The Communist Horizon - Jodi Dean

In this new title in Verso’s Pocket Communism series, Jodi Dean unshackles the communist ideal from the failures of the Soviet Union. In an age when the malfeasance of international banking has alerted exploited populations the world over to the unsustainability of an economic system predicated on perpetual growth, it is time the left ended its melancholic accommodation with capitalism.

In the new capitalism of networked information technologies, our very ability to communicate is exploited, but revolution is still possible if we organize on the basis of our common and collective desires. Examining the experience of the Occupy movement, Dean argues that such spontaneity can’t develop into a revolution and it needs to constitute itself as a party.

An innovative work of pressing relevance, The Communist Horizon offers nothing less than a manifesto for a new collective politics.

The Anarchis Revolution. Polemical Articles 1924-1931 - Errico Malatesta

"The revolution is the creation of new living institutions, new groupings, new social relationships; it is the destruction of privileges and monopolies; it is the new spirit of justice, of brotherhood, of freedom which must renew the whole of social life, raise the moral level and the material conditions of the masses by calling on them to provide, through their direct and conscientious action, for their own futures. Revolution is the organization of all public services by those who work in them in their own interest as well as the public’s; Revolution is the destruction of all coercive ties; it is the autonomy of groups, of communes, of regions; Revolution is the free federation brought about by desire for brotherhood, by individual and collective interests, by the needs of production and defense; Revolution is the constitution of innumerable free groupings based on ideas, wishes, and tastes of all kinds that exist among the people; Revolution is the forming and disbanding of thousands of representative, district, communal, regional, national bodies which, without having any legislative power, serve to make known and to coordinate the desires and interests of people near and far and which act through information, advice and example. Revolution is freedom proved in the crucible of facts—and lasts so long as freedom lasts, that is until others, taking advantage of the weariness that overtakes the masses, of the inevitable disappointments that follow exaggerated hopes, of the probable errors and human faults, succeed in constituting a power, which supported by an army of conscripts or mercenaries, lays down the law, arrests the movement at the point it has reached, and then begins the reaction". 

Alchemists of Human Nature: Psychological Utopianism in Gross, Jung, Reich and Fromm - Petteri Pietikainen

This is the first book-length study of Modernist utopias of the mind. Pietikainen examines the psychodynamic writings of Otto Gross, C G Jung, Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm. After they broke from Freud and orthodox psychoanalysis, Pietikainen argues, utopianism became increasingly important to the fundamental ambitions of all four thinkers. He shows how Gross' "Matriarchal Communism", Jung's "Archetypal Cosmos", Reich's "Orgonomic Functionalism" and Fromm's "Socialist Humanism" were attempts to reshape social structures and human relations by conquering the Unconscious. Pietikainen places the 'utopian impulse' with the historical context of the large, violent socio-political narratives of the early twentieth century. This innovative interdisciplinary book contributes to ongoing scholarly and professional discussions about the historicity versus the universality of human nature.

Digital Labour and Karl Marx - Christian Fuchs

How is labour changing in the age of computers, the Internet, and "social media" such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter? In Digital Labour and Karl Marx, Christian Fuchs attempts to answer that question, crafting a systematic critical theorisation of labour as performed in the capitalist ICT industry.

Relying on a range of global case studies--from unpaid social media prosumers or Chinese hardware assemblers at Foxconn to miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo--Fuchs sheds light on the labour costs of digital media, examining the way ICT corporations exploit human labour and the impact of this exploitation on the lives, bodies, and minds of workers.

Occupy! A Short History of Workers' Occupations - Dave Sherry

Workplace occupations have reappeared over the last year in response to the economic crisis. Groups of workers have refused to let their factories and jobs go without a fight. Today's movement can learn from a century of experience. Dave Sherry looks at waves of occupations and sit-ins from Italy 1920, France 1936 and 1968, to the US car workers in Flint and Britain's own tradition from the Upper Clyde shipbuilders to the women at Lee Jeans. This short accessible history is rich with first-hand accounts as well as political analysis.

