The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas--most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behaviour will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In "Black Mass," celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political centre. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches."Black Mass "is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain's leading political thinkers. John Gray is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including "Straw Dogs "and "Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern." A regular contributor to "The New York Review of Books," he is a professor of European thought at the London School of Economics.

    Lasch’s identification of narcissism as not only an individual ailment but also a burgeoning social epidemic was groundbreaking. His diagnosis of American culture is even more relevant today, predicting the limitless expansion of the anxious and grasping narcissistic self into every part of American life.The Culture of Narcissism offers an astute and urgent analysis of what we need to know in these troubled times.

    History, on the other hand, has come to regard him as the figure who gave political cogency to the liberating ideas of the Enlightenment. His great pamphlets, Rights of Man and Common Sense, are now recognized for what they are–classic arguments in defense of the individual’s right to assert his or her freedom in the face of tyranny.(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Part diagnosis of the times, part theoretical analysis of the impasses and possibilities of ethics and politics, part manifesto Infinitely Demandind identifies a massive political disappointment at the heart of liberal democracy and argues that what is called for is an ethics of commitment thatn can inform a radical politics. exploring the problem of ethics in Kant, Levinas, Badiou and Lacan that leads to a conception of subjectivity based on the infinite responsibility of an ethical demand, Critchley considers the possibility of political subjectivity and action after Marx and Marxism. Infinitely Demanding culminates in an argument for anarchism as an ethical practice and a renovating means of political organization.

    VI Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism was one of the first attempts to account for the increasing importance of the world market in the twentieth century. Originally published in 1916, Imperialism explains how colonialism and the First World War were inherent features of the global development of the capitalist economy.In a new introduction, Norman Lewis and James Malone contrast Lenin's approach with that adopted by contemporary theories of globalisation. They argue that, while much has changed since Lenin wrote, his theoretical framework remains the best method for understanding recent global developments.

    While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory.

    Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not—and cannot—be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.

    Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

    It was written in 1873, in the aftermath of the rise of the German Empire and the clash between Bakunin and Karl Marx in the first International. Bakunin assesses the strength of a European state system dominated by Bismarck. Then, in the most remarkable part of the book, he assails the Marxist alternative, predicting that a dictatorship of the proletariat will in fact be a dictatorship over the proletariat, and will produce a new class of socialist rulers. Instead, he outlines his vision of an anarchist society and identifies the social forces he believes will achieve an ananarchist revolution. Statism and Anarchy had an immediate influence on the to the people movement of Russian populism, and Bakunin's ideas inspired other anarchist movements. This is the only complete and reliable rendition of Statism and Anarchy in English, and in a lucid introduction Marshall Shatz locates Bakunin in his immediate historical and intellectual context, and assesses the impact of his ideas on the wider development of European radical thought. A guide to further reading and a chronology of events are appended as aids to students encountering Bakunin's thought for the first time.

    Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness—for everyone. Technological advance will reduce the value of commodities—food, healthcare and housing—towards zero.Improvements in renewable energies will make fossil fuels a thing of the past. Asteroids will be mined for essential minerals. Genetic editing and synthetic biology will prolong life, virtually eliminate disease and provide meat without animals. New horizons beckon.In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history.

    Modern socialism is not a doctrine, Engels explains, but a working-class movement growing out of the establishment of large-scale capitalist industry and its social consequences.

    The text has influenced thinkers such as Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek.The piece is, in fact, an extract from a much longer book, On the Reproduction of Capitalism, until now unavailable in English. Its publication makes possible a reappraisal of seminal Althusserian texts already available in English, their place in Althusser’s oeuvre and the relevance of his ideas for contemporary theory. On the Reproduction of Capitalism develops Althusser’s conception of historical materialism, outlining the conditions of reproduction in capitalist society and the revolutionary struggle for its overthrow.Written in the afterglow of May 1968, the text addresses a question that continues to haunt us today: in a society that proclaims its attachment to the ideals of liberty and equality, why do we witness the ever-renewed reproduction of relations of domination? Both a conceptually innovative text and a key theoretical tool for activists, On the Reproduction of Capitalism is an essential addition to the corpus of the twentieth-century Left.

    Challenging the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, Sen presents an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiraled in recent years toward brutality and war.

    Burnham explains how Capitalism had virtually lost its control, and would be displaced not by labour, nor by socialism, but by the rule of administartors in business and in government.This revolution, he posited, is as broad as the world and as comprehensive as human society, asking 'Why is "totalitarianism" not the issue?' 'Can civilization be destroyed?' And 'Why is the New Deal something bigger than Roosevelt can handle?'In a volume extraordinary for its dispassionate handling of those and other fundamental questions, James Burnham explores fully the implications of the managerial revolution. Praise for James Burnham: 'Burnham has real intellectual courage, and writes about real issues.' - George Orwell'The stoic, detached, empirical, hard-boiled, penetrating, realist mind of James Burnham is something to behold, to admire, to emulate.' - National Review'James Burnham was an astonishing writer. Subtle, passionate, and irritatingly well-read.' - New Criterion'The immense significance of Burnham’s approach is potential. We can ignore it only at the risk of being disarmed by the future course of events.' - Irving Kristol

    Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it.In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault’s fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle’s notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over “life” is implicit.The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt’s idea of the sovereign’s status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective “naked life” of all individuals.