“It is worth dwelling for a moment on this concept of improvement, because it tells us a great deal about English agriculture and the development of capitalism. The word ‘improve’ itself, in its original meaning, did not mean just ‘make better’ in a general sense but literally meant to do something for monetary profit, especially to cultivate land for profit. […] The word was at the same time acquiring a more general meaning in the sense that we know it today (We might like to think about the implications of a culture in which the word for “making better” is rooted in the word for monetary profit).”

Ellen Meiksins Wood, from The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View

Capitalism

THE ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD READER

Now Out! The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader 

http://www.brill.com/ellen-meiksins-wood-reader

Edited by Larry Patriquin, NipissingUniversity

Volume: 40

Series: Historical Materialism Book Series

ISSN: 

1570-152

ISBN: 9789004230088

Publication Year: 2012

Edition info:  1

Version: Hardback

Publication Type: Book

Pages, Illustrations: xiii, 335 pp.

Imprint: BRILL

Language: English

Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading contemporary political theorist who has elaborated an innovative approach to the history of political thought, the ‘social history of political theory’. She has been described as the founder, together with the historian Robert Brenner, of ‘Political Marxism’, a distinct version of historical materialism which has inspired a research program that spans a number of academic disciplines. Organized thematically, this Reader brings together selections from Wood’s groundbreaking scholarship, published over three decades, providing an overview of her original interpretations of capitalism, precapitalist societies, the state, political theory, democracy, citizenship, liberalism, civil society, the Enlightenment, globalization, imperialism, and socialism

Readership

All those interested in the history and theories of capitalism, socialism, imperialism, Marxism, liberalism, social classes, democracy, civil society, and citizenship.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The ‘Method’ of Ellen Meiksins Wood

1. Capitalism
The ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ in capitalism
Class-power and state-power
Feudalism and private property
Capitalism as the privatisation of political power
The localisation of class-struggle
England vs. the dominant model of capitalism
The bourgeois paradigm
Begging the question
Opportunity or imperative?
The commercialisation-model
Marx on the transition
Towns and trade
Agrarian capitalism
Market-dependent producers
A different kind of market-dependence?
Competitive markets

2. Precapitalist Societies
Class and state in China and Rome
Rome and the empire of private property
The city-states of Florence and Venice
Master and slave vs. landlord and peasant
Free producers and slaves
Slavery and the ‘decline’ of the Roman Empire
The ‘logic’ of slavery vs. the logic of capitalism
The ‘slave-mode of production’
Agricultural slavery and the peasant-citizen
The nexus of freedom and slavery in democratic Athens

3. The State in Historical Perspective
Class and state in ancient society
The emergence of the polis in ancient Athens
The ‘essence’ of the polis
Class in the democratic polis
Village and state, town and country, in democratic Athens
The rise and fall of Rome
The culture of property: the Roman law
From imperial Rome to ‘feudalism’
Absolutism and the modern state
The idea of the state
The peculiarities of the English state
Contrasting states: France vs. England

4. Social and Political Thought
The social history of political theory
Political theory in history: an overview
Plato
The Greek concept of freedom
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
John Locke
Revolution and tradition, c. 1640–1790

5. Democracy, Citizenship, Liberalism, and Civil Society
Labour and democracy, ancient and modern
From ancient to modern conceptions of citizenship
Capitalism and democratic citizenship
The American redefinition of democracy
A democracy devoid of social content
From democracy to liberalism
Capitalism and ‘liberal democracy’
Liberal democracy and capitalist hegemony
The idea of ‘civil society’
The civil-society argument
‘Civil society’ and the devaluation of democracy

6. The Enlightenment, Postmodernism, and the Post-‘New Left’
Modernity vs. capitalism: France vs. England
From modernity to postmodernity
Modernity and the non-history of capitalism
Themes of the postmodern left
Enlightenment vs. capitalism: Condorcet vs. Locke
Enlightenment-universalism
The periodisation of the Western left
Left-intellectuals and contemporary capitalism

7. Globalisation and Imperialism
Globalisation and the nation-state
Nation-states, classes, and universal capitalism
The indispensable state
Precapitalist imperialism
The classic age of imperialism
Globalisation and war
Globalisation and imperial hegemony
The contradictions of capitalist imperialism

8. Socialism
The end of the welfare-state ‘compact’
There are no social democrats now
Market-dependence vs. market-enablement
Left-strategies of market-enablement
The political implications of competition
The working class and the struggle for socialism
Class-conflict and the socialist project
Socialism and democracy
The state in classless societies
Liberalism vs. democracy
‘Universal human goods’
The self-emancipation of the working class
The socialist movement
Democracy as an economic mechanism

Bibliography of Works by Ellen Meiksins Wood, 1970–2012

References
Index

Originally published in: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/now-out-the-ellen-meiksins-wood-reader