 

 

The Angry Brigade: A History of Britain's First Urban Guerilla Group - Gordon Carr

 

Based on extensive research, this book remains the essential study of the Angry Brigade, a group of urban guerillas, who, between 1970 and 1972, used guns and bombs on embassies of repressive regimes, police stations and army barracks, boutiques and factories, government departments, and the homes of cabinet ministers as well the attorney general and the commissioner of the metropolitan police. An avalanche of police raids followed, culminating in the "Stoke Newington 8" conspiracy trial—the longest criminal trial in British legal history—which is throughly discussed in this volume. Updated with a comprehensive chronology of the "Angry Decade" and new illustrations, this new edition also adds introductions by Stuart Christie and John Barker, two of the defendants, who discuss the political and social context of the movement and its long-term significance.

Early Writings, 1910-1917 - Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin became a published writer at the age of seventeen. Yet the first stirrings of this most original of critical minds—penned during the years in which he transformed himself from the comfortable son of a haute-bourgeois German Jewish family into the nomadic, uncompromising philosopher-critic we have since come to appreciate—have until now remained largely unavailable in English. Early Writings, 1910-1917 rectifies this situation, documenting the formative intellectual experiences of one of the twentieth century's most resolutely independent thinkers.Here we see the young Benjamin in his various roles as moralist, cultural critic, school reformer, and poet-philosopher. The diversity of interest and profundity of thought characteristic of his better-known work from the 1920s and 30s are already in evidence, as we witness the emergence of critical projects that would occupy Benjamin throughout his intellectual career: the role of the present in historical remembrance, the relationship of the intellectual to political action, the idea of truth in works of art, and the investigation of language as the veiled medium of experience. Even at this early stage, a recognizably Benjaminian way of thinking comes into view—a daring, boundary-crossing enterprise that does away with classical antitheses in favor of the relentlessly-seeking critical consciousness that produced the groundbreaking works of his later years. With the publication of these early writings, our portrait of one of the most significant intellects of the twentieth century edges closer to completion.

Negri on Negri - Anne Dufourmentelle

Political philosopher, convicted activist, leftist intellectual and co-author of the best-selling Empire , Antonio Negri is one of the most controversial thinkers at work today. In this book-length conversation with Anne Dufourmentelle, Negri offers thoughtful responses to twenty-six terms, alphabetically arranged, that have had special significance for his life and work. Negri speaks openly here of his involvement with political movements, his exile, his return to Italy and years there in prison, and his life since. But beyond the biographical there is much here to explain Negri's ideas on globalization, the future of social change, and the history of political thought. The book's subjects - fascism, Heidegger, the Red Brigades, Wittgenstein, empire, Kant, the unconscious, and many others - are often thresholds from which Negri shares his views on still larger topics. Negri on Negri provides a fascinating glimpse into his mind and life. Perhaps nowhere else can one engage so readily the ideas of this major contemporary thinker. 

Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organisation from Proudhon to May 1968 - Alexandre Skirda & Paul Sharkey

Drawing on decades of research, Skirda traces anarchism as a major political movement and ideology across the 19th and 20th centuries. Critical and engaging, he offers biting and incisive portraits of the major thinkers, and more crucially, the organizations they inspired, influenced, came out of, and were spurned by.

Bakuninist secret societies; the Internationals and the clash with Marx; the Illegalists, bombers and assassins; the mass trade unions; and of course, the Russian and Spanish Revolutions are all discussed through the prism of working people battling fiercely for a new world free of the shackles of Capital and the State.

Alexandre Skirda is the foremost anarchist theorist and activist writing in Europe today.

Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913-1923 - Lloyd C. Gardner

This ground-breaking book probes the way that two capitalist superpowers, Great Britain and the United States, responded to the momentous challenge of revolution that emerged during the early years of this century. Focusing on two key figures--Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George--the book explores the collective impact on the Western democracies of the revolutions that swept Mexico in 1910, China in 1911, and, especially, Russia in 1917.

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition - Cedric J. Robinson

In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of black people and black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of blacks on western continents, Robinson argues, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.

To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright.

