Download or read book The Retreat to Unfreedom written by Prabhat Patnaik and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first two decades after World War II, it appeared as if mankind was embarking on a remarkable journey towards freedom. The socialist world underwent a rapid expansion, advanced capitalist countries restructured themselves, ushering in the golden age of capitalism which saw unprecedented employment, technological progress and rising real wages for workers.The world today, however, presents a totally changed scenario. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the socialist project regressed, and the hope of freedom that underlay the loss of support for extant socialism has been completely belied. On the other side, the golden age of capitalism has become a distant memory, with pervasive unemployment. Above all, there has been a veritable rolling back of decolonization , with the third world once again being pushed back under metropolitan hegemony. Poverty has increased over much of the third world. Almost everywhere, there is a growth of fascism of different hues.An important factor underlying this substantial change is the emergence of a new form of international finance capital. This has undermined the capacity of the nation-state the only agency hitherto available that could, in principle, intervene to improve the human condition. If progress along the road to freedom has come to a halt and has, in fact, been reversed, if there is a retreat to unfreedom, as the title of this book suggests, then, the analysis of the causes of this retreat requires an exploration of the immanent logic of this new form of international finance capital. The essays in this book constitute a preliminary attempt at such an exploration.Prabhat Patnaik is Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author of Time, Inflation and Growth (1998), Economics and Egalitarianism (1991), Whatever Happened to Imperialism and Other Essays (1995), Accumulation and Stability under Capitalism (1997), and has edited Lenin and Imperialism: An Appraisal of Theories and Contemporary Reality (1986) and Macroeconomics (1995).The essays, covering a range of topics varying from the political economy of globalization and its implications for development of poor countries through the political economy of Indian development to the current conjuncture and future prospects of socialism as a historical project, are truly remarkable for their coherence and consistency of perspective. Frontline

Download or read book The Road to Unfreedom written by Timothy Snyder and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of international bestseller On Tyranny, this prescient analysis of Russia's ongoing interference in the West is now more relevant than ever. 'One of the best...brisk, conceptually convincing account of democracy's retreat in the early years of 21st century' Guardian The past is another country, the old saying goes. The same might be said of the future. But which country? For Europeans and Americans today, the answer is Russia. In this visionary work of contemporary history, Timothy Snyder shows how Russia works within the West to destroy the West; by supporting the far right in Europe, invading Ukraine in 2014, and waging a cyberwar during the 2016 presidential campaign and the EU referendum. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the creation of Donald Trump, an American failure deployed as a Russian weapon. But this threat presents an opportunity to better understand the pillars of our freedoms and face the choices that will determine the future: equality or oligarchy, individualism or totalitarianism, truth or lies. 'A brilliant and disturbing analysis, which should be read by anyone wishing to understand the political crisis currently engulfing the world' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens

Download or read book The Retreat of Western Liberalism written by Edward Luce and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A panorama of the unravelling world order as riveting as any beach read' New Yorker 'Read this book: in the three hours it takes you will get a new, bracing and brilliant understanding of the dangers we in the democratic West now face. Luce is one of the smartest journalists working today, and his perceptions are priceless' Jane Mayer, staff writer on the New Yorker 'No one was more prescient about the economic malaise and popular resentment that has hit the United States than Ed Luce in his previous book, Time to Start Thinking. His new book, Retreat of Western Liberalism, broadens that picture to cover the Western world. It is a must read for anyone trying to make sense of the waves of populism and nationalism we face today' Liaquat Ahamed In his widely acclaimed book Time to Start Thinking, Financial Times columnist and commentator Edward Luce charted the course of American economic and geopolitical decline, proving to be a prescient voice on our current social and political turmoil. In The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Luce makes a larger statement about the weakening of western hegemony and the crisis of democratic liberalism - of which Donald Trump and his European counterparts are not the cause, but a symptom. Luce argues that we are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to build the West, arrogance towards society's losers, and complacency about our system's durability - attitudes that have been emerging since the fall of the Berlin Wall, treated by the West as an absolute triumph over the East. We cannot move forward without a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Luce contrasts Western democratic and economic ideals, which rest on an assumption of linear progress, with more cyclical views of economic strength - symbolized by the nineteenth-century fall and present-day rise of the Chinese and Indian economies - and with the dawn of a new multipolar age. Combining on-the-ground reporting with intelligent synthesis of the vast literature already available, Luce offers a detailed projection of the consequences of the Trump administration and a forward-thinking analysis of what those who believe in enlightenment values must do to defend them from the multiple onslaughts they face in the coming years.