**END**

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Marx for Today

MARX FOR TODAY

Edited by Marcello Musto

After having being sold out as special issue (Nr. 54 – December 2010) of the journal “Socialism and Democracy” already in March 2011, Routledge has published ”Marx for Today” as a book:
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415503594/

—
DESCRIPTION

Since the onset of global crisis in recent years, academics and economic theorists from various political and cultural backgrounds have been drawn to Marx’s analysis of the inherent instability of capitalism. The rediscovery of Marx is based on his continuing capacity to explain the present. In the context of what some commentators have described as a “Marx renaissance”, the aim of this book is to make a close study of Marx’s principal writings in relation to the major problems of our own society, and to show why and how some of his theories constitute a precious tool for the understanding and critique of the world in the early twenty-first century.

The book brings together varied reflections on the Marxian oeuvre, drawing on different perspectives and fields, and argues its case in two different parts. The first will encompass such diverse areas and themes as political thought, economics, nationalism, ethnicity, post-capitalist society, freedom, democracy, emancipation, and alienation, showing in each case how Marx has still today an invaluable contribution to make. The second presents a complete and rigorous account of the dissemination and the reception of Marx’s work throughout the world in the last decade. Both parts make a significant contribution to the current research on Marx and Marxisms.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Socialism and Democracy.

—
REVIEWS

“In Marcello Musto, the Marx revival has found an ‘Impressario’ with a range of interests and contacts, a tolerance for differences, and an exquisite taste for only the finest and most provocative of Marxist scholarship. With this volume of exceptionally astute essays (the second for Routledge after Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy 150 years later, and a third is on its way), Musto has set the gold standard for Marxological studies in the modern era. No one who wants to understand why Marx was chosen as the greatest thinker of the last millenium in a BBC poll of its listeners can afford to miss any of Musto’s volumes, including his own remarkably lucid and insightful contributions to each of them. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!” — Bertell Ollman – New York University

“With the relentless globalization of capital in recent decades, a global capitalist economic crisis, and uprisings in Greece, Italy, Spain, the Occupy Movements, and the Arab Uprisings of 2011, Marx has perhaps never been as relevant for the contemporary moment as now. Marcello Musto has orchestrated a series of projects that have ignited the Marx revival and contributed his own scholarship and ideas for making Marx alive for us today. His edited book Marx for Today is an extremely important contribution to the ungoing “Marx renaissance”, and shows how Marx’s work contributes to understanding and engaging key problems of today’s society, and thus how Marx contributes to projects of understanding, critique and transformation of the world in the early twenty-first century.” — Douglas Kellner – UCLA

“The ruling doxa wants us to believe that Marx belongs to yesterday. The truth of the matter is that his analysis, his theories and his indignation are relevant today, as much, and perhaps more so, than in his own times. This brilliant collection of essays edited by Marcello Musto shows us why”. — Michael Löwy – CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research)

—

CONTENTS

1. Introduction, Marcello Musto.

Part 1: Re-reading Marx in 2010

2. Not Just Capital and Class: Marx on Non-Western Societies, Nationalism and Ethnicity, Kevin B. Anderson.

3. The Myth of Twentieth-Century Socialism and the Continuing Relevance of Karl Marx, Paresh Chattopadhyay.

4. Change the System, Not Its Barriers, Michael A. Lebowitz.

5. Emancipation in Marx’s Early Work, George Comninel.

6. Revisiting Marx’s Concept of Alienation, Marcello Musto.

7. Marx and the Politics of Sarcasm, Terrell Carver.

8. The ‘Lesser Evil’ as Argument and Tactic, from Marx to the Present, Victor Wallis.

9. In Capitalist Crisis, Rediscovering Marx, Rick Wolff.

10. Universal Capitalism, Ellen Meiksins Wood.

Part 2: Marx’s Global Reception Today

11. Marx in Hispanic America, Francisco T. Sobrino.

12. Marx in Brazil, Armando Boito and Luiz Eduardo Motta.

13. Marx in the Anglophone World, Paul Blackledge.

14. Marx in France, Jean-Numa Ducange.

15. Marx in Germany, Jan Hoff.

16. Marx in Italy, Gianfranco Ragona.

17. Marx in Russia, Vesa Oittinen.

18. Marx in China, Daping Hu.

19. Marx in South Korea, Seongjin Jeong.

20. Marx in Japan, Hiroshi Uchida.

—

A 20% discount flyer for universities and/or libraries is available from marcello.musto@gmail.com.

A library recommendation form is available at the following location – see: http://www.routledge.com/resources/librarian_recommendation/9780415503594 for more details. You can fill this out for your own librarian and forward the link to interested parties who would like to see your book appear in their libraries as well.

