Capital Is Dead

Download Capital Is Dead PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1788735331
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (887 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Capital Is Dead by : McKenzie Wark

Download or read book Capital Is Dead written by McKenzie Wark and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's not capitalism, it's not neoliberalism - what if it's something worse? In this radical and visionary new book, McKenzie Wark argues that information has empowered a new kind of ruling class. Through the ownership and control of information, this emergent class dominates not only labour but capital as traditionally understood as well. And it’s not just tech companies like Amazon and Google. Even Walmart and Nike can now dominate the entire production chain through the ownership of not much more than brands, patents, copyrights, and logistical systems. While techno-utopian apologists still celebrate these innovations as an improvement on capitalism, for workers—and the planet—it’s worse. The new ruling class uses the powers of information to route around any obstacle labor and social movements put up. So how do we find a way out? Capital Is Dead offers not only the theoretical tools to analyze this new world, but ways to change it. Drawing on the writings of a surprising range of classic and contemporary theorists, Wark offers an illuminating overview of the contemporary condition and the emerging class forces that control—and contest—it.

Capitalism is Dead

Download Capitalism is Dead PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780077103699
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (36 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Capitalism is Dead by : Alec Reed

Download or read book Capitalism is Dead written by Alec Reed and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aims of this text is to look at the acute challenges experienced by companies in the Peoplist era, and proffer solutions. It translates the impact of Peoplism into business strategy through original case studies and management tools.

Against the Dead Hand

Download Against the Dead Hand PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0471206652
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (712 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Against the Dead Hand by : Brink Lindsey

Download or read book Against the Dead Hand written by Brink Lindsey and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2002-04-08 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A refreshing, insightful look into the political and economicdynamics driving globalization today Globalization: it's earlier than you think. That's the provocativemessage of Against the Dead Hand, which traces the rise and fall ofthe century-long dream of central planning and top-down control andits impact on globalization-revealing the extent to which the "deadhand" of the old collectivist dream still shapes the contours oftoday's world economy. Mixing historical narrative,thought-provoking arguments, and on-the-scene reporting andinterviews, Brink Lindsey shows how the economy has grown up amidstthe wreckage of the old regime-detailing how that wreckageconstrains the present and obscures the future. He conveys aclearer picture of globalization's current state than the currentconventional wisdom, providing a framework for anticipating thefuture direction of the world economy.

Capitalism and the Death Drive

Download Capitalism and the Death Drive PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509545026
Total Pages : 135 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Capitalism and the Death Drive by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book Capitalism and the Death Drive written by Byung-Chul Han and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What we call growth today is in fact a tumorous growth, a cancerous proliferation which is disrupting the social organism. These tumours endlessly metastasize and grow with an inexplicable, deadly vitality. At a certain point this growth is no longer productive, but rather destructive. Capitalism passed this point long ago. Its destructive forces cause not only ecological and social catastrophes but also mental collapse. The destructive compulsion to perform combines self-affirmation and self-destruction in one. We optimize ourselves to death. Brutal competition ends in destruction. It produces an emotional coldness and indifference towards others as well as towards one’s own self. The devastating consequences of capitalism suggest that a death drive is at work. Freud initially introduced the death drive hesitantly, but later admitted that he ‘couldn’t think beyond it’ as the idea of the death drive became increasingly central to his thought. Today, it is impossible to think about capitalism without considering the death drive.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

Download Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691217068
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by : Anne Case

Download or read book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism written by Anne Case and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class Deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism are rising dramatically in the United States, claiming hundreds of thousands of American lives. Anne Case and Angus Deaton explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. This critically important book paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline, and provides solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.

The Future of Capitalism

Download The Future of Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062748661
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (627 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Future of Capitalism by : Paul Collier

Download or read book The Future of Capitalism written by Paul Collier and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Gates's Five Books for Summer Reading 2019 From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it. Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of the United States and other Western societies: thriving cities versus rural counties, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now. In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts—economic, social and cultural—with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervor of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself—and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the twentieth century.

