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Politics
"In capitalist society work is the cause of all intellectual degeneracy, of all organic deformity."
Paul Lafargue's The Right to Be Lazy spells out with unrivalled clarity the damage inflicted by the myth that endless work is morally virtuous. Presenting an inspiring vision of social equality and of individual human fulfilment, Lafargue's text remains one of the most powerful denunciations of "economic prejudices" ever written.
For many citizens, politics is depressing. How has this come to be the norm? And, how is it influencing democracy?
From rising polarization to climate change, today's politics are leaving many Western democracies in the throes of malaise. While anger, anxiety, and fear are loud emotions that powerfully activate voters, depression is quiet, demobilizing, and less visible as a result. Yet its pervasiveness is cause for concern: after all, democracy should empower citizens.
In The Sad Citizen, Christopher Ojeda draws on wide-ranging data from the United States and beyond to explain how politics is depressing, why this matters, and what we can do about it. Integrating insights from political science, sociology, psychology, and other fields, The Sad Citizen exposes the unhappy underbelly of contemporary politics and offers fresh ideas to strengthen democracy and help citizens cope with the stress of politics.
American democracy arrived abruptly in the 19th century; it changed just as dramatically early in the 20th. Hence, "Self-Rule" divides the history of American democracy into two halves: a 19th century half covering the 1820s to the present, and a 20th century half, with a major transition from the 1890s to the 1920s between them. As Wiebe explains why the original democracy of the early 19th century represented a sharp break from the past, he recreates in vivid detail the way European visitors contrasted the radical character of American democracy with their own societies. He then discusses the operation of various 19th century democratic publics, including a nationwide public, the People. Finally, he places democracy's white fraternal world of equals in a larger environment where other Americans who differed by class, race, and gender, developed their own relations to democracy.
Wiebe then picks up the history of democracy in the 1920s and carries it to the present. Individualism, once integrated with collective self-governance in the 19th century, becomes the driving force behind 20th century democracy. During those same years, other ways of defining good government andsound public policy shunt majoritarian practices to one side. Late in the 20th century, these two great themes in the history of American democracy--individualism and majoritarianism--turn on one another in modern democracy's war on itself.
Finally, "Self-Rule" assesses the polarized state of contemporary American democracy. Putting the judgments of sixty-odd commentators from Kevin Phillips and E.J. Dionne to Robert Bellah and Benjamin Barber to the test of history, Wiebe offers his own suggestions on the meaning and direction of today's democracy. This sweeping work explains how the history of American democracy has brought us here and how that same history invites us to create a different future.
The great ideological cliche of our time, Cesar Rendueles argues in Sociophobia, is the idea that communication technologies can support positive social dynamics and improve economic and political conditions. We would like to believe that the Internet has given us the tools to overcome modernity's practical dilemmas and bring us into closer relation, but recent events show how technology has in fact driven us farther apart.
Named one of the ten best books of the year by Babelia El Pais, Sociophobia looks at the root causes of neoliberal utopia's modern collapse. It begins by questioning the cyber-fetishist dogma that lulls us into thinking our passive relationship with technology plays a positive role in resolving longstanding differences. Rendueles claims that the World Wide Web has produced a diminished rather than augmented social reality. In other words, it has lowered our expectations with respect to political interventions and personal relations. In an effort to correct this trend, Rendueles embarks on an ambitious reassessment of our antagonistic political traditions to prove that post-capitalism is not only a feasible, intimate, and friendly system to strive for but also essential for moving past consumerism and political malaise.
Exiled from Pakistan in the 1960s for his activism against the military dictatorship, Tariq Ali has gained a reputation as one of the English speaking world's most forceful political thinkers, speaking out consistently against imperialism, religious fundamentalism, and, most recently, the misguided Anglo-American war on terror, including the disastrous fiasco in Iraq.
Ali's most recent books, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon, have been widely praised and read. A prolific and eloquent writer, Ali is also a captivating conversationalist, and Speaking of Empire and Resistance captures him at his provocative best. This series of interviews brings together Ali's insights into a wide range of topics--among them the fate of modern-day Pakistan, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the state of the Islamic world, and the continuing significance of imperialism in the twenty-first century. Speaking of Empire and Resistance reinforces Tariq Ali's reputation as one of the most perceptive and engaging figures of today's Left.
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year
An Atlantic Best Book of the Year
A Financial Times Best Politics Book of the Year
How should Western democracies respond to the many millions of people who want to settle in their societies? Economists and human rights advocates tend to downplay the considerable cultural and demographic impact of immigration on host societies. Seeking to balance the rights of immigrants with the legitimate concerns of citizens, Strangers in Our Midst brings a bracing dose of realism to this debate. David Miller defends the right of democratic states to control their borders and decide upon the future size, shape, and cultural make-up of their populations.