And in case a colleague would like to review the book: A review copy request form can be found at the following here: http://www.routledge.com/resources/review_copy_request/9780415503594   

**END**

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Henry Heller

In a review for Counterfire, Dominic Alexander finds Henry Heller’s The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century Perspective to be “rich in fascinating historical debates…provid[ing] a comprehensive and eminently readable introduction to a complex field at the centre of the Marxist tradition of history. It will be of great use to anyone concerned the problem of capitalism, its origins and development.” In his detailed review Alexander offers some criticisms but overall finds much to praise:

While sometimes Heller seems to concede too much to undialectical conceptions in these debates, in other respects he mounts an impressive and important defence of central arguments in the Marxist understanding of capitalism’s development. His chapters on the bourgeois revolution offer a robust case that the Dutch, English and French revolutions were real social revolutions representing the victory of a bourgeois class over feudal state power. Here again the target is Robert Brenner and his followers, particularly Ellen Meiksins Wood, and Georges Comninel on the French Revolution.

Heller finds that the economistic approach of the ‘political Marxists’ encourages them to accept the de-coupling of the revolutions from any bourgeois class so that the French revolution was, for example, bourgeois without being capitalist, while the English was the other way round (p.117). In effect, this school of historians, for all their brilliance in some areas, fell into line with the revisionist attack on the Marxist theory of history which grew from the 1970s onwards (pp.70-2).

Aside from this controversy, the chapters on bourgeois revolution from above and below (four and five) are a rich and lucid resource covering the work of historians who have been substantiating Marx’s theory of revolution in the transition to capitalism.

Visit Counterfire to read the review in full.

Capitalism

THE AMERICAN ROAD TO CAPITALISM – BY CHARLES POST

Wednesday, 11 April 2012, 5:30 – 7:00 PM

@ University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way (between Telegraph and Dana), Berkeley, CA  

Charles Post speaks on his new book:

The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620-1877

Shortlisted for the 2011 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize

“Charles Post’s new book, The American Road to Capitalism,is sure to become a reference point for debates among historians and Marxists about the transformation of the English colonies into the fully developed capitalist United States. [...] it should be widely read, appreciated for its insights and rigor, and also debated.” — Ashley Smith, International Socialist Review

“This is a thoughtful, learned, stimulating, challenging and altogether valuable volume. It reprints a series of reflections by the Marxist sociologist Charles Post on various aspects of the rise and evolution of capitalism in North America between the colonial era and the late 19th century. The book is anchored in a wide-ranging study of (and it duly credits) the work of generations of historians.” — Bruce Levine, author of Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War, in Against the Current

“Explaining the origin and early development of American capitalism is a particularly challenging task. It is in some ways even more difficult than in other cases to strike the right historical balance, capturing the systemic imperatives of capitalism, and explaining how they emerged, while doing justice to historical particularities – To confront these historical complexities requires both a command of historical detail and a clear theoretical grasp of capitalism’s systemic imperatives, a combination that is all too rare. Charles Post succeeds in striking that difficult balance, which makes his book a major contribution to truly historical scholarship.” — Ellen Meiksins-Wood, York University, author of The Origins of Capitalism: A Long View.

Unable to analyze the dynamics of specific forms of social labour in the antebellum U.S., most historians of the US Civil War have ignored its deep social roots. To search out these roots, Post applies the theoretical insights from the transition debates to the historical literature on the U.S.to produce a new analysis of the origins of American capitalism.

Charles Post Ph. D. (1983) in Sociology, SUNY-Binghamton, is Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College-CUNY. He has published in New Left Review, Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Against the Current and Historical Materialism.

**END**

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House of Lords

CITIZENS TO LORDS – BY ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD

CITIZENS TO LORDS: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

BY ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD
NEW IN PAPERBACK: 15TH AUGUST 2011
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“Immensely impressive, bold and erudite … Meiksins Wood‘s conclusions are undeniably nuanced, challenging and important … This book ought to be compulsory reading for us all.” —Times Higher Education Supplement
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A major new history of Western political thought as it evolved through conflict and communities.

In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory. She traces the development of the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Middle Ages in the perspective of social history—a significant departure not only from the standard abstract history of ideas but also from other contextual methods.

Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines their ideas not simply in the context of political languages but as creative responses to the social relations and conflicts of their time and place. She identifies a distinctive relation between property and state in Western history and shows how the canon, while largely the work of members or clients of dominant classes, was shaped by complex interactions among proprietors, labourers and states. Western political theory, Wood argues, owes much of its vigour, and also many ambiguities, to these complex and often contradictory relations.

