Beginning with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concluding with a critique of the key strands in its thinking, Roger Scruton conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Ralph Milliband, and Eric Hobsbawm. In addition to assessments of these thinkers' philosophical and political contributions, the book contains a biographical and bibliographical section summarizing their careers and most important writings.In Fools, Frauds and Firebrands Scruton asks, What does the Left look like today, and how has it evolved? He charts the transfer of grievances, from the working class to women, gays, and immigrants, asks what we can put in the place of radical egalitarianism, and what explains the continued dominance of antinomian attitudes in the intellectual world. Can there be any foundation for resistance to the leftist agenda without religious faith?Writing with great clarity, Scruton delivers a devastating critique of modern left-wing thinking.

    This updated edition contains an all-new chapter not included in the original release, featuring material on the surprising discovery of brain-like cells – sensory neurites – located within the human heart, and the role they play in creating personal resilience. The powerful heart-brain connection made possible by these cells is now recognized as a portal to the deepest levels of our intuition, as well as a gateway to the subconscious mind.This book gets to the heart of the fundamental question you have no doubt asked yourself in the face of the complexities and challenges of the modern world: How do I make everyday life better for myself and my family? Through his skillful synthesis of easy-to-understand science and real-life circumstances, Gregg uniquely provides the answer, describing: State-of-the-art discoveries that are the key to embracing big change in a healthy way The three shifts that will transform the way you think of your career, lifestyle, and finances The simple strategies of heart-based resilience that you can learn and use immediately for optimal health in our stressful world A template of strategies for resilient living for your family and community . . . and much more. Gregg is an optimist, as well as a realist. His lifetime of work with indigenous cultures, combined with his scholarship in science and ancient traditions, gives him reason to believe in our ability to transform in a healthy way. To get to that point, however, we must be honest with ourselves. When the facts are clear, our choices become obvious and something beautiful happens. And it’s the power of this simple truth that is the basis for Resilience from the Heart. Join Gregg on this intimate journey as he unlocks the mystery of the world’s extremes . . . to reveal the power to thrive in life!

    When it first appeared the New English Weekly predicted that 'for the next five to ten years it will cetainly remain a work with which no one who professes any degree of information on sociology or economics can afford to be unacquainted.' Fifty years on, this prediction seems a little understated.Why has the work endured so well? Schumpeter's contention that the seeds of capitalism's decline were internal, and his equal and opposite hostility to centralist socialism have perplexed, engaged and infuriated readers since the book's publication. By refusing to become an advocate for either position Schumpeter was able both to make his own great and original contribution and to clear the way for a more balanced consideration of the most important social movements of his and our time.

    Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us?An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

    But as the free market reaches its extreme limits in the economic and environmental fallout, a reassessment of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy has never been more timely. Eric Hobsbawm provides a fascinating and insightful overview of Marxism. He investigates its influences and analyses the spectacular reversal of Marxism's fortunes over the past thirty years.

    Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr. Ostrom first describes three models most frequently used as the foundation for recommending state or market solutions. She then outlines theoretical and empirical alternatives to these models in order to illustrate the diversity of possible solutions. In the following chapters she uses institutional analysis to examine different ways--both successful and unsuccessful--of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the tragedy of the commons argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.

    As united by their opposition as they are divided by their goals, the members of the New Right are willfully suspicious of those in the mainstream who would seek to tell their story. Fortunately, author Michael Malice was there from the very inception, and in The New Right recounts their tale from the beginning.Malice provides an authoritative and unbiased portrait of the New Right as a movement of ideas--ideas that he traces to surprisingly diverse ideological roots. From the heterodox right wing of the 1940s to the Buchanan/Rothbard alliance of 1992 and all the way through to what he witnessed personally in Charlottesville, The New Right is a thorough firsthand accounting of the concepts, characters and chronology of this widely misunderstood sociopolitical phenomenon.Today's fringe is tomorrow's orthodoxy. As entertaining as it is informative, The New Right is required reading for every American across the spectrum who would like to learn more about the past, present and future of our divided political culture.

     You, as a free, beautiful, independent human being with inalienable rights, own yourself! You can do what you want with your own body and the product of your labor. All human interactions should be free of force and coercion, and we are free to exercise our rights, limited only by respect for the rights of others. Governments rely on force, and force is a poor substitute for persuasion. When you learned "don't hit," "don't steal," and “don’t kill,” it wasn't, "unless you work for the government." Governments frighten us into thinking we need them, but we are moving past the statist paradigm and rendering them obsolete. This book will empower YOU to be more happy, free, and prosperous, while putting you in a position to help shape our destiny.

    In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then--diminishing human agency and political freedom; the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions—continue to confront us today.

    I want to know how the economic engine of capitalism works the way it does, and why it might stutter and stall and sometimes appear to be on the verge of collapse. I also want to show why this economic engine should be replaced, and with what." --from the Introduction To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work--and what makes it fail--is crucial to understanding its long-term health, and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it. In Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, the eminent scholar David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism, examines the internal contradictions within the flow of capital that have precipitated recent crises. He contends that while the contradictions have made capitalism flexible and resilient, they also contain the seeds of systemic catastrophe. Many of the contradictions are manageable, but some are fatal: the stress on endless compound growth, the necessity to exploit nature to its limits, and tendency toward universal alienation. Capitalism has always managed to extend the outer limits through "spatial fixes," expanding the geography of the system to cover nations and people formerly outside of its range. Whether it can continue to expand is an open question, but Harvey thinks it unlikely in the medium term future: the limits cannot extend much further, and the recent financial crisis is a harbinger of this. David Harvey has long been recognized as one of the world's most acute critical analysts of the global capitalist system and the injustices that flow from it. In this book, he returns to the foundations of all of his work, dissecting and interrogating the fundamental illogic of our economic system, as well as giving us a look at how human societies are likely to evolve in a post-capitalist world.

