Migration

Changing the World

Guy Arnold

Constant migration is a worldwide phenomenon that creates sharp divisions between those who accept the need for migrants and welcome the contributions they make and those who oppose them on xenophobic grounds. Guy Arnold provides a comprehensive survey of the consequences of migration. Arnold studies both the massive internal migrations in China and India that drive economic development and the influx of cheap labour into the advanced economies of the USA and EU. He shows that migrants are essential… (more information)

Global Minotaur

America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the future of the World Economy

Yanis Varoufakis

In this remarkable and provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis explodes the myth that financialization, ineffectual regulation of banks, greed and globalization were the root causes of the global economic crisis. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a ‘Global Minotaur’ was born. Just as the Athenians maintained a steady flow of tributes to the Cretan beast, so the &lsquo… (more information)

Private Affluence, Public Austerity

Economic Crisis and Democratic Malaise in Canada

Stephen McBride, Heather Whiteside

Examining Canadian political and economic developments of the twenty-first century, Private Affluence, Public Austerity provides a systematic analysis of the dynamics of Canadian politics in the era of neoliberal globalization. Stephen McBride and Heather Whiteside conclude that, although the last three decades of neoliberal rule are characterized by recurrent crises, the system has proven to be resilient — even in the face of a severe recession. Canada’s “business as usual&rdquo… (more information)

Dark Matter

Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise

Gregory Sholette

Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalised artists, the ‘dark matter’ of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it. Gregory Sholette, a politically engaged artist, argues that imagination and creativity in the art world originate thrive in the non-commercial sector… (more information)

Global Slump

The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance

David McNally

Global Slump analyzes the global financial meltdown as the first systemic crisis of the neoliberal stage of capitalism. It argues that – far from having ended – the crisis has ushered in a whole period of worldwide economic and political turbulence. In developing an account of the crisis as rooted in fundamental features of capitalism, Global Slump challenges the view that its source lies in financial deregulation. The book locates the recent meltdown in the intense economic restructuring… (more information)

In and Out of Crisis

The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives

Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, Leo Panitch

While many are wondering if another world is possible, few are mapping out avenues to a post-capitalist future. In this groundbreaking analysis of the meltdown, renowned political economists Albo, Gindin and Panitch locate the roots of the crisis in the inner logic of capitalism itself and illuminate how the era of neoliberal free markets has been undergirded by massive state intervention. The authors argue that it’s time to start thinking about transformative alternatives to capitalism &mdash… (more information)

Crack Capitalism

John Holloway

Crack Capitalism, argues that radical change can only come about through the creation, expansion and multiplication of ‘cracks’ in the capitalist system. These cracks are ordinary moments or spaces of rebellion in which we assert a different type of doing. John Holloway’s previous book, Change the World Without Taking Power, sparked a world-wide debate among activists and scholars about the most effective methods of going beyond capitalism. Now Holloway rejects the idea of a… (more information)

Saving Global Capitalism

Interrogating Austerity and Working Class Responses to Crises

Edited by Carlo Fanelli, Chris Hurl, Priscillia Lefebvre, Gulden Ozcan

What began as an unprecedented housing meltdown centered in the United States in the summer of 2007, quickly turned into a global insolvency crisis throughout 2008, and later the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression. Despite monumental bailouts and extraordinary coordination by all major capitalist countries led by the U.S. Treasury, the public purse that salvaged the making of global capitalism is now being undermined by the very financial markets that were rescued. A new… (more information)

Socialist Register 2010

Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism

Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch

Health care rights are fought over between commercial forces that seek to make health into a commodity (for those who can pay), and popular forces that seek to reduce gross inequalities and try to make (or keep) health as a public service. These essays analyze the global health industry: the corporations that sell pharmaceuticals and insurance and push to expand the consumption of goods and services, making health care everywhere a field of capital accumulation. (more information)

If You’re in My Way, I’m Walking

The Assault on Working People since 1970

Thom Workman

“If you’re in my way I’m walking.” This arrogant statement by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on the occasion of his physical altercation with a protester in Hull, Quebec in the mid-1990s symbolizes the spirit of the relentless drive of capital to rewrite the historical compromise reached with working people after World War II. This early post-war compromise—sometimes referred to as the Fordist Compact—was associated with improving wages and rising… (more information)

The State in Capitalist Society

Ralph Miliband

Almost as soon as The State in Capitalist Society was published in 1969, it was recognized as one of the most important books in political science and sociology to have appeared since the Second World War. Four decades later, and in the wake of a neoliberal era almost universally characterized in terms of the re-treat of the state, “the massive scale of state intervention today makes the re-publication of Ralph Miliband’s classic study extremely timely. Its famous opening sentences… (more information)

General Police System

Political Economy and Security in the Age of Enlightenment

Edited by Joshua Johnson, John McMullan, Gulden Ozcan, George S. Rigakos

While contemporary inquiries into theoretical linkages between political economy and security are rare, the exploration of these connections formed the cornerstone of political, social and economic philosophy during the upheavals of post-feudal Europe. “A General Police System”, a term borrowed from the late eighteenth century thinker Patrick Colquhoun, examines the overlapping genealogies of commerce, security, surveillance and the problem of poverty in the works of foundational English… (more information)

The Global Food Economy

The Battle for the Future of Farming

Tony Weis

The modern food industry is a paradox: surplus “food mountains” sit alongside global malnutrition; the developed world subsidized its own agriculture while pressurizing the developing to liberalize at any cost; and an increasingly aggressive export competition is accompanied by a growing reliance on imports in many countries. The WTO’s uneven application of neoliberal economics to food production is relatively new, and the consequences of mounting deficits, rising “food miles… (more information)