From the Ancient Greek polis of Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus and Sophocles, through the Roman Republic of Cicero and the Empire of St Paul and St Augustine, to the medieval world of Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, Citizens to Lords offers a rich, dynamic exploration of thinkers and ideas that have indelibly stamped our modern world.
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Further praise for CITIZENS TO LORDS:

“A challenging analysis, which successfully integrates theory with historical changes. The clarity of the writing makes her account readily accessible to any reader ready to engage a fresh approach to the history of political theory.” —Sheldon Wolin

“Few historians of comparative political thought are in the same league as Ellen Wood, who surveys the whole sweep of ancient and medieval thinkers with equal magisterial brilliance of insight.”  Professor Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge

Praise for EMPIRE OF CAPITAL:

“A splendid book.” —Eric Hobsbawm

“The most compelling account yet of imperialism in its current phase.” —Robert Brenner
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Ellen Meiksins Wood, for many years Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, is the author of many books, including Democracy Against Capitalism and, with Verso, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism, The Origin of Capitalism, Peasant, Citizen and Slave, Citizens to Lords, Empire of Capital and Liberty and Property.
———————————–
ISBN: 9 781 84467 706 1 / $26.95 / £14.99 / $33.50 CAN / Paperback / 256 pages
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For more information about CITIZENS TO LORDS or to buy the book visit: http://www.versobooks.com/books/972-citizens-to-lords
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Academics can request an inspection copy. For further information please go to: http://www.versobooks.com/pg/desk-copies
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Visit Verso’s website for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and publications and special offers: http://www.versobooks.com

Become a fan of Verso on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Verso-Books/205847279448577

And get updates on Twitter –  @VersoBooks
http://twitter.com/VersoBooks

__._,_.___

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CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK – UPDATE 8th MAY 2011

EVENTS

DYING FOR A HOME: FIGHTING FOR OUR SOCIAL PROGRAMS

Thursday, May 19
7 pm
Toronto Reference Library, Atrium
Yonge Street, north of Bloor

Join Toronto street nurse Cathy Crowe for a street-level perspective on the need for social housing and why we need social programs now more than ever. Crowe has been a street nurse in downtown Toronto for more than seventeen years and co-founded the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee. Music provided by the Common Thread Community Choir. Hosted by Councillor Adam Vaughan.

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STOP SIGNS: CARS AND CAPITALISM ON THE ROAD TO ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL DECAY

Thursday, May 12
7pm
Bahen Centre, Room 1200
40 St. George St., Toronto

In North America, human beings have become enthralled by the automobile: A quarter of our working lives are spent paying for them; communities fight each other for the right to build more of them; our cities have been torn down, remade and planned with their needs as the overriding concern; wars are fought to keep their fuel tanks filled; songs are written to praise them; cathedrals are built to worship them.

Drawing on their new book Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay, authors Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler will describe how the automobile’s ascendance is inextricably linked to capitalism and involved corporate malfeasance, political intrigue, backroom payoffs, media manipulation, racism, academic corruption, third world coups, secret armies, environmental destruction and war.

To locate this discussion in the Toronto context, local activist Jordy Cummings will describe the work of the campaign for Free and Accessible public transit, which is being spearheaded by the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly.

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COUNCILLOR JOSH MATLOW’S TOWN HALL DEBATE ON GARBAGE PRIVATIZATION

Tuesday, May 10th 2011
7:00 – 9:00 pm
North Toronto Collegiate Institute, 17 Broadway Ave – SCHOOL AUDITORIUM

Councillor Josh Matlow will be holding a Town Hall debate on the garbage privatization issue which will be coming to City Council in mid-May, to ensure residents have an opportunity to become informed on both sides of this important issue. It will be moderated by TVO’s Steve Paikin and will feature Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, Chair of Toronto Public Works Committee and Hugh Mackenzie of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

For additional information, please contact Josh Matlow’s office at (416) 392-7906 or email councillor_matlow@toronto.ca

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STOP WAGE THEFT! CAMPAIGN LAUNCH

Friday May 13, 2011
7:00pm * FREE!
Beit Zatoun – 612 Markham Street
(Bathurst St. and Bloor St.)

Celebrate our shared resistance with performances by:

* Ruben ‘Beny’ Esguerra and New Tradition Drum and Dance live Afro-Colombian percussion
* Spoken word by Lishai

Hear from Workers’ Action Centre leaders on our fight to stop employers from stealing our wages.    

Watch undercover footage of employers breaking the law, and see how workers are resisting through Bad Boss actions around the city.

Find Out how you can get involved!

Workers’ Action Centre is releasing a series of videos on wage theft. Watch the latest video at http://www.workersactioncentre.org

For more information: call Sonia at (416) 531-0778, ext. 221.

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(UN)LAWFUL ACCESS: CYBER-SURVEILLANCE, SECURITY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

May 12, 2011
5:00pm- :00pm
Campbell Conference Facility
Munk School of Global Affairs, U of T
1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, ON

Join moderator Dr. Ron Deibert for an insightful and lively discussion into some of the most pressing social issues surrounding our rights and freedoms as cyber-surveillance becomes an ubiquitous part of our lives, on-line and off.