The Myth of Capitalism

Download The Myth of Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1394184069
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (941 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Myth of Capitalism by : Jonathan Tepper

Download or read book The Myth of Capitalism written by Jonathan Tepper and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-04-25 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Myth of Capitalism tells the story of how America has gone from an open, competitive marketplace to an economy where a few very powerful companies dominate key industries that affect our daily lives. Digital monopolies like Google, Facebook and Amazon act as gatekeepers to the digital world. Amazon is capturing almost all online shopping dollars. We have the illusion of choice, but for most critical decisions, we have only one or two companies, when it comes to high speed Internet, health insurance, medical care, mortgage title insurance, social networks, Internet searches, or even consumer goods like toothpaste. Every day, the average American transfers a little of their pay check to monopolists and oligopolists. The solution is vigorous anti-trust enforcement to return America to a period where competition created higher economic growth, more jobs, higher wages and a level playing field for all. The Myth of Capitalism is the story of industrial concentration, but it matters to everyone, because the stakes could not be higher. It tackles the big questions of: why is the US becoming a more unequal society, why is economic growth anemic despite trillions of dollars of federal debt and money printing, why the number of start-ups has declined, and why are workers losing out.

Foretelling the End of Capitalism

Download Foretelling the End of Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674919327
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Foretelling the End of Capitalism by : Francesco Boldizzoni

Download or read book Foretelling the End of Capitalism written by Francesco Boldizzoni and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intellectuals since the Industrial Revolution have been obsessed with whether, when, and why capitalism will collapse. This riveting account of two centuries of failed forecasts of doom reveals the key to capitalism’s durability. Prophecies about the end of capitalism are as old as capitalism itself. None have come true. Yet, whether out of hope or fear, we keep looking for harbingers of doom. In Foretelling the End of Capitalism, Francesco Boldizzoni gets to the root of the human need to imagine a different and better world and offers a compelling solution to the puzzle of why capitalism has been able to survive so many shocks and setbacks. Capitalism entered the twenty-first century triumphant, its communist rival consigned to the past. But the Great Recession and worsening inequality have undermined faith in its stability and revived questions about its long-term prospects. Is capitalism on its way out? If so, what might replace it? And if it does endure, how will it cope with future social and environmental crises and the inevitable costs of creative destruction? Boldizzoni shows that these and other questions have stood at the heart of much analysis and speculation from the early socialists and Karl Marx to the Occupy Movement. Capitalism has survived predictions of its demise not, as many think, because of its economic efficiency or any intrinsic virtues of markets but because it is ingrained in the hierarchical and individualistic structure of modern Western societies. Foretelling the End of Capitalism takes us on a fascinating journey through two centuries of unfulfilled prophecies. An intellectual tour de force and a plea for political action, it will change our understanding of the economic system that determines the fabric of our lives.

Dead Labor

Download Dead Labor PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452960321
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Dead Labor by : James Tyner

Download or read book Dead Labor written by James Tyner and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking consideration of death from capitalism, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century From a 2013 Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed fifteen people and injured 252 to a 2017 chemical disaster in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, we are confronted all too often with industrial accidents that reflect the underlying attitude of corporations toward the lives of laborers and others who live and work in their companies’ shadows. Dead Labor takes seriously the myriad ways in which bodies are commodified and profits derived from premature death. In doing so it provides a unique perspective on our understanding how life and death drive the twenty-first-century global economy. James Tyner tracks a history from the 1600s through which premature death and mortality became something calculable, predictable, manageable, and even profitable. Drawing on a range of examples, including the criminalization of migrant labor, medical tourism, life insurance, and health care, he explores how today we can no longer presume that all bodies undergo the same processes of life, death, fertility, and mortality. He goes on to develop the concept of shared mortality among vulnerable populations and examines forms of capital exploitation that have emerged around death and the reproduction of labor. Positioned at the intersection of two fields—the political economy of labor and the philosophy of mortality—Dead Labor builds on Marx’s notion that death (and truncated life) is a constant factor in the processes of labor. Considering premature death also as a biopolitical and bioeconomic concept, Tyner shows how racialized and gendered bodies are exposed to it in unbalanced ways within capitalism, and how bodies are then commodified, made surplus and redundant, and even disassembled in order to accumulate capital.

Postcapitalism

Download Postcapitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0374235546
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Postcapitalism by : Paul Mason

Download or read book Postcapitalism written by Paul Mason and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Originally published in 2015 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Great Britain"--Title page verso.

