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The Socialist Imperative
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Book Synopsis The Socialist Imperative by : Michael A. Lebowitz
Download or read book The Socialist Imperative written by Michael A. Lebowitz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a little more than a decade, economist Michael A. Lebowitz has written several major works about the transition from socialism to capitalism: Beyond Capital(winner of the Deutscher Prize), Build It Now, The Socialist Alternative, and The Contradictions of “Real Socialism.” Here, he develops and deepens the analysis contained in those pathbreaking works by tracing major issues in socialist thought from the nineteenth century through the twenty-first. Lebowitz explores the obvious but almost universally ignored fact that as human beings work together to produce society’s goods and services, we also “produce” something else: namely, ourselves. Human beings are shaped by circumstances, and any vision of socialism that ignores this fact is bound to fail, or, at best, reproduce the alienation of labor that is endemic to capitalism. But how can people transform their circumstances in a way that allows them to re-organize production and, at the same time, fulfill their human potential? Lebowitz sets out to answer this question first by examining Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, and from there investigates the experiences of the Soviet Union and more recent efforts to build socialism in Venezuela. He argues that socialism in the twenty-first century must be animated by a central vision, in three parts: social ownership of the means of production, social production organized by workers, and the satisfaction of communal needs and communal purposes. These essays repay careful reading and reflection, and prove Lebowitz to be one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of this era.
Book Synopsis Socialist Imperative by : Michael A. Lebowitz
Download or read book Socialist Imperative written by Michael A. Lebowitz and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Socialist Alternative by : Michael A. Lebowitz
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.
Book Synopsis Build It Now by : Michael A. Lebowitz
Download or read book Build It Now written by Michael A. Lebowitz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2006-08 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Build it Now' provides a compelling set of arguments for socialism, showing both the new catastrophes being prepared by capitalism and the concrete steps being taken to initiate a transition from capitalism to a form of socialism fitted for the 21st century.
Book Synopsis The Optimum Imperative: Czech Architecture for the Socialist Lifestyle, 1938–1968 by : Ana Miljacki
Download or read book The Optimum Imperative: Czech Architecture for the Socialist Lifestyle, 1938–1968 written by Ana Miljacki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Optimum Imperative examines architecture’s multiple entanglements within the problematics of Socialist lifestyle in postwar Czechoslovakia. Situated in the period loosely bracketed by the signing of the Munich accords in 1938, which affected Czechoslovakia’s entrance into World War II, and the Warsaw Pact troops’ occupation of Prague in 1968, the book investigates three decades of Czech architecture, highlighting a diverse cast of protagonists. Key among them are the theorist and architect Karel Honzík and a small group of his colleagues in the Club for the Study of Consumption; the award-winning Czechoslovak Pavilion at the 1958 World Expo in Brussels; and SIAL, a group of architects from Liberec that emerged from the national network of Stavoprojekt offices during the reform years, only to be subsumed back into it in the wake of Czechoslovak normalization. This episodic approach enables a long view of the way that the project of constructing Socialism was made disciplinarily specific for architecture, through the constant interpretation of Socialist lifestyle, both as a narrative framework and as a historical goal. Without sanitizing history of its absurd contortions in discourse and in daily life, the book takes as its subject the complex and dynamic relationships between Cold War politics, state power, disciplinary legitimating narratives, and Czech architects’ optimism for Socialism. It proposes that these key dimensions of practicing architecture and building Socialism were intertwined, and even commensurate at times, through the framework of Socialist lifestyle.
Book Synopsis Between Capitalism and Community by : Michael A. Lebowitz
Download or read book Between Capitalism and Community written by Michael A. Lebowitz and published by Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Connects the Marxist construct of capitalism to systems of community In this book, Michael Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his award-winning, Beyond Capital. Karl Marx, in Capital, focused on capital and the capitalist class that is its embodiment. It is the endless accumulation of capital, its causes and consequences that are central to Marx’s analysis. In taking this approach, Marx tended to obscure not only the centrality of capital’s “immanent drive” and “constant tendency” to divide the working class but also the political economy of the working class (“social production controlled by social foresight”). In Between Capitalism and Community, Lebowitz demonstrates that capitalism contains within itself elements of a different society, one of community. Whereas Marx’s intellectual construct of capitalism treats it as an organic system that reproduces its premises of capital and wage-labor (including a working class that looks upon the requirements of capital “as self-evident natural laws”), Lebowitz argues that the struggle of workers in common and activities based upon solidarity point in the direction of the organic system of community, an alternative system that produces its own premises, communality, and recognition of the needs of others. If we are to escape the ultimate barbarism portended by the existing crisis of the earth system, the subordination of the system of capitalism by that of community is essential. Since the interregnum in which capitalism and community coexist is marked by the interpenetration and mutual deformation of both sides within this whole, however, the path to community cannot emerge spontaneously but requires a revolutionary party that stresses the development of the capacities of people through their protagonism.
Book Synopsis The Necessity of Social Control by : István Mészáros
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.