Digitally mediated surveillance is an increasingly prevalent, but still largely invisible, aspect of everyday life. As we work, play and negotiate public spaces, on-line and off, we produce a growing stream of personal digital data of interest to unseen others. CCTV cameras hosted by private and public actors survey and record our movements in public space, as well as in the workplace. Corporate interests track our behaviour as we navigate both social and transactional cyberspaces, data mining our digital doubles and packaging users as commodities for sale to the highest bidder. Governments continue to collect personal information on-line with unclear guidelines for retention and use, while law enforcement increasingly use internet technology to monitor not only criminals but activists and political dissidents as well, with worrisome implications for democracy.

Read more: http://www.digitallymediatedsurveillance.ca

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NEXT GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE GTWA: IN THE SPRING OF 2011 WILL STRUGGLE BLOOM?

Saturday May 14, 2011
Steelworkers Hall
25 Cecil Street, Toronto.
East side of Spadina south of College

As we exit the elections and the capitalist class continues to consolidate itself the attacks against working people will come quicker and stronger. The need for an organized resistance is greater than ever.

The Greater Toronto Workers’s Assembly (GTWA) was formed to contribute to this resistance at a time when we saw the tip of the iceberg of the “austerity” program. Looking back less than two years later our success at doing this has been both limited and mixed despite some of our successes. We need to examine the current context, our project and the challenges we face. Do we have the capacity, will and discipline to take on these challenges? Can we overcome the divisions, pressures and practices that divide us? Will we be able to help the struggle bloom?

All members and supporters are welcome. Members and supporters are encouraged to bring guests as observers.

Read more: http://www.workersassembly.ca/node/150

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NEWS & VIEWS

ANTI-AUSTERITY STRUGGLES AND THE CANADIAN ELECTION

From The Bullet

The precise political outcome of the May 2nd election may well have the NDP make an unprecedented electoral breakthrough in Canada and Quebec. This would be a major step in its long desire to displace the Liberals as the other dominant national party, partly to become something more like the Democratic Party in the U.S. and partly to become the alternate centrist political option like the British Labour Party and the German SPD. This is already what the NDP is in Western Canada and Nova Scotia. This needs to be placed in the context of an international political conjuncture where ruling class forces have, paradoxically, gained strength and momentum over the crisis to date; and set against the enduring institutional characteristics of the Canadian political and electoral systems that, if anything, the political parties and campaigns have reinforced.

Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/496.php

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ONTARIO FARM WORKERS ‘SHOCKED’ AS UNION BAN UPHELD

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a provincial ban on farm unions is constitutional, denying more than 80,000 Ontario farm workers the ability to unionize. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a provincial ban on farm unions is constitutional, denying more than 80,000 Ontario farm workers the ability to unionize.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2011/04/29/supreme-court.html

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MURRAY DOBBIN’S BLOG – A CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY. NOW WHAT?

There is no point dwelling on the obvious other than to simply reiterate it. The election of a Conservative majority government will usher in wrenching change in Canada and we will have to witness the worse that Stephen Harper has to offer. It remains to be seen whether or not Harper actually wants to stay around for another election to win it (and therefore not go too far in a first term), and solidify the dominance of his party as the new “natural governing party.” Or whether, as his personality disorder would suggest, he will in a spirit of vengeance against the country he detests, dismantle as much of the post-war social contract he can in four years of virtually absolute power.

Read more: http://murraydobbin.ca/2011/05/03/a-conservativ-majority-now-what/

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BUY THIS BOOK!

From LBO News, Doug Henwood
Excellent collection of interviews … Perfect for teaching, or just reading. Order your copies here.

Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (PM Press, 2011)

Interviewees: Ellen Meiksins Wood, David Harvey, Doug Henwood, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, Greg Albo, David McNally, John Bellamy Foster, Jason W Moore, Ursula Huws, Gillian Hart, Vivek Chibber, Mike Davis, Tariq Ali, John Sanbonmatsu, Andrej Grubacic, and Noam Chomsky.

Through a series of incisive conversations with some of the most eminent thinkers and political economists on the Left—including David Harvey, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Mike Davis, Leo Panitch, Tariq Ali, and Noam Chomsky—Capital and Its Discontents illuminates the dynamic contradictions undergirding capitalism and the potential for its dethroning.

The book challenges conventional wisdom on the Left about the nature of globalization, neoliberalism and imperialism, as well as the agrarian question in the Global South. It probes deeply into the roots of the global economic meltdown, the role of debt and privatization in dampening social revolt, and considers capitalism’s dynamic ability to find ever new sources of accumulation—whether through imperial or ecological plunder or the commodification of previously unpaid female labor.

Read more: https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=267

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VIDEO – ONLY KNOWN RECORDING OF MOTHER JONES

You have to see the only known audio and video recording of Mother Jones. On what is believed to be her 100th birthday in 1930, the legendary union organizer is still full of fire for worker justice.

