After Capitalism is the apex of the life’s work of one of the most respected scholars of the American workplace. For nearly half a century, Seymour Melman has been an influential commentatoron capitalism, militarism and their discontents. In After Capitalism he explores a growing trend in capitalist systems worldwide: workplace democracy. The end of the Cold War in 1991 inspired an unprecedented outburst of triumphalist rhetoric among proponents of unfettered capitalism. Free-marketeers believed that we were witnessing “the end of history,” and proclaimed that the market economy was here to stay, that all alternatives had been proven inferior. Melman, in dissent, tracks the increasing social and economic inequities and the resulting cries for workplace reform. He points out the ominous parallels between the Soviet Union’s planned economy and the relentless onward march of American capitalism. Just as the Soviet planned economy venerated “the State” above all else, American capitalism views the health and eternal expansion of the free market as the ultimate goal: both propagate vast and harmful income gaps, both rely on and promote militarism—and neither leaves much room for consideration of workers’ well-being. Melman analyzes the adverse economic impact of these flaws and oversights, which have led to “grave production weaknesses in the U.S. economy,” and he suggests an alternative to current economic organization that holds out the promise of both greater fairness and equity and more soundly balanced production. “Workplace democracy,” in which workers actively participate in the management of their workplace, is gaining ground in venues as diverse as Israeli kibbutzim and Basque factories. Melman explains how workplace democracy can, and why it should, be implemented in America. After Capitalism is the new century’s first essential book about labor: thoughtful, humane, at once commonsensical and revolutionary, Melman’s prescriptions can inspire changes in the way the world works.

Is global capitalism on its last legs? Is the era of American leadership over? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does American civilization deserve to survive? These are the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009. This book presents a radically new answer, insisting that global society has only begun to realize its full potential. Author HowardBloom argues that there's a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: "It's struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings." Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race.In more than eighty short, fast chapters, insights appear suddenly, like the quick bursts of flashbulbs, taking the reader on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present. Every chapter conveys a radically new way to see the astonishing mechanism we call "Western Civilization." Bloom marvels at how humans have turned toxic waste into food and fuel, trash into treasure, and garbage into gold. He shows how we've produced material miracles based on immaterial things-passion, persistence, and fantasy. He shows that what many regard as the end is just the beginning. The beginning of something you've never before imagined. The author explains why the secret to capitalism's next great leap does not lie in new financial tricks, but in tapping things right under our noses in radically new ways-that is, tapping our imagination, our desire to feel useful, our desire to help others, and our desire to be recognized for contributing to the welfare of humanity. The key to next-generation capitalism lies in a big-picture view that's utterly unlike anything you've previously perceived. A big-picture view that will startle you. A big-picture view with which you can ignite the world, get a new handle on your life, and help transform society. This brilliant, inspirational work of daring ideas and breathtaking research offers more than hope. It offers unseen levels of understanding. Understanding that can literally redefine what it means to be a human being.

The State is a book by German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer first published in Germany in 1908. The work summarizes Oppenheimer's general theory on the origin, development and future transformation of the state. The State, which Oppenheimer's missionary zeal pervades, was widely read and passionately discussed in the early 20th century. It was well received by-and influential on-as diverse an audience as Israeli halutzim, American and Slavic communitarians, West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, and anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard.A classical liberal and socialist sympathiser, Oppenheimer regarded capitalism as "a system of exploitation and capital revenues as the gain of that exploitation", but placed the blame not on the genuinely free market, but on the intervention of the state. Oppenheimer's view of the state is profoundly opposed to the then dominant characterisation propounded by G. W. F. Hegel of the state as an admirable achievement of modern civilisation.In contrast, Opphenheimer's view was an advancement of the "conquest theory" of the state that developed during the late 19th century by Ludwig Gumplowicz. According to conquest theory, the state came into being through war and conquest, a consequence of which was the establishment of social classes; the dominant conquerors and the subordinate conquered.