Book Synopsis The Contradictions of "Real Socialism" by : Michael A. Lebowitz
Download or read book The Contradictions of "Real Socialism" written by Michael A. Lebowitz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was “real socialism”—the term which originated in twentieth-century socialist societies for the purpose of distinguishing them from abstract, theoretical socialism? In this volume, Michael A. Lebowitz considers the nature, tendencies, and contradictions of those societies. Beginning with the constant presence of shortages within “real socialism,” Lebowitz searches for the inner relations which generate these patterns. He finds these, in particular, in what he calls “vanguard relations of production,” a relation which takes the apparent form of a social contract where workers obtain benefits not available to their counterparts in capitalism but lack the power to decide within the workplace and society. While these societies were able to claim major achievements in areas from health care to education to popular culture, the separation of thinking and doing prevented workers from developing their capacities as fully developed human beings. The relationship within “real socialism” between the vanguard as conductor and a conducted working class, however, did not only lead to the deformation of workers and those elements necessary for the building of socialism; it also created the conditions in which enterprise managers emerged as an incipient capitalist class, which was an immediate source of the crises of “real socialism.” As he argued in The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development, Lebowitz stresses the necessity to go beyond the hierarchy inherent in the relation of conductor and conducted (and beyond the “vanguard Marxism” which supports this) to create the conditions in which people can transform themselves through their conscious cooperation and practice—i.e., a society of free and associated producers.
Download or read book Imagine written by Frances Goldin and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The polar ice caps are melting, hurricanes and droughts ravish the planet, and the earth's population is threatened by catastrophic climate change. Millions of American jobs have been sent overseas and aren't coming back. Young African-American men make up the majority of America's prison population. Half of the American population are poor or near poor, living precariously on the brink, while the top one percent own as much as the bottom eighty. Government police-state spying on its citizens is pervasive. Consequently, as former President Jimmy Carter has said, "we have no functioning democracy." Imagine: Living In a Socialist U.S.A., edited by Francis Goldin, Debby Smith, and Michael Steven Smith, is at once an indictment of American capitalism as the root cause of our spreading dystopia and a cri de coeur for what life could be like in the United States if we had economic as well as a real political democracy. This anthology features essays by revolutionary thinkers, activists, and artists—including Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, civil rights activist Angela Davis, incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu Jamal, and economist Rick Wolff— addressing various aspects of a new society and, crucially, how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, living in a society that is truly fair and just.
Book Synopsis Kantian Ethics and Socialism by : Harry Van der Linden
Download or read book Kantian Ethics and Socialism written by Harry Van der Linden and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awarded the 1985 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy.
Book Synopsis The Socialist Manifesto by : Bhaskar Sunkara
Download or read book The Socialist Manifesto written by Bhaskar Sunkara and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The success of Jeremy Corbyn's left-led Labour Party and Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign revived a political idea many had thought dead. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system look like today? In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin magazine, argues that socialism offers the means to achieve economic equality, and also to fight other forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. The book both explores socialism's history and presents a realistic vision for its future. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.
Book Synopsis The Socialist Imperative by : Michael A. Lebowitz
Download or read book The Socialist Imperative written by Michael A. Lebowitz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a little more than a decade, economist Michael A. Lebowitz has written several major works about the transition from socialism to capitalism: Beyond Capital(winner of the Deutscher Prize), Build It Now, The Socialist Alternative, and The Contradictions of “Real Socialism.” Here, he develops and deepens the analysis contained in those pathbreaking works by tracing major issues in socialist thought from the nineteenth century through the twenty-first. Lebowitz explores the obvious but almost universally ignored fact that as human beings work together to produce society’s goods and services, we also “produce” something else: namely, ourselves. Human beings are shaped by circumstances, and any vision of socialism that ignores this fact is bound to fail, or, at best, reproduce the alienation of labor that is endemic to capitalism. But how can people transform their circumstances in a way that allows them to re-organize production and, at the same time, fulfill their human potential? Lebowitz sets out to answer this question first by examining Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, and from there investigates the experiences of the Soviet Union and more recent efforts to build socialism in Venezuela. He argues that socialism in the twenty-first century must be animated by a central vision, in three parts: social ownership of the means of production, social production organized by workers, and the satisfaction of communal needs and communal purposes. These essays repay careful reading and reflection, and prove Lebowitz to be one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of this era.