Watch the video: http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/05/03/only-known-videoaudio-of-mother-jones/

(END)
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ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):

Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin

The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.

Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education. For more information about this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca

For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

END ***

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

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Karl Marx

KARL MARX’S ‘GRUNDRISSE’ 150 YEARS LATER – OUT IN PAPERBACK

Karl Marx’s Grundrisse
Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later

Edited by Marcello Musto

Hardback 2008. Price: € 82.00, £70.00, $ 130.00, CAD$ 135.00

Paperback 2010. Price: € 27.00, £ 22.50, $ 32.95, CAD$ 35.00

Written between1857 and 1858, the Grundrisse is the first draft of Marx’s critique of political economy and, thus, also the initial preparatory work on Capital. Despite its editorial vicissitudes and late publication, Grundrisse contains numerous reflections on matters that Marx did not develop elsewhere in his oeuvre and is therefore extremely important for an overall interpretation of his thought.

In this collection, various international experts in the field, analysing the Grundrisse on the 150th anniversary of its composition, present a Marx in many ways radically different from the one who figures in the dominant currents of twentieth-century Marxism. The book demonstrates the relevance of theGrundrisse to an understanding of Capital and of Marx’s theoretical project as a whole, which, as is well known, remained uncompleted. It also highlights the continuing explanatory power of Marxian categories for contemporary society and its present contradictions.

With contributions from such scholars as Eric Hobsbawm, Moishe Postone, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Terrell Carver, John Bellamy Foster, Enrique Dussel and Iring Fetscher, and covering subject areas such as political economy, philosophy and Marxism, this book is likely to become required reading for serious scholars of Marx across the world.

Table of Contents

1. Prologue

2. Foreword, Eric Hobsbawn

Part I. Grundrisse: Critical Interpretations

3. History, Production and Method in the 1857 ‘Introduction’ to the Grundrisse, Marcello Musto

4. The Concept of Value in Modern Economy. On the Relationship between Money and Capital in ‘Grundrisse’, Joachim Bischoff and Christoph Lieber

5. Marx Conception of Alienation in ‘Grundrisse’, Terrell Carver

6. The Discovery of the Category of Surplus value, Enrique Dussel

7. Historical Materialism in ‘Forms which precede Capitalist Production’, Ellen Meiksins Wood

8. Marx’s ‘Grundrisse’ and the Ecological Contradictions of Capitalism, John Bellamy Foster

9. Emancipated Individuals in an Emancipated Society. Marx’s Sketch of Post-Capitalist Society in the ‘Grundrisse’, Iring Fetscher

10. Rethinking ‘Capital’ in Light of the ‘Grundrisse’, Moishe Postone 

Part II. Marx at the time of Grundrisse

11. Marx’s life at the time of the ‘Grundrisse’. Biographical notes on 1857-8, Marcello Musto

12. The First World Economic Crisis: Marx as an Economic Journalist, Michael R. Kratke

13. Marx’s ‘Books of Crisis’ of 1857-8, Michael R. Kratke

Part III. Dissemination and reception of Grundrisse in the world 

14. Dissemination and Reception of the ‘Grundrisse’ in the world. Introduction, Marcello Musto

15. Germany and Austria and Switzerland, Ernst Theodor Mohl

16. Russia and Soviet Union, Lyudmila L. Vasina

17. Japan, Hiroshi Uchida

18. China, Zhongpu Zhang

19. France, Andre Tosel

20. Italy, Mario Tronti

21. Cuba and Argentina and Spain and Mexico, Pedro Ribas and Rafael Pla

22. Czechoslovakia, Stanislav Hubik

23. Hungary, Ferenc L. Lendvai

24. Romania, Gheorghe Stoica

25. USA and Britain and Australia and Canada, Christopher J. Arthur

26. Denmark, Birger Linde

27. Yugoslavia, Lino Veljak

28. Iran, Kamran Nayeri

29. Poland, Holger Politt

30. Finland, Vesa Oittinen

31. Greece, John Milios

32. Turkey, E. Ahmet Tonak

33. South Korea, Hogyun Kim

34. Brazil and Portugal, Jose Paulo Netto

Author Biography

Marcello Musto teaches at the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto – Canada.