Download or read book The Value of Money written by Prabhat Patnaik and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is money more valuable than the paper on which it is printed? Monetarists link the value of money to its supply and demand, believing the latter depends on the total value of the commodities it circulates. According to Prabhat Patnaik, this logic is flawed. In his view, in any nonbarter economy, the value we assign to money is determined independently of its supply and demand. Through an original and provocative critique of monetarism, Patnaik advances a revolutionary understanding of macroeconomics that highlights the "propertyist" position of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Unlike the usual division between "classical" economists (e.g., David Ricardo and Marx) and the "marginalists" (e.g., Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and Léon Walras), Patnaik places "monetarists," including Ricardo, on one side, while grouping propertyist writers like Marx, Keynes, and Rosa Luxemburg on the other. This second group subscribes to the idea that the value of money is given from outside the realm of supply and demand, therefore making money a form in which wealth is held. The fact that money is held as wealth in turn gives rise to the possibility of deficiency of aggregate demand under capitalism. It is no accident that this possibility was highlighted by Marx and Keynes while going largely unrecognized by Ricardo and contemporary monetarists. At the same time, Patnaik points to a weakness in the Marx-Keynes tradition namely, its lack of any satisfactory explanation of why the value of money, determined from outside the realm of supply and demand, remains relatively stable over long stretches of time. The answer to this question lies in the fact that capitalism is not a self-contained system but is born from a precapitalist setting with which it interacts and where it creates massive labor reserves that, in turn, impart stability to the value of money. Patnaik's theory of money, then, is also a theory of imperialism, and he concludes with a discussion of the contemporary international monetary system, which he terms the "oil-dollar" standard.

Download or read book The Retreat From Class written by Ellen Meiksins Wood and published by Verso. This book was released on 1998 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the connections between class, ideology and politics In this classic study, which won the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize, Ellen Wood provides a critical survey of influential trends in “post-Marxist” theory. Challenging their dissociation of politics from class, she elaborates her own original conception of the complex relations between class, ideology and politics. In the process, Wood explores the links between socialism and democracy and reinterprets the relationship between liberal and socialist democracy. In a new introduction, Wood discusses the relevance of The Retreat from Class in a post-Soviet world. She traces the connections between post-Marxism and current academic trends such as postmodernism and argues that a re-examination of class politics is a necessary counter to the current cynical acceptance of capitalism.

Download or read book Between Freedom and Unfreedom written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Invitation to Retreat written by Ruth Haley Barton and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we choose retreat we make a generous investment in our friendship with Christ. Seasoned spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton gently and eloquently leads us into an exploration of retreat as a key practice that opens us to God, guiding us through seven invitations to retreat. You will discover how to say yes to God's winsome invitation to greater freedom and surrender.

Download or read book Marxism written by Amiya Bagchi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique re-conceptualization of Marxism in bringing together leading scholars across disciplines — history, philosophy, economics, politics, sociology, and literary and culture studies — into one comprehensive corpus. It demonstrates the engaging relevance of the perspectives and techniques of the analyses adopted by Karl Marx, Frederich Engels and contemporary Marxists, and will be immensely useful to scholars and researchers across social sciences as well as general readers interested in Marxism.

Download or read book The Politics of Imperialism and Counterstrategies written by and published by Aakar Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The God S Cowboy Warrior Holds World To Ransom. White, Green And Saffron Guards All Play Their Part In This Grand Inquisition, Extending And Intensifying It.The Papers In This Collection Grounding Themselves In Diverse Marxist Traditions Are United In Their Pursuit To Understand The Ongoing Political Conflicts Around The Globe. Imperialism And All Its De-Humanised Representations Are Realisations Of The Systemic Logic Of Capitalism. If Alternative Has To Be Anti-Capitalist, Its Evolving Forms/Contents Have To Be Identified.One Cannot Simply Go On Rhetoricising Ad Infinitum Another World Is Possible . Even If We Refrain From Identifying That World , The System Will Define It In Its Own Way. Anti-Capitalist Indifference Leads To Barbaric Conclusions, Reflected In Nationalist Vandalism Of Rss And Shiv Sena In India, Al Qaeda In The Middle- East, Anti-Immigrant Racist Resurgence In The Advanced Societies Anti-Capitalist Capitalism .

Download or read book The University Unthought written by Debaditya Bhattacharya and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is it important to have a revolutionary critical pedagogy? What are the new inter/disciplinary engagements possible within the university? What will it be like to live and learn in this university of the future? Drawing on these essential questions, this volume explores the political future(s) of the university. It does not take a simplistic recourse to the tenets of liberal democracy but seeks a more engaged positioning of the university space within everyday practices of the social. It cross-examines the history of this ‘ideal’ university’s relationship with the banal everyday, the ‘apolitical’ outside and what exceeds intellectual reason, to finally question if such historicizing of the university is necessary at all. Along with its companion The Idea of the University: Histories and Contexts, this brave new intervention makes a compelling foray into the political future(s) of the university. It will be of interest to academics, educators and students of the social sciences and humanities, especially education. It will also be of use to policy-makers and education analysts, and be central to the concerns of any citizen.