Book Synopsis Socialism after Hayek by : Theodore A. Burczak
Download or read book Socialism after Hayek written by Theodore A. Burczak and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socialism after Hayek recasts and reinvigorates the socialist quest for class justice by rendering it compatible with Hayek's social and economic theories. Theodore A. Burczak puts forth a conception of socialism from a postmodern perspective, drawing from the apparently opposing ideas of Marx and Hayek (the latter of whom achieved worldwide recognition in the twentieth century as a champion of the free market and fierce opponent of government interference in markets). Burczak sketches an institutional structure that would promote a democratic socialist notion of distributive justice and his own interpretation of Marx's notion of freely associated labor, while avoiding Hayek's criticisms of centrally planned socialism. Burczak's version of market socialism is one in which privately owned firms are run democratically by workers, governments engage in ongoing redistribution of wealth to support human development, and markets are otherwise unregulated. Burczak poses this model of "free market socialism" against other models of socialism, especially those developed by John Roemer, Michael Albert, and Robin Hahnel. "Burczakian socialism = (Hayek + Nussbaum + Sen + Ackerman + Resnick and Wolff) = Ellerman = legal-economic democracy. Brilliant! Burczak takes Hayek, his critics, and other social theorists and produces the foundations of a legal-economic order in which the concerns of most current thinkers are provided for. It is a deep, sustained, and brilliant achievement." —Warren J. Samuels, Professor Emeritus, Economics Department, Michigan State University; former President of the History of Economics Society and the Association for Social Economics; coeditor of the Journal of Income Distribution; and author of over 40 books "Theodore A. Burczak's Socialism after Hayek is a thoroughly researched and thoughtful examination not only of the ideological debate that framed the twentieth century, but of Hayek's intellectual framework. Burczak hopes for an economic framework that is both humanistic in its approach and humanitarian in its concern while being grounded in good reasons. The book should be on the reading list of every comparative political economist and in particular anyone who wants to take Hayek seriously, including those who would like to push Hayek's classical liberal politics toward the left in the twenty-first century. Burczak has made an outstanding contribution to the fields of political and economic thought and to Hayek studies in particular." —Peter J. Boettke, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax "An advance well beyond the great 'socialist calculation debate.' Socialism after Hayek is both novel and challenging to contemporary Hayekian scholars. Burczak is the only scholar working in the post-Marxist tradition that thoroughly understands and appreciates the Hayekian critique of socialism. He is on his way to answering many of our long-held objections." —Dave Prychitko, Department of Economics, Northern Michigan University "One does not have to agree with all of Burczak's arguments to accept that he has developed a bold, creative and challenging response to the powerful Hayekian critique of socialism. Burczak wisely rejects the agoraphobia—literally the fear of markets—of many socialists, and focuses instead on the socialist goal of the abolition of exploitation. If this important book is read by both socialists and Hayekians, then there is a chance that debates on the viability of socialism may avoid some past pitfalls." —Geoffrey M. Hodgson, University of Hertfordshire, UK "Provocative and expansive. An excellent book that deals in depth with the relevant literature, incorporating it into a new analysis of the question of socialism. . . . The scholarship is superior: Burczak integrates the works of Hayek and Marx to develop a new theory of justice and to provide a new way to think through the problems of a socialist economy." —Stephen Cullenberg, Department of Economics, University of California, Riverside "A brilliant, fair-minded approach to Marx, Hayek, Sen, and Nussbaum yields a needed socialist vision for the twenty-first century." —Stephen Resnick, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Theodore A. Burczak is Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University.
Book Synopsis Reflections on Socialism in the Twenty-First Century by : Claes Brundenius
Download or read book Reflections on Socialism in the Twenty-First Century written by Claes Brundenius and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, the authors reflect on the question “what is socialism” as it pertains to today’s economy. There is particular emphasis on democratic socialism models as a potential alternative to classic authoritarian socialism. A number of topical questions are addressed such as: What is democratic socialism and is it feasible, or even viable? What can be learnt from existing democratic socialist experiences? What would an ideal democratic socialist society look like today? Under what circumstances, and where, could such a model emerge today? In exploring these questions, several themes arise within these chapters such as the role of socialist values and inspirations in capitalist societies; and how capitalism and socialism relate to the knowledge economy. The contemporary world is showing many contradictions with uncertain future scenarios that preoccupy mankind. The global capitalist system as we know it is in deep crisis—and some even predict its slow death, because of its inability to handle the environmental imperative. At the same time, classic socialism as experienced in the Soviet Union and its proxies is a stone dead alternative to capitalism today. So what options remain? The book considers this question as it examines a range of countries where socialism (in one form or another) has arisen, or where democratic socialism could be possible, including Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Sweden and the United States.
Book Synopsis The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by : Shoshana Zuboff
Download or read book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism written by Shoshana Zuboff and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.
Book Synopsis Becoming East German by : Mary Fulbrook
Download or read book Becoming East German written by Mary Fulbrook and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.
Book Synopsis The Pan-African Imperative by : Michael Williams
Download or read book The Pan-African Imperative written by Michael Williams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-14 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the principles of Pan-Africanism are more important than ever in ensuring the liberation of the people Africa, those at home and abroad, and the rapid development of the African continent. The writings and practice of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post-independence prime minister and president, were key in laying out a vision for post-independence Africa. Now, in an effort to counter the deluge of neo-liberal thinking that has engulfed so much of the debate on African development in recent decades, Michael Williams illuminates just how important a role an Nkrumaist intellectual framework can play in providing an accurate diagnosis of, and effective solution to, Africa’s development crisis. This is done by examining Nkrumah’s vision of the critical role Pan-Africanism must play in the development of the continent. Raising vitally important questions about Africa’s development and the quality of life of its populations, this book will be a key text for researchers of African politics, development studies, and the Pan-African movement.