Murdered by Capitalism

Download Murdered by Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Nation Books
ISBN 13 : 0786740515
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Murdered by Capitalism by : John Ross

Download or read book Murdered by Capitalism written by John Ross and published by Nation Books. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2004 After spilling bourbon on Schnaubelt's grave, its pugnacious and very dead occupant becomes Ross's mentor, sidekick, and boozing companion through this epic telling of the hallucinatory, carnal, and ornery histories of the American Left and John Ross's own remarkable life. Schnaubelt navigates us through his seemingly boundless revolutionary battleground, uttering cries of subversion from within the grave while trying to remain out of earshot from the FBI snoop and local supermarket tycoon buried nearby. Ross's own story--hobo revolutionist, junkie, poet, and journalist is a contrapuntal to Schnaubelt's. Ross never takes himself too seriously, yet his most remarkable trait is the honesty with which he approaches life, even while trying to deconstruct his own faults, personal tragedies (including the death of his one-month-old son), and imperfections. His pursuit of revolutionary politics and poetics is the constant, often spent with his muse, Revolutionary Mexico. Ross concludes with a trip to Baghdad as a "human shield," before the Anglo-American invasion, ready to sacrifice his life as part of his perpetual struggle for justice. Award-winning writer John Ross's memoir is inspired from a tumbledown tombstone in California: The headstone reads: E. B. Schnaubelt 1855-1913, "Murdered by Capitalism."

Capitalism and Disability

Download Capitalism and Disability PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Haymarket Books
ISBN 13 : 1608467163
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (84 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Capitalism and Disability by : Marta Russell

Download or read book Capitalism and Disability written by Marta Russell and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spread out over many years and many different publications, the late author and activist Marta Russell wrote a number of groundbreaking and insightful essays on the nature of disability and oppression under capitalism. In this volume, Russell’s various essays are brought together in one place in order to provide a useful and expansive resource to those interested in better understanding the ways in which the modern phenomenon of disability is shaped by capitalist economic and social relations. The essays range in analysis from the theoretical to the topical, including but not limited to: the emergence of disability as a “human category” rooted in the rise of industrial capitalism and the transformation of the conditions of work, family, and society corresponding thereto; a critique of the shortcomings of a purely “civil rights approach” to addressing the persistence of disability oppression in the economic sphere, with a particular focus on the legacy of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; an examination of the changing position of disabled people within the overall system of capitalist production utilizing the Marxist economic concepts of the reserve army of the unemployed, the labor theory of value, and the exploitation of wage-labor; the effects of neoliberal capitalist policies on the living conditions and social position of disabled people as it pertains to welfare, income assistance, health care, and other social security programs; imperialism and war as a factor in the further oppression and immiseration of disabled people within the United States and globally; and the need to build unity against the divisive tendencies which hide the common economic interest shared between disabled people and the often highly-exploited direct care workers who provide services to the former.

Another Now

Download Another Now PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 1612199569
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (121 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Another Now by : Yanis Varoufakis

Download or read book Another Now written by Yanis Varoufakis and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What would a fair and equal society actually look like? The world-renowned economist and bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis presents his radical and subversive answer in a work of speculative fiction that recalls William Morris and William Gibson The year: 2035. At a funeral for Iris, a revolutionary leftist feminist, Yango is approached by Costa, Iris’s closest comrade, who urges him to carry out Iris’s last wish: plough into her secret diaries to tell their story. “But”, Costa insists “leave out anything that might help Big Tech replicate my technologies!” That night Yango delves into Iris’s diaries. In them he discovers a chronicle of how Costa’s revolutionary technologies had unveiled an actually existing, fully democratized, postcapitalist society. Suddenly he understands Costa’s obsession with the hackers trying to steal his secrets. So begins Yanis Varoufakis’s extraordinary novelistic thought-experiment, where the world-famous economist offers an invigorating and deeply moving vision of an alternative reality. Another Now tells the story of Costa, a brilliant but deeply disillusioned, computer engineer, who creates a revolutionary technology that will allow the user a “glimpse of a life beyond their dreams” but will not enslave them. But an accident during one of its trial runs unveils a cosmic wormhole where Costa meets his DNA double, who is living in a 2025 very different than the one Costa is living in. In this parallel 2025 a global hi-tech uprising, begun in the wake of the collapse of 2008, has birthed a post-capitalist world in which work, money, land, digital networks and politics have been truly democratized. Banks have been eliminated, as well as predatory, data-mining digital monopolies; the gig economy is no more; and the young are free to experiment with different careers and to study ”non-lucrative topics, from Sumerian pottery to astrophysics.” Intoxicated, Costa travels to England to tell Iris, his old comrade, and her neighbor, Eva, a recovering banker turned neoliberal economics professor, of the parallel universe he has discovered. Costa eventually leads them back to his workshop in America where Iris and Eva meet their own doubles, and confront hard truths about themselves and the daunting political challenge that "the Other Now" presents. But, as their obsession with the Other Now deepens, time begins to run out, as the wormhole begins to deteriorate and hackers begin to unleash new attacks on Costa’s technology. The trio have to make a choice: which 2025 do they want to live in? Varoufakis has been claiming for a while that we already live in postcapitalist times. That, since the 2008 crisis, capitalism has been morphing into technofeudalism. Another Now, a riveting work of speculative fiction, shows that there is a realistic, democratic alternative to the technofeudalpostcapitalist dystopia taking shape all around us. It also confronts us with the greatest question: how far are we willing to go to bring it about?