Few questions of history have as many contemporary political implications as this deceptively simple one: how did capitalism come to be? In this clarifying work, Ellen Meiksins Wood refutes most existing accounts of the origin of capitalism, which, she argues, fail to recognize capitalism's distinctive attributes as a social system, making it seem a culmination of a natural human inclination to sell and buy. Wood begins with searching assessments of classical thinkers ranging from Adam Smith to Max Weber. She then explores the great Marxist debates among writers such as Paul Sweezy, Maurice Dobb, Robert Brenner, Perry Anderson, and E. P. Thompson. She concludes with her own account of capitalism's agrarian origin, challenging the association of capitalism with cities, the identification of "capitalist" with "bourgeois," and conceptions of modernity and postmodernity derived from those assumptions. Only with a proper understanding of capitalism's beginning, Wood concludes, can we imagine the possibility of it ending.

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Oxford University Press paperback. Includes bibliographical references and index. pt. 1: Technology as social production. The wedding of science to the useful arts--1: The rise of science-based industry. The wedding of science to the useful arts--2: The development of technical education. The wedding of science to the useful arts--3: The emergence of the professional engineer. Preservation through change: Corporate engineers and social reform -- pt. 2: Corporate reform as conscious social production. Laying the foundation: Scientific and industrial standardization. The corporation as inventor: Patent-law reform and patent monoply. Science for industry: The organization of industrial and university research. Technology as people: The industrial process of higher education --1. Technology as people: The industrial process of higher education--2. A technology of social production: Modern management and the expansion of engineering. * dss 20081210.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Foreword Tony Kennedy -- Henryk Grossmann and the Theory of Capitalist Collapse Tony Kennedy -- Introduction by Henryk Grossmann -- 1 The Downfall of Capitalism in the Existing Literature -- The point at issue -- The conception of breakdown in the existing literature -- How Kautsky finally abandoned Marx's theory of accumulation and of breakdown -- Notes -- 2 The Law of Capitalist Breakdown -- Is there a theory of breakdown in Marx? -- Preliminary methodological remarks -- The equilibrium theory of the neo-harmonists -- The conditions and tasks of schematic analysis -- Why was classical economy alarmed by the fall in the rate of profit despite an expanding mass of profit? -- The views of classical economists on the future of capitalism (D Ricardo and J S Mill) -- The Marxist theory of accumulation and breakdown -- Marx's theory of breakdown is also a theory of crises -- An anti-critical interlude -- The logical and mathematical basis of the law of breakdown -- Why the Marxist theory of accumulation and breakdown was misunderstood -- The factors of the breakdown and the business cycle -- Crises and the theory of underconsumption -- The elasticity of accumulation -- The restricted development of productive forces under capitalism -- The Marxist theory of imperfect valorisation -- Notes -- 3 Modifying Countertendencies -- Introduction -- Part 1: Countertendencies Internal to the Mechanism of Capital -- Increases in the rate of profit through the expansion of productivity -- Reducing the costs of variable capital through increases in productivity -- Shortening the turnover time and its impact on the rate of surplus value -- The additional money capital required for an expanded scale of production -- The conflict between use value and exchange value

Re/presenting Class is a collection of essays that develops a poststructuralist Marxian conception of class in order to theorize the complex contemporary economic terrain. Both building upon and reconsidering a tradition that Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff—two of this volume’s editors—began in the late 1980s with their groundbreaking work Knowledge and Class, contributors aim to correct previous research that has largely failed to place class as a central theme in economic analysis. Suggesting the possibility of a new politics of the economy, the collection as a whole focuses on the diversity and contingency of economic relations and processes. Investigating a wide range of cases, the essays illuminate, for instance, the organizational and cultural means by which unmeasured surpluses—labor that occurs outside the formal workplace‚ such as domestic work—are distributed and put to use. Editors Resnick and Wolff, along with J. K. Gibson-Graham, bring theoretical essays together with those that apply their vision to topics ranging from the Iranian Revolution to sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta to the struggle over the ownership of teaching materials at a liberal arts college. Rather than understanding class as an element of an overarching capitalist social structure, the contributors—from radical and cultural economists to social scientists—define class in terms of diverse and ongoing processes of producing, appropriating, and distributing surplus labor and view class identities as multiple, changing, and interacting with other aspects of identity in contingent and unpredictable ways. Re/presenting Class will appeal primarily to scholars of Marxism and political economy. Contributors. Carole Biewener, Anjan Chakrabarti, Stephen Cullenberg, Fred Curtis, Satyananda Gabriel, J. K. Gibson-Graham, Serap Kayatekin, Bruce Norton, Phillip O’Neill, Stephen Resnick, David Ruccio, Dean Saitta, Andriana Vlachou, Richard Wolff

