumptions about American society even with those liberal intellectuals who were his primary opponents. The book also sets Mills firmly within the history of American sociology and traces his political trajectory from committed supporter of the Old Left labor movement to influential herald of an international New Left. More than just a biography, Radical Ambition illuminates the career of a brilliant thinker whose life and works illustrate both the promise and the dilemmas of left-wing social thought in the United States.

Download or read book Europe s Radical Left written by Luke March, Professor of Post-Soviet and Comparative Politics, the University of Edinburgh and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiles contributions from leading scholars to analyse how European radical left parties have responded to the ongoing socio-economic crisis that continues to afflict the EU.

Download or read book Challenging the Right Augmenting the Left written by Robert Latham and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-08T00:00:00Z with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does the future hold for the left? How does the left adapt to, and prepare for, the crises of our time? In moments of crisis it is always important to rethink longstanding assumptions, jettison wishful thinking and dated ideas, and recover wisdom from the past. In so doing, we have the opportunity to plot a new way forward. The authors of this edited collection do just this: putting forward a diversity of approaches and issues to strategize for the work that awaits us in the 2020s, particularly in the struggle against capitalism, climate change and the far right. Working within five major thematic areas, the contributors examine how to engage working class people in anti-capitalist struggles, undermine reactionary currents of ethno-nationalism while supporting anti-colonial movements, strategically build power inside and outside the state apparatus, demand new forms of resistance to address environmental crises, and effectively promote solidarity and ecological responsibility. This book provides suggestions for working with popular disaffection, taking the rich, fragmented, conflicted history of refusals and defeats as a starting point for next steps in the struggle against capitalism and the far right, rather than as the basis for more conflict or defeatism.

Download or read book Beyond Left and Right written by Anthony Giddens and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-23 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should one understand the nature and possibilities of political radicalism today? The political radical is normally thought of as someone who stands on the left, opposing backward-looking conservatism. In the present day, however, the left has turned defensive, while the right has become radical, advocating the free play of market forces no matter what obstacles of tradition or custom stand in their way. What explains such a curious twist of perspective? In answering this question Giddens develops a new framework for radical politics, drawing freely on what he calls "philosophic conservatism", but applying this outlook in the service of values normally associated with the Left. The ecological crisis is at the core of this analysis, but is understood by Giddens in an unconventional way - as a response to a world in which modernity has run up against its limits as a social and moral order. The end of nature, as an entity existing independently of human intervention, and the end of tradition, combined with the impact of globalization, are the forces which now have to be confronted, made use of and coped with. This book provides a powerful interpretation of the rise of fundamentalism, of democracy, the persistence of gender divisions and the question of a normative political theory of violence. It will be essential reading for anyone seeking a novel approach to the political challenges which we face at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Hegemony And Socialist Strategy written by Ernesto Laclau and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ‘Third Way’ attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.

Download or read book Beyond Left and Right written by Anthony Giddens and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the cataclysmic changes that have transformed the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries since 1989, what can it mean to be politically radical today? In this conceptually powerful work, the author applies his well-known and influential body of ideas about modernity to the present state and future of radical politics.

Download or read book Challenging Austerity written by Beltrán Roca and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-14 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses social movements and radical political parties' strategies in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy from 2008 to today. Events in 2011 such as the Arab Spring and the indignados movement in Spain initiated a new cycle of social protest. This book explores how the economic crisis and policies of austerity have transformed and continue to transform social movements, trade unions and radical political parties in Southern Europe. The economic crisis has led to a rise in protest movements, which confront political institutions and conventional forms of democracy, and develop new spatial and organisational strategies. This book examines these cases, in addition to those groups who, contrastingly, have used institutional politics to achieve their aims, such as new political parties like Podemos in Spain or Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy. Analysing the extent to which there has been a change in approach when it comes to contesting neo-liberal capitalism, this book makes an important contribution to the study of social movements and radical politics. With a comparative perspective and an emphasis on studying the largely unexplored recent social and political dynamics in the European periphery, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and activists interested in social movements, radical politics and European politics more generally.