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century

Download How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1788739558
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (887 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century by : Erik Olin Wright

Download or read book How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century written by Erik Olin Wright and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is wrong with capitalism, and how can we change it? Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values—equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity—can provide both the basis for a critique of capitalism and help to guide us toward a socialist and democratic society. Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into this concise and tightly argued manifesto: analyzing the varieties of anticapitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and an unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible. Included is an afterword by the author’s close friend and collaborator Michael Burawoy.

Histories of Racial Capitalism

Download Histories of Racial Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231549105
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Histories of Racial Capitalism by : Justin Leroy

Download or read book Histories of Racial Capitalism written by Justin Leroy and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between race and capitalism is one of the most enduring and controversial historical debates. The concept of racial capitalism offers a way out of this impasse. Racial capitalism is not simply a permutation, phase, or stage in the larger history of capitalism—since the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of the Americas, capitalism, in both material and ideological senses, has been racial, deriving social and economic value from racial classification and stratification. Although Cedric J. Robinson popularized the term, racial capitalism has remained undertheorized for nearly four decades. Histories of Racial Capitalism brings together for the first time distinguished and rising scholars to consider the utility of the concept across historical settings. These scholars offer dynamic accounts of the relationship between social relations of exploitation and the racial terms through which they were organized, justified, and contested. Deploying an eclectic array of methods, their works range from indigenous mortgage foreclosures to the legacies of Atlantic-world maroons, from imperial expansion in the continental United States and beyond to the racial politics of municipal debt in the New South, from the ethical complexities of Latinx banking to the postcolonial dilemmas of extraction in the Caribbean. Throughout, the contributors consider and challenge how some claims about the history and nature of capitalism are universalized while others remain marginalized. By theorizing and testing the concept of racial capitalism in different historical circumstances, this book shows its analytical and political power for today’s scholars and activists.

The Corona Crash

Download The Corona Crash PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1839762055
Total Pages : 113 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (397 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Corona Crash by : Grace Blakeley

Download or read book The Corona Crash written by Grace Blakeley and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free market, competitive capitalism is dead. The separation between politics and economics can no longer be sustained. In The Corona Crash, leading economics commentator Grace Blakeley theorises about the epoch-making changes that the coronavirus brings in its wake. We are living through a unique moment in history. The pandemic has caused the deepest global recession since the Second World War. Meanwhile the human cost is reflected in a still-rising death toll, as many states find themselves unable—and some unwilling—to grapple with the effects of the virus. Whatever happens, we can never go back to business as usual. This crisis will tip us into a new era of monopoly capitalism, argues Blakeley, as the corporate economy collapses into the arms of the state, and the tech giants grow to unprecedented proportions. We need a radical response. The recovery could see the transformation of our political, economic, and social systems based on the principles of the Green New Deal. If not, the alternatives, as Blakeley warns, may be even worse than we feared.

Capitalism As Civilisation

Download Capitalism As Civilisation PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108497187
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Capitalism As Civilisation by : Ntina Tzouvala

Download or read book Capitalism As Civilisation written by Ntina Tzouvala and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the theoretical tools drawn from historical materialism and deconstruction, Tzouvala offers a comprehensive history of the standard of civilisation.