Reviews:

“Nothing Marx wrote has better illustrated the complexity of his thought and the enormous array of the world’s appreciation of it than the Grundrisse. This collection of essays gives one an indispensable entry into understanding better what Marx has to offer the world today and the social bases of the multiple Marxisms” — Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University

“In this edited collection of essays by international scholars, Marcello Musto has helped to chart the recognition and influence of one of Marx’s most important, methodologically rich – and most neglected – texts: the Grundrisse. The volume is the fruit of many years of sustained and devoted scholarship, his chapter on the ‘1857 Introduction’ is one of the finest in the collection” — Stuart Hall, Open University

“Karl Marx’s Grundrisse is a magnificent volume, which also serves as a global map of world Marxist theory” — Fredric Jameson, Duke University

“Over the last two decades, Marx’s Grundrisse has increasingly been seen as the key text to the understanding his work. An up-to-date discussion of the Grundrisse is therefore much to be welcomed. And when it is of the consistently high quality that Marcello Musto has here put together, scholars of Marx can only rejoice” — David McLellan, Goldsmiths College, University of London

“Karl Marx’s Grundrisse represents a major resource for studies on Marx. It is a key text for understanding his critique of political economy; but also – and no less importantly – it makes visible the questions that Marx did not develop later in Capital, such as capitalism as a global system, ecology, and the contours of a post-capitalistic society. This volume is required reading for all serious students of Marx” — Samir Amin, Third World Forum

“At a time when Marx’s writings are once again attracting ever-wider circles of readers seeking to understand yet another global capitalist crisis, Marcello Musto has produced an edited volume devoted to Marx’s Grundrisse. The essays of interpretation as well as the studies of both the production of this great work and its reception across many different societies and social contexts make this book an especially timely and valuable contribution to Marx’s current ascendancy” — Richard D. Wolff, New School University, New York

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Capitalism in Crisis

THE GLOBAL SLUMP – DAVID McNALLY

Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance

by David McNally

SKU: 9781604863321

https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=271

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 that marked the recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Through this lens, it highlights the emergence of new patterns of world inequality and new centers of accumulation, particularly in East Asia, and the profound economic instabilities these produced.Global Slump offers an original account of the “financialization” of the world economy during this period, and explores the intricate connections between international financial markets and new forms of debt and dispossession, particularly in the Global South.

Analyzing the massive intervention of the world’s central banks to stave off another Great Depression, Global Slump shows that, while averting a complete meltdown, this intervention also laid the basis for recurring crises for poor and working class people: job loss, increased poverty and inequality, and deep cuts to social programs. The book takes a global view of these processes, exposing the damage inflicted on countries in the Global South, as well as the intensification of racism and attacks on migrant workers. At the same time, Global Slump also traces new patterns of social and political resistance – from housing activism and education struggles, to mass strikes and protests in Martinique, Guadeloupe, France and Puerto Rico – as indicators of the potential for building anti-capitalist opposition to the damage that neoliberal capitalism is inflicting on the lives of millions.

Praise:

“In this book, McNally confirms – once again – his standing as one of the world’s leading Marxist scholars of capitalism. For a scholarly, in depth analysis of our current crisis that never loses sight of its political implications (for them and for us), expressed in a language that leaves no reader behind, there is simply no better place to go.” –Bertell Ollman, Professor, Department of Politics, NYU, and author of Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method

“David McNally’s tremendously timely book is packed with significant theoretical and practical insights, and offers actually-existing examples of what is to be done. Global Slump urgently details how changes in the capitalist space-economy over the past 25 years, especially in the forms that money takes, have expanded wide-scale vulnerabilities for all kinds of people, and how people fight back. In a word, the problem isn’t neo-liberalism — it’s capitalism.” –Ruth Wilson Gilmore, University of Southern California and author, Golden Gulag

“Standard accounts of the present crisis blame the excesses of the financial sector, promising that all will be well when the proper financial regulations are in place. McNally’s path breaking account goes far deeper. He documents in great detail how the roots of the crisis are found in the systematic failings of capitalism. At this moment in world history the case for a radical alternative to the capitalist global order needs to be made as forcefully as possible. No one has done this better than McNally.” –Tony Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Iowa State University and author of Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account

“McNally has developed a powerful interpretation that sheds a mass of new light… This is a superb book.” –Robert Brenner, author of The Economics of Global Turbulence on Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism.

“By exposing the historical and theoretical roots of ‘market socialism’, David McNally demonstrates in a particularly lucid and powerful way the fundamental flaws and contradictions in that concept.” –Ellen Meiksins Wood, author of Empire of Capital on Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique.

About the Author:

David McNally is Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto. He is the author of five previous books: Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism (1988); Against the Market: Political Economy Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique (2003); Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labor and Liberation (2001); Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism (2002; second revised edition 2006); and Monsters of the Market: Body Panics and Global Capitalism (2010). His articles have appeared in many journals, including Historical Materialism, Capital and Class, New Politics, and Review of Radical Political Economics. David McNally is also a long-time activist in socialist, anti-poverty and migrant justice movements.

Product Details:

Author: David McNally
Publisher: PM Press/Spectre
Published: December 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60486-332-1
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 248 Pages
Dimensions: 8 by 5
Subjects: Politics-Marxism, Economics

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Peter Gowan

PETER GOWAN MEMORIAL CONFERENCE

A one-day conference to discuss the contribution and ideas of Peter Gowan (1946-2009), author of The Global Gamble, founding editor of Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, long-standing editor of New Left Review, and Professor of International Relations at London Metropolitan University.