Gramsci and the Anarchists - Carl Levy

This is the first work in English to deal comprehensively with Italian anarchism from the beginning of the century to the rise of fascism. It reconstructs the development of anarchist and syndicalist ideas and programmes and charts their relations with Gramsci and the Turin- based Ordine Nuovo group. The book places these developments within the general context of little known links connecting Italian anarchists and syndicalists to sympathizers in Britain, France, Germany and Russia. The analysis of ‘libertarian’ politics in Italy is accompanied by a detailed and fascinating reconstruction of the social base of Italian anarchism that challenges the assumptions of much of the political sociology of the European Left.

Developing a hitherto unexplored but important aspect of Gramsci's political ideas and strategies, this book contributes to our understanding of one of the central Marxist thinkers and activists of the twentieth century and to one of the critical moments in the history of the European Left. In bringing new life and understanding to an important chapter in contemporary Italian history, this book is likely to become a standard text on this pivotal thinker.

A History of Capitalism, 1500-2000 - Michel Beaud

The conquest of the Americas inaugurated the slow accumulation of resources and the imperceptible structural transformations that culminated in the Industrial Revolution. From that moment on, capitalism grew and expanded with a dynamism and adaptability that are now all too familiar, profiting from wars and even managing to rebound after a series of devastating economic crises.

In this highly-anticipated revised edition of the 1981 classic, Beaud extends one of the major strengths of the original: the interweaving of social, political, and economic factors in the context of history. At the same time, Beaud's analysis provides a realistic and thorough examination of the developments of capitalism in the last twenty years, including globalization, the accelerating speed of capital transfer, and the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent absorption of its population into the world market. This new edition also offers a completely revised format that integrates diagrams and flow-charts not previously available in the English-language edition.

Markets not Capitalism - Gary Chartier & Charles W. Johnson (Ed.)

 

Individualist anarchists believe in mutual exchange, not economic privilege. They believe in freed markets, not capitalism. They defend a distinctive response to the challenges of ending global capitalism and achieving social justice: eliminate the political privileges that prop up capitalists.

Massive concentrations of wealth, rigid economic hierarchies, and unsustainable modes of production are not the results of the market form, but of markets deformed and rigged by a network of state-secured controls and privileges to the business class. Markets Not Capitalism explores the gap between radically freed markets and the capitalist-controlled markets that prevail today. It explains how liberating market exchange from state capitalist privilege can abolish structural poverty, help working people take control over the conditions of their labor, and redistribute wealth and social power.

Featuring discussions of socialism, capitalism, markets, ownership, labor struggle, grassroots privatization, intellectual property, health care, racism, sexism, and environmental issues, this unique collection brings together classic essays by leading figures in the anarchist tradition, including Proudhon and Voltairine de Cleyre, and such contemporary innovators as Kevin Carson and Roderick Long. It introduces an eye-opening approach to radical social thought, rooted equally in libertarian socialism and market anarchism.

Spinoza Now - Dimitris Vardoulakis (Ed.)

 

Spinoza Now, the first broadly interdisciplinary volume dealing with Spinozan thought, asserts the importance of Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence for contemporary cultural and philosophical debates. In this bold endeavor, the essays gathered here extend the Spinozan project beyond the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy to encompass all forms of life-affirming activity, including the arts and literature. 

Those interested in the interdisciplinary significance and application of Spinoza’s philosophy may find this volume provocative.

— Choice

Heideggerian Marxism: Herbert Marcuse - Richard Wolin & John Abromeit (Ed.)

The Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) studied with Martin Heidegger at Freiburg University from 1928 to 1932 and completed a dissertation on Hegel’s theory of historicity under Heidegger’s supervision. During these years, Marcuse wrote a number of provocative philosophical essays experimenting with the possibilities of Heideggerian Marxism. For a time he believed that Heidegger’s ideas could revitalize Marxism, providing a dimension of experiential concreteness that was sorely lacking in the German Idealist tradition. Ultimately, two events deterred Marcuse from completing this program: the 1932 publication of Marx’s early economic and philosophical manuscripts, and Heidegger’s conversion to Nazism a year later. Heideggerian Marxism offers rich and fascinating testimony concerning the first attempt to fuse Marxism and existentialism. These essays offer invaluable insight concerning Marcuse’s early philosophical evolution. They document one of the century’s most important Marxist philosophers attempting to respond to the “crisis of Marxism”: the failure of the European revolution coupled with the growing repression in the USSR. In response, Marcuse contrived an imaginative and original theoretical synthesis: “existential Marxism.”