"Meltdown is the gripping account of the financial collapse that destroyed the West's investment banks, brought the global economy to its knees, and undermined three decades of neoliberal orthodoxy. Covering the development of the crisis from the economic front line, BBC Newsnight journalist Paul Mason explores the roots of the US and UK's financial hubris, documenting the real-world causes and consequences from the Ford factory, to Wall Street, to the City of London. In this fully updated new edition, he recounts how the credit crunch became a full-blown financial crisis, and explores its impact on capitalist ideology and politics in our new age of austerity."--P. [4] of cover.

"Global capitalism is facing an unprecedented crisis. The global economy is mired in prolonged stagnation. The worldwide social fabric is in decay. Civil strife and social upheaval are tearing up political systems and, in some cases, leading to the collapse of states. The planetary ecosystem is breaking down. Millions are fleeing, displaced by climate change, transnational corporate land grabs, wars and political persecution. How far into the future can global capitalism endure? In this urgent new study, sociologist William I. Robinson presents a "big picture" snapshot of the crisis of capitalism and the battle for the future of humanity. Drawing on 30 years of scholarship and activism, Robinson applies his original theory of global capitalism to the emerging digital age. He shows how global elites have pinned their hope on economic reactivation through the application of radical new digital technologies and financial strategies to the global economy and society. The rulers will turn to enhancing a global police state to contain mass rebellion as humanity enters a season of chaos and global civil war. The capitalist class and privileged strata of humanity may be able to survive collapse for decades to come even as a majority of humanity faces desperate struggles for survival that lead many to perish in the coming years. But there is eventually a terminal point to capitalist expansion as mass extinction and the radical alteration of the natural environment make life for our species and most others impossible. The only solution is a reversal of escalating inequalities through a radical redistribution of wealth and power downward as a first step in replacing the capitalist system, with its relentless pursuit of private profit at all cost, by an ecosocialism that prioritizes social need and harmony with the rest of nature. Theoretically sophisticated and engaging, this concise study will be satisfying to scholars yet accessible to a broader public concerned with the urgent political affairs of our day"--

The kind of investigative book that makes you sit up and take notice. Vulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres, mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, outsourced aid, destructive resource wars and militarized private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it. Endorsements for Profits of Doom: 'In Australia, so often bereft of voices of dissent and courage, Antony Loewenstein's tenacious work stands out. Profits of Doom is a journey into a world of mutated economics and corrupt politics that we ignore at our peril.' - John Pilger, independent investigative journalist, author and documentary film-maker 'A great exercise in joining the dots, on essential terrain that too often is ignored. At a time when rapacious private interests campaign to destroy government - so they can cash in on its absence - Loewenstein reports from the frontline in an insidious war.' - Paul McGeough, author of Kill Khalid and chief foreign correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald 'The competition for the most depraved example of the predatory state capitalism of the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal era is fierce. In this chilling study, based on careful and courageous reporting, and illuminated with perceptive analysis, Antony Loewenstein presents many competitors for the prize, while also helping us understand all too well the saying that man is a wolf to man.' - Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor at MIT and Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, political activist and author 'Profits of Doom nails the mad idea that the drive for profits will create global wellbeing. Antony Loewenstein delivers a spine-chilling account of the post 9/11 world taken over by vulture capitalism and its political cronies. And this is what we are voting for.' - Bob Brown, former leader of the Australian Greens and director of Sea Shepherd 'Antony Loewenstein's Profits of Doom is a powerful indictment of the corporations and governments across the globe whose unquenchable thirst for resources and power threaten the stability - perhaps even the very existence - of the planet. Loewenstein is no armchair academic or cubicle journalist. The stories in the book are the product of years embedded, in military and economic warzones, with the disempowered of the world, the people from Pakistan to Papua New Guinea and beyond who have the audacity and bravery to fight back against all odds. Loewenstein's keen sense of justice is evident on every page of this book as he gives voice to the voiceless and confronts the powerful. Profits of Doom is a devastating, incisive follow-up to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.' - Jeremy Scahill, international best-selling author of Dirty Wars and Blackwater