    And in this book the distinguished scholar Amartya Sen offers a powerful critique of the theory of social justice that, in its grip on social and political thinking, has long left practical realities far behind.The transcendental theory of justice, the subject of Sen's analysis, flourished in the Enlightenment and has proponents among some of the most distinguished philosophers of our day; it is concerned with identifying perfectly just social arrangements, defining the nature of the perfectly just society. The approach Sen favors, on the other hand, focuses on the comparative judgments of what is "more" or "less" just, and on the comparative merits of the different societies that actually emerge from certain institutions and social interactions.At the heart of Sen's argument is a respect for reasoned differences in our understanding of what a "just society" really is. People of different persuasions--for example, utilitarians, economic egalitarians, labor right theorists, no--nonsense libertarians--might each reasonably see a clear and straightforward resolution to questions of justice; and yet, these clear and straightforward resolutions would be completely different. In light of this, Sen argues for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives that we inevitably face.

    The principles of individual liberty, the rule of law, government by consent of the people, and the right to private property are taken for granted as fundamental to the human condition now. Most liberal theorists writing today look back to Locke as the source of their ideas. Some maintain that religious fundamentalism, "post-modernism," and socialism are today the only remaining ideological threats to liberalism. To the extent that this is true, these ideologies are ultimately attacks on the ideas that Locke, arguably more than any other, helped to make the universal vocabulary of political discourse.

    This lucid translation renders Montesquieu's problematic text newly accessible to a fresh generation of students, helping them to understand why Montesquieu was such an important figure in the early Enlightenment and why The Spirit of the Laws was such an influence on those who framed the American Constitution. Fully annotated, this edition focuses on Montesquieu's use of sources and his text as a whole, rather than on those opening passages toward which critical energies have traditionally been devoted. A select bibliography and chronology are also provided.

    Because today millions of Americans—young and old—are flocking to the socialist banner and chanting, “What do we want? Socialism—the economic system that has impoverished people everywhere and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions! And when do we want it? Now!” Really? Most people seem somehow to have missed Economics 101 and don’t understand that socialism isn’t nice, cuddly government that takes care of everything for you so that you can remain an adolescent forever. No, we’ve seen it tried over and over again with catastrophic consequences. Luckily, two semi-sober economists have toured the socialist world so you don’t have to. And they’ve come back with this stunning report: Socialism Sucks! Along the way, you’ll learn: • Why the so-called Swedish model might be attractive, but sure isn’t socialism (Sweden is capitalism with a big welfare state) • How socialist Venezuela went from being the toast of liberals everywhere—Viva Venezuela!—to being just toast • Why you never see new cars in Cuba • Why no one forgets to turn out the lights in North Korea (hint: there aren’t any) • Why American socialists have no idea what socialism really is How hard it is to find good beer—or sometimes any beer at all—in socialist countries Irreverent but honest economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell have all the data—and even more important, the firsthand global experience—to affirm that socialism fails to deliver on any of the utopian promises it makes and instead is very bad for your economic (and other) health. This is a book that every American who values freedom and sound economics (and good beer) needs to read.

    Professor Ralph Raico shows them to be wolves in sheep's clothing and their wars as attacks on human liberty and human rights.In the backdrop of this blistering and deeply insightful and scholarly history is the whitewashing of "great leaders" like Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, FDR, Truman, Stalin, Trotsky, and other collectivists. They are highly regarded because they were on the "right side" of the rise of the state. But do they deserve adulation? Raico says no: these great leaders were main agents in the decline of civilization in the 20th century, all of them anti-liberals who used their power to celebrate and enhance state power.Robert Higgs writes the introduction and cheers this powerful expose as a necessary corrective."For Ralph Raico," writes Robert Higgs in the foreword, "it would be not only unseemly but foolish to quiver obsequiously in the historical presence of a Churchill, a Roosevelt, or a Truman. He knows when he has encountered a politician who lusted after power and public adulation, and he describes the man accordingly. He does not sweep under the rug the crimes committed by the most publicly revered Western political leaders. If they ordered or acceded to the commission of mass murder, he tells us, without mincing words, that they did so. The idea that the United States has invariably played the role of savior or 'good guy' in its international relations Raico recognizes as state propaganda, rather than honest history."Thus, in these pages, you will find descriptions and accounts of World War I, of the lead-up to formal U.S. belligerence in World War II, and of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman, among others, that bear little resemblance to what you were taught in school. Here you will encounter, perhaps for the first time, compelling evidence of how the British maneuvered U.S. leaders and tricked the American people prior to the U.S. declarations of war in 1917 and 1941. You will read about how the British undertook to starve the Germans – men, women, and children alike – not only during World War I, but for the greater part of a year after the armistice. You will be presented with descriptions of how the communists were deified and the German people demonized by historians and others who ought to have known better. You will see painted in truer shades a portrait of the epic confrontation between the great majority of Americans who wished to keep their country at peace in 1939, 1940, and 1941 and the well-placed, unscrupulous minority who sought to plunge the United States into the European maelstrom."Raico’s historical essays are not for the faint of heart or for those whose loyalty to the U.S. or British state outweighs their devotion to truth and humanity. Yet Ralph did not invent the ugly facts he recounts here, as his ample documentation attests. Indeed, many historians have known these facts, but few have been willing to step forward and defy politically popular and professionally fashionable views in the forthright, pull-no-punches way that Raico does. The historians’ principal defect for the most part has not been a failure or refusal to dig out the relevant facts, but rather a tendency to go along to get along in academia and 'respectable' society, a sphere in which individual honesty and courage generally count against a writer or teacher, whereas capitulation to trendy nonsense often brings great rewards and professional acclaim."