Power and Policy in Syria - Radwan Ziadeh

In an unstable Middle East, beset by regional tensions and repercussions of the global war on terror, Syria is a key player. The bloodless coup by General Hafez al-Assad, in 1970, put in place a powerful autocratic machinery at the core of the state which continues till today under the control of his son Bashar. Here Radwan Ziadeh presents a fresh and penetrating analysis of Syria’s political structure -- a "despotic" state monopoly, a bureaucratic climate marked by fear, and the administrative structure through which centralized control is exercised. With a focus on Syria’s intelligence services which have significant influence in legal and policy decisions, and the conditions and patterns of foreign policy decision-making, particularly vis-à-vis the US, Power and Policy in Syria is essential reading for all those interested in Syria, the modern Middle East, International Relations and Security Studies.

Jefferson - Albert Jay Nock

When Jefferson was published in 1928, Mencken praised it as "the work of a subtle and highly dexterous craftsman" which cleared "off the vast mountain of doctrinaire rubbish that has risen above Jefferson's bones and also provides a clear and comprehensive account of the Jeffersonian system," and the "essence of it is that Jefferson divided all mankind into two classes, the producers and the exploiters, and he was for the former first, last and all the time." Mencken also thought the book to be accurate, shrewd, well-ordered and charming.

Men against the State - James J. Martin

The author, James Martin, notes that the purpose of the book is to (Page ix): "Its evolution from the practical stages as a frontier experiment in individual sovereignty and 'equitable commerce' to the theoretical and intellectual pamphleteering of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the main concern here." The subject? American individualist anarchists. Their basic views? Martin observes that (Page x): "The individualist anarchists held that the collectivist society in any form was an impossibility without the eventuality of authoritarianism, sand ultimately, totalitarianism, and adhered resolutely to the concept of private property. . . ."

The book itself begins with Josiah Warren, who created a utopian society. He developed the concept of the "time store" as a central economic concept. Perhaps the first major figure in this line of thought. Several chapters outline his efforts to put theory into practice; the book also considers his relationship with allied thinkers, such as Stephen Pearl Andrews.

Other key thinkers covered who were active in the 1800s: Ezra Heywood, William Greene, J. K. Ingalls, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Lysander Spooner. Spooner and Andrews are especially interesting thinkers.

The book concludes with the iconic Benjamin Tucker, whose publication, "Liberty," was one of his central contributions. Indeed, his major book, "Instead of a Book by a Man too Busy to Write One," is largely a collection of his essays from that publication. The book provides a good sense of Tucker, an original American thinker.

Want to get a sense of the individualist strain in American anarchism? This is a fine starting point... [Steven Peterson] 

Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend - Norman Geras

“Striking elegance, economy, and argumentative power.”—Times Literary Supplement

“Marx did not reject the idea of a human nature. He was right not to do so.”

That is the conclusion of this passionate and polemical new work by Norman Geras. In it, he places the sixth of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach under rigorous scrutiny. He argues that this ambiguous statement—widely cited as evidence that Marx broke with all conceptions of human nature in 1845—must be read in the context of Marx’s work as a whole. His later writings are informed by an idea of a specifically human nature that fulfills both explanatory and normative functions.

The belief that Marx’s historical materialism entailed a denial of the conception of human nature is, Geras writes, “an old fixation, which the Althusserian influence in this matter has fed upon … Because this fixation still exists and is misguided, it is still necessary to challenge it.” One hundred years after Marx’s death, this timely essay—combining the strengths of analytical philosophy and classical Marxism—rediscovers a central part of his heritage." 