Download or read book Finally Got the News written by Brad Duncan (Political activist) and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally Got the News uncovers the hidden legacy of the radical left of the 1970s, a decade when vibrant social movements challenged racism, imperialism, patriarchy, and capitalism itself. It uses original printed materials--from pamphlets to posters, flyers to record albums--to tell this politically rich and little-known story. The dawn of the 1970s saw an explosion of interest in revolutionary ideas and activism. Young people radicalized by the antiwar movement became anti-imperialists, veterans of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements increasingly identified with communism and Pan-Africanism, radical groups sent members into factories to organize the working class, and women were building for autonomy and liberation. Across movements with different roots, an incredible overlap and intermingling of activists, ideologies, and hybrid organizations emerged. These diverse movements used printed materials as organizing tools in every political activity, creating a remarkable array of publishing styles, techniques, and formats. Through the lens of printed materials we can see the real nuts and bolts of political organizing in an era when thousands of young revolutionaries were attempting to put their beliefs into practices in workplaces and neighborhoods across the US. Finally Got the News uses this agitational material to shine a light on the full breadth of organizations and collectives that were a part of the '70s radical renaissance. The book features original materials from Amiri Baraka's Congress of African People, radical broadsides distributed in factories, queer socialist pamphlets, and agitational newspapers from Puerto Rican revolutionary groups like the Young Lords Party. These materials were made to be ephemeral and disposable, making collecting and preserving the paper legacy of '70s radical activism especially difficult. But many materials have survived and offer an irreplaceable insight into this period. Finally Got the News highlights many essential issues that are still resoundingly contemporary: from community responses to police brutality, to battles for better wages and working conditions, to opposition to US imperialism in the Middle East. Radical movements of the '70s attempted to confront concerns that are still central to today's campaigns for social justice. The full-color book that accompanies the exhibition will collect almost 100 images of materials included in the show, original essays by 14 contributors, and a round table discussion amongst a broad collection of producers of propaganda in the 1970s. The majority of this exhibition is from the archive of Brad Duncan, amassed over twenty years of collecting and activism. Additional items are from the collection of Interference Archive.

Download or read book The Rise of the Arab American Left written by Pamela E. Pennock and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first history of Arab American activism in the 1960s, Pamela Pennock brings to the forefront one of the most overlooked minority groups in the history of American social movements. Focusing on the ideas and strategies of key Arab American organizations and examining the emerging alliances between Arab American and other anti-imperialist and antiracist movements, Pennock sheds new light on the role of Arab Americans in the social change of the era. She details how their attempts to mobilize communities in support of Middle Eastern political or humanitarian causes were often met with suspicion by many Americans, including heavy surveillance by the Nixon administration. Cognizant that they would be unable to influence policy by traditional electoral means, Arab Americans, through slow coalition building over the course of decades of activism, brought their central policy concerns and causes into the mainstream of activist consciousness. With the support of new archival and interview evidence, Pennock situates the civil rights struggle of Arab Americans within the story of other political and social change of the 1960s and 1970s. By doing so, she takes a crucial step forward in the study of American social movements of that era.

Download or read book Leftism Reinvented written by Stephanie L. Mudge and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Left-leaning political parties play an important role as representatives of the poor and disempowered. They once did so by promising protections from the forces of capital and the market's tendencies to produce inequality. But in the 1990s they gave up on protection, asking voters to adapt to a market-driven world. Meanwhile, new, extreme parties began to promise economic protections of their own--albeit in an angry, anti-immigrant tone. To better understand today's strange new political world, Stephanie L. Mudge's Leftism Reinvented analyzes the history of the Swedish and German Social Democrats, the British Labour Party, and the American Democratic Party. Breaking with an assumption that parties simply respond to forces beyond their control, Mudge argues that left parties' changing promises expressed the worldviews of different kinds of experts. To understand how left parties speak, we have to understand the people who speak for them. Leftism Reinvented shows how Keynesian economists came to speak for left parties by the early 1960s. These economists saw their task in terms of discretionary, politically-sensitive economic management. But in the 1980s a new kind of economist, who viewed the advancement of markets as left parties' main task, came to the fore. Meanwhile, as voters' loyalties to left parties waned, professional strategists were called upon to "spin" party messages. Ultimately, left parties undermined themselves, leaving a representative vacuum in their wake. Leftism Reinvented raises new questions about the roles and responsibilities of left parties--and their experts--in politics today.--

Download or read book Democracy and the Left written by Evelyne Huber and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although inequality in Latin America ranks among the worst in the world, it has notably declined over the last decade, offset by improvements in health care and education, enhanced programs for social assistance, and increases in the minimum wage. In Democracy and the Left, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens argue that the resurgence of democracy in Latin America is key to this change. In addition to directly affecting public policy, democratic institutions enable left-leaning political parties to emerge, significantly influencing the allocation of social spending on poverty and inequality. But while democracy is an important determinant of redistributive change, it is by no means the only factor. Drawing on a wealth of data, Huber and Stephens present quantitative analyses of eighteen countries and comparative historical analyses of the five most advanced social policy regimes in Latin America, showing how international power structures have influenced the direction of their social policy. They augment these analyses by comparing them to the development of social policy in democratic Portugal and Spain. The most ambitious examination of the development of social policy in Latin America to date, Democracy and the Left shows that inequality is far from intractable—a finding with crucial policy implications worldwide.