Newspaper Commentary from the Ayn Rand Institute 1996-2000

2015 Reprint of 1951 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. First published in 1913 and generally held to be her finest achievement, this volume reveals Luxemburg as a Marxist critical of Karl Marx. It offers a theory of the dynamic development of capitalism which is of continued relevance to contemporary scholarship. Taking Marx as her starting point, she offers an independent and fiercely critical explanation of the economic and political consequences of capitalism in the context of the turbulent times in which she lived, reinterpreting events in the United States, Europe, China, Russia and the British Empire. Most today believe there is no alternative to global capitalism. This book is a timely and forceful statement of an opposing view. Rosa Luxemburg was born in 1870 in Russian Poland. She was murdered in Germany while on way to prison. Contains an introduction by Joan Robinson.

2009 Reprint of original 1956 edition. Paperback, 114pp. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism and is seen as one of the leaders of the Austrian School of economics. Mises introduced praxeology as a more general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and established that economic laws were only arrived at through the means of methodological individualism firmly rejecting positivism and materialism as a foundation for the social sciences. Many of his works were on two related economic themes:1. Monetary economics and inflation; 2. The differences between government controlled economies and free trade.

For over sixty years, Selma James has been organizing from the perspective of unwaged women who, with their biological and caring work, reproduce the whole human race--along with whatever other labor they are performing. This work goes on almost unnoticed everywhere on the planet and in every culture. When this work is not economically prioritized, politically protected, or socially supported there are dire consequences for the whole of humanity, beginning with women and children. This collection compiles several decades of James's work with a focus on her more recent writings, including an analysis of C.L.R. James's two masterpieces, The Black Jacobins and Beyond a Boundary, and an account of her formative partnership with him over three decades. Her experience with the Caribbean movement for independence and federation is reflected in her introduction to Ujamaa, the work of Tanzanians to bypass capitalism, and much more. Steeped in the tradition of Marx urging the need for a "practical movement," James recounts the unusual history of how autonomous organizations formed within the International Wages for Housework Campaign and reshaped it. Women of color, queer women, sex workers, women with disabilitie... each independent but mutually accountable (including to the men's network with whom they work) as they confront sexism, racism, deportation, rape, and other violence. James makes the argument that the climate justice movement can draw on all the movements' people have formed to refuse their particular exploitation, to end the capitalist hierarchy that is destroying the world. ---From publisher description.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was rife with ethnic tensions that undermined the possibilities for Jewish assimilation in Central Europe. The Jews were trapped between rising German nationalism and other nationalisms. Discusses various Jewish and non-Jewish attitudes toward the "Jewish problem", whereby Jews were often stereotyped (e.g. by Rosa Luxemburg) or were considered to need a solution separate from that of European majority peoples (e.g. Nathan Birnbaum and Max Nordau). Views Nietzsche as belonging more to the philosemites than the antisemites, for whom he had great scorn; however, his complexity and obscurity provided ammunition for antisemites, including the Nazis. Herzl believed that a Jewish state was needed to provide a home for Jews suffering from antisemitism. Freud's experience of antisemitism, combined with his negative view of human nature, left no room for illusions about Austrian and German acceptance of Jews. Karl Kraus exhibited elements of Jewish self-hatred when he identified the worst elements of contemporary journalism and capitalism with Jews. Karl Lueger used political antisemitism to become mayor of Vienna. He provided a model for Hitler, who imbibed antisemitic attitudes and stereotypes from the cauldron of nationalisms that was Austria-Hungary.

Comprising essays and philosophical fictions, classics and new work, the book ranges from Socrates to W.V. Quine, from the implications of an Israeli kibbutz to the flawed arguments of Ayn Rand. Nozick considers the figure of Socrates himself as well as the Socratic method (why is it a method of getting at the truth?). Many of these essays bring classic methods to bear on new questions about choice. How should you choose in a disconcerning situation ("Newcomb's Problem") when your decisions are completely predictable? Why do threats and not offers typically coerce our choices? How do we make moral judgments when we realize that our moral principles have exceptions? Other essays present new approaches to familiar intellectual puzzles, from the stress on simplicity in scientific hypotheses to the tendency of intellectuals to oppose capitalism.