Saturday, 12 June 2010, 10.00 to 5.30

School of Oriental and African Studies, Room G2

Agenda

10.00 – 12.30
Introduction: Tariq Ali

Session 1: Eastern Europe
Speakers: Gus Fagan, Marko Bojcun, Catherine Samary

12.30 – 1.30 lunch

1.30 – 3.00
Session 2: Imperialism and American Grand Strategy
Speakers: Gilbert Achcar, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Susan Watkins

3.00 – 3.30  coffee break

3.30 – 5.00
Session 3: The Dollar-Wall St Regime
Speakers: Robin Blackburn, Robert Wade, Alex Callinicos

5.00 – 5.30
Mike Newman: Peter Gowan as an Educator
Awarding of the Peter Gowan Prize

The Conference is sponsored by Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and Historical Materialism.

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0965-156x&linktype=44

gus.fagan@ntlworld.com

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2nd Annual Research Conference

The Centre for Educational Research and Development of the University of Lincoln

Thursday, 4th June, 2009

EMMTEC Conference Centre, Brayford Pool, University of Lincoln, LN6 7TS

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:         

Professor Ron Barnett, Institute of Education:         “The Utopian University: Challenges and Prospects”

Professor Antonia Darder, University of Illinois: “Breaking Silence: A Study into the Pervasiveness of Oppression”

THEMATIC WORKSHOPS

Patrick Ainley, Joyce Canaan: “The Student Experience”

Stefano Harney, Fred Moten: “Academic Labour”

Cath Lambert, Mike Neary, Elisabeth Simbuerger: “Teaching in Public”

Dennis Hayes, Terence Karran: “Academic Freedom”

What is the Conference About?

Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) sets out, for the first time, the paradox of the modern (new) world: the possibility of abundance (freedom) in a society of scarcity (non-freedom); and the dangers that are inherent in this paradoxical situation for the development of the emergent capitalist society.

More suggests the universality of education as a way of resolving this paradox.  For the humanist More, the highest pleasures are those of the mind, and true happiness depends on their realization.  On More’s fantasy island, Utopia is a universal school for all its citizens, where all civic life is education.  Citizens attend public lectures in the morning, participate in lively discussions during meal-times, and, in the evening, receive formal supervision from scholars. (Meiksins Wood, 1997).

In 1953, with the publication of The University of Utopia, the educational philosopher Robert Hutchins extended More’s allegory to a liberal humanist reappraisal of higher education.  Anticipating the vocationalist critique of contemporary higher education, Hutchins wrote ‘The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens’ (p.3). Hutchins’s views have been repeated and endorsed in the increasing volume of critical literature on the commercialisation of higher education.

However this critical literature has struggled to provide any convincing alternatives to ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997).  This absence of any radical alternative, occurs not because of a lack of imagination, but by virtue of the nature of liberal-humanism itself.  For Zizek (2002) liberal humanism ‘precludes any serious questioning of the way in which this liberal democratic order is complicit in the phenomena it officially condemns, and, of course, any serious attempt to imagine a different socio-political order’ (167). What this amounts to, for Zizek, is ‘a prohibition on thinking… the moment we question the liberal consensus we are accused of abandoning scientific objectivity and recourse to outdate ideological positions’ (168).

The aim of this conference is to recover the freshness of More’s critique, while going beyond Hutchins’s liberal fundamentalism, in order to imagine some real radical futures for higher education.  The conference addresses the problem of inventing a form of radicality that confronts the same paradox that emerged in Tudor England, and continues to undermine the progressive development of the postmodern world.

Why Come to the Conference?

The conference will be of interest to all staff in further and higher education who are concerned about the future direction and role of the changing university within the emerging global knowledge economy.

We look forward to welcoming you

Register online now at: http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/conferences/  

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Organised by the Department of Development Studies

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

University of London

Convenor: Prof. Gilbert Achcar

2008-2009

LECTURE 1

THE IMPERIAL PARADOX:

IDEOLOGIES OF EMPIRE

FROM ALEXANDER THE GREAT TO GEORGE W. BUSH

PROFESSOR ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD

Professor Emerita of Political Science at York University (Toronto, Canada)

Wednesday 29 October, 6:30pm

SOAS, Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, London

Professor Ellen Meiksins Wood is the author of many major books on the history of political thought and the history of capitalism.

Her most recent works include:

Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (2008)

Empire of Capital (2005)

The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (2002)

– 
Gilbert Achcar
Professor of Development Studies & International Relations
University of London – School of Oriental and African Studies
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
Phone +44 (0)20 7898 4557
Fax     +44 (0)20 7898 4759

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