Download or read book Capital and Imperialism written by Utsa Patnaik and published by Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey of capitalism's colonialist roots and uncertain future Those who control the world’s commanding economic heights, buttressed by the theories of mainstream economists, presume that capitalism is a self-contained and self-generating system. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this pathbreaking book—winner of the Paul A. Baran-Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award—radical political economists Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik argue that the accumulation of capital has always required the taking of land, raw materials, and bodies from noncapitalist modes of production. They begin with a thorough debunking of mainstream economics. Then, looking at the history of capitalism, from the beginnings of colonialism half a millennium ago to today’s neoliberal regimes, they discover that, over the long haul, capitalism, in order to exist, must metastasize itself in the practice of imperialism and the immiseration of countless people. A few hundred years ago, write the Patnaiks, colonialism began to ensure vast, virtually free, markets for new products in burgeoning cities in the West. But even after slavery was generally abolished, millions of people in the Global South still fell prey to the continuing lethal exigencies of the marketplace. Even after the Second World War, when decolonization led to the end of the so-called “Golden Age of Capitalism,” neoliberal economies stepped in to reclaim the Global South, imposing drastic “austerity” measures on working people. But, say the Patnaiks, this neoliberal economy, which lives from bubble to bubble, is doomed to a protracted crisis. In its demise, we are beginning to see—finally—the transcendence of the capitalist system.

Download or read book Limits of Islamism written by Maidul Islam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines the dynamics from the formation of Islamist politics for the struggle for hegemony to failure to become a hegemonic force in Bangladesh. The contradiction between Islamic universalism/Islamist populism, on one hand, and a politics of Muslim particularism in India, on the other, is revealed in this study.

Download or read book Policy Matters written by Jose Antonio Ocampo and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2007-03 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2000, UN member states pledged to halve world poverty by 2015, among other Millennium Development Goals (MDG's). But progress has been elusive since. The chapters in this volume address disparate problems in achieving the UN Development Agenda, from the complex effects of trade and financial liberalisation to the realities of development aid, itself a central pillar of the MDGs. The unifying theme is one of economic and social integration, and an emphasis on long-term strategic investments in education, health and infrastructure.

Download or read book Re Envisioning Socialism written by Prabhat Patnaik and published by Tulika Books. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume are informed by a perception that can be summarized as follows. A capitalist economy is a self-driven or 'spontaneous' system. State intervention in its functioning, driven by political compulsions, tends to make it dysfunctional. This necessitates either further interventions, leading to a transcendence of the system itself, or a progressive slide-back to the pre-intervention state. To say this is not to suggest that capitalism does not need the state. It does, not only for the maintenance of capitalist property relations and for providing it with the external, precapitalist surroundings that are necessary for its functioning; but also for accelerating, through its intervention, its immanent tendencies. But state intervention that is contrary to its immanent tendencies makes capitalism dysfunctional, setting up a dialectics either of subversion of or subservience to the logic of capital. It follows that all the shibboleths of capitalism, namely freedom, democracy and individual subjectivity, are actually unachievable under capitalism. They can be realized only if the spontaneity of the economic terrain is broken through the coming into being of socialism, where the nature of property relations is such that people can shape their economic lives through collective political intervention. The case for socialism arises precisely because capitalism is not a malleable but a spontaneous system.

Download or read book Antinomies of Art and Culture written by Okwui Enwezor and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this landmark collection, world-renowned theorists, artists, critics, and curators explore new ways of conceiving the present and understanding art and culture in relation to it. They revisit from fresh perspectives key issues regarding modernity and postmodernity, including the relationship between art and broader social and political currents, as well as important questions about temporality and change. They also reflect on whether or not broad categories and terms such as modernity, postmodernity, globalization, and decolonization are still relevant or useful. Including twenty essays and seventy-seven images, Antinomies of Art and Culture is a wide-ranging yet incisive inquiry into how to understand, describe, and represent what it is to live in the contemporary moment. In the volume’s introduction the theorist Terry Smith argues that predictions that postmodernity would emerge as a global successor to modernity have not materialized as anticipated. Smith suggests that the various situations of decolonized Africa, post-Soviet Europe, contemporary China, the conflicted Middle East, and an uncertain United States might be better characterized in terms of their “contemporaneity,” a concept which captures the frictions of the present while denying the inevitability of all currently competing universalisms. Essays range from Antonio Negri’s analysis of contemporaneity in light of the concept of multitude to Okwui Enwezor’s argument that the entire world is now in a postcolonial constellation, and from Rosalind Krauss’s defense of artistic modernism to Jonathan Hay’s characterization of contemporary developments in terms of doubled and even para-modernities. The volume’s centerpiece is a sequence of photographs from Zoe Leonard’s Analogue project. Depicting used clothing, both as it is bundled for shipment in Brooklyn and as it is displayed for sale on the streets of Uganda, the sequence is part of a striking visual record of new cultural forms and economies emerging as others are left behind. Contributors: Monica Amor, Nancy Condee, Okwui Enwezor, Boris Groys, Jonathan Hay, Wu Hung, Geeta Kapur, Rosalind Krauss, Bruno Latour, Zoe Leonard, Lev Manovich, James Meyer, Gao Minglu, Helen Molesworth, Antonio Negri, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Nikos Papastergiadis, Colin Richards, Suely Rolnik, Terry Smith, McKenzie Wark

Download or read book Looking Into the Well written by Maureen Conroy and published by Loyola Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking into the Well: Supervision of Spiritual Directors is the first book-length treatment of the supervision and development of spiritual directors.

Download or read book The Pioneers of Development Economics written by Jomo Kwame Sundaram and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of the main influences on the development of modern development economics.