 

 

Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates and Pirate Utopias - Peter Ludlow

 

In Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias, Peter Ludlow extends the approach he used so successfully in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, offering a collection of writings that reflects the eclectic nature of the online world, as well as its tremendous energy and creativity. This time the subject is the emergence of governance structures within online communities and the visions of political sovereignty shaping some of those communities. Ludlow views virtual communities as laboratories for conducting experiments in the construction of new societies and governance structures. While many online experiments will fail, Ludlow argues that given the synergy of the online world, new and superior governance structures may emerge. Indeed, utopian visions are not out of place, provided that we understand the new utopias to be fleeting localized "islands in the Net" and not permanent institutions.The book is organized in five sections. The first section considers the sovereignty of the Internet. The second section asks how widespread access to resources such as Pretty Good Privacy and anonymous remailers allows the possibility of "Crypto Anarchy"--essentially carving out space for activities that lie outside the purview of nation states and other traditional powers. The third section shows how the growth of e-commerce is raising questions of legal jurisdiction and taxation for which the geographic boundaries of nation-states are obsolete. The fourth section looks at specific experimental governance structures evolved by online communities. The fifth section considers utopian and anti-utopian visions for cyberspace.Contributors Richard Barbrook, John Perry Barlow, William E. Baugh Jr., David S. Bennahum, Hakim Bey, David Brin, Andy Cameron, Dorothy E. Denning, Mark Dery, Kevin Doyle, Duncan Frissell, Eric Hughes, Karrie Jacobs, David Johnson, Peter Ludlow, Timothy C. May, Jennifer L. Mnookin, Nathan Newman, David G. Post, Jedediah S. Purdy, Charles J. Stivale.

Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life - Henri Lefebvre

In the analysis of rhythms - both biological and social - Lefebvre shows the interrelation of space and time in the understanding of everyday life. He moves between discussions of music, the commodity, measurement, the media and the city. In doing so he shows how a non-linear conception of time and history balanced his famous rethinking of the question of space. This volume also includes his earlier essays on ''The Rhythmanalytical Project'' and ''Attempt at the Rhythmanalysis of Mediterranean Towns''.

Border as Method or the Multiplication of Labor - Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson

Far from creating a borderless world, contemporary globalization has generated a proliferation of borders. In Border as Method, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson chart this proliferation, investigating its implications for migratory movements, capitalist transformations, and political life. They explore the atmospheric violence that surrounds borderlands and border struggles across various geographical scales, illustrating their theoretical arguments with illuminating case studies drawn from Europe, Asia, the Pacific, the Americas, and elsewhere. Mezzadra and Neilson approach the border not only as a research object but also as an epistemic framework. Their use of the border as method enables new perspectives on the crisis and transformations of the nation-state, as well as powerful reassessments of political concepts such as citizenship and sovereignty.

Representing Capital - Fredric Jameson

Representing Capital, Fredric Jameson’s first book-length engagement with Marx’s magnum opus, is a unique work of scholarship that records the progression of Marx’s thought as if it were a musical score. The textual landscape that emerges is the setting for paradoxes and contradictions that struggle toward resolution, giving rise to new antinomies and a new forward movement. These immense segments overlap each other to combine and develop on new levels in the same way that capital itself does, stumbling against obstacles that it overcomes by progressive expansions, which are in themselves so many leaps into the unknown.

Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True - Mark Dice

In Big Brother, Mark Dice details actual high-tech spy gadgets, mind-reading machines, government projects, and emerging artificial intelligence systems that seem as if they came right out of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s famous book was first published in 1949, and tells the story of a nightmarish future where citizens have lost all privacy and are continuously monitored by the omniscient Big Brother surveillance system which keeps them obedient to a totalitarian government. The novel is eerily prophetic as many of the fictional systems of surveillance described have now become a reality. Mark Dice shows you the scary documentation that Big Brother is watching you, and is more powerful than you could imagine. Surveillance Cameras - Global Positioning Systems - Radio Frequency Identification - Mind Reading Machines - Neural Interfaces - Psychotronic Weapons - Information Technology - Orwellian Government Programs - The Nanny State - Orwellian Weapons -Artificial Intelligence -Cybernetic Organisms – A Closer Look at 1984 – Social Structure - The Control of Information - Perpetual State of War - The Personification of the Party - Telescreens - A Snitch Culture - Relationships - A Heartless Society - Foreign Countries Painted as Enemies - Power Hungry Officials - An Erosion of the Language - Double Think -And More!