"A cool dissection of some of the main moral issues surrounding immigration and worth reading for its introductory chapter alone. Moreover, unlike many progressive intellectuals, Miller gives due weight to the rights and preferences of existing citizens and does not believe an immigrant has an automatic right to enter a country...Full of balanced judgments and tragic dilemmas."--David Goodhart, Evening Standard "A lean and judicious defense of national interest...In Miller's view, controlling immigration is one way for a country to control its public expenditures, and such control is essential to democracy."
--Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker
A concise and accessible examination of sustainability in a range of contemporary contexts, from economic development to government policy.
The word "sustainability" has been connected to everything from a certain kind of economic development to corporate promises about improved supply sourcing. But despite the apparent ubiquity of the term, the concept of sustainability has come to mean a number of specific things. In this accessible guide to the meanings of sustainability, Kent Portney describes the evolution of the idea and examines its application in a variety of contemporary contexts--from economic growth and consumption to government policy and urban planning.
Portney takes as his starting point the 1987 definition by the World Commission on Environment and Development of sustainability as economic development activity that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." At its heart, Portney explains, sustainability focuses on the use and depletion of natural resources. It is not the same as environmental protection or natural resource conservation; it is more about finding some sort of steady state so that the earth can support both human population and economic growth.
Portney looks at political opposition to the promotion of sustainability, which usually questions the need for sustainability or calls its costs unacceptable; collective and individual consumption of material goods and resources and to what extent they must be curtailed to achieve sustainability; the role of the private sector, and the co-opting of sustainability by corporations; government policy on sustainability at the international, national, and subnational levels; and how cities could become models for sustainability action.
Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.
An evenhanded look at how democracies can fight terrorism while maintaining a healthy society.
The bombings of the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City federal building have shown that terrorist attacks can happen anywhere in the United States. Around the globe, massacres, hijackings, and bombings of airliners are frequent reminders of the threat of terrorism. The use of poison gas in the Tokyo subway has raised the specter of even more horrible forms of terror -- including the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In this book, Philip Heymann argues that the United States and other democracies can fight terrorism while preserving liberty and maintaining a healthy, unified society. Drawing on his experience in the US Departments of State and Justice, he shows how domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering can thwart terrorism, how the United States must cooperate and share information with its allies, and how terrorism can be prevented in many cases. Terrorism will never disappear completely, but the policies Heymann offers can limit the harm to Americans and protect the integrity of US governmental processes.
When do governments merit our allegiance, and when should they be denied it? Ian Shapiro explores this most enduring of political dilemmas in this innovative and engaging book. Building on his highly popular Yale courses, Professor Shapiro evaluates the main contending accounts of the sources of political legitimacy. Starting with theorists of the Enlightenment, he examines the arguments put forward by utilitarians, Marxists, and theorists of the social contract. Next he turns to the anti-Enlightenment tradition that stretches from Edmund Burke to contemporary post-modernists. In the last part of the book Shapiro examines partisans and critics of democracy from Plato's time until our own. He concludes with an assessment of democracy's strengths and limitations as the font of political legitimacy. The book offers a lucid and accessible introduction to urgent ongoing conversations about the sources of political allegiance.
What would happen to international politics if the dead rose from the grave and started to eat the living? Daniel Drezner's groundbreaking book answers the question that other international relations scholars have been too scared to ask. Addressing timely issues with analytical bite, Drezner looks at how well-known theories from international relations might be applied to a war with zombies. Exploring the plots of popular zombie films, songs, and books, Theories of International Politics and Zombies predicts realistic scenarios for the political stage in the face of a zombie threat and considers how valid--or how rotten--such scenarios might be.
Drezner boldly lurches into the breach and "stress tests" the ways that different approaches to world politics would explain policy responses to the living dead. He examines the most prominent international relations theories--including realism, liberalism, constructivism, neoconservatism, and bureaucratic politics--and decomposes their predictions. He digs into prominent zombie films and novels, such as Night of the Living Dead and World War Z, to see where essential theories hold up and where they would stumble and fall. Drezner argues that by thinking about outside-of-the-box threats we get a cognitive grip on what former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously referred to as the "unknown unknowns" in international security. Correcting the zombie gap in international relations thinking and addressing the genuine but publicly unacknowledged fear of the dead rising from the grave, Theories of International Politics and Zombies presents political tactics and strategies accessible enough for any zombie to digest.
Provocative essays from one of America's most important cultural critics
Think Again gathers one hundred of the best of Stanley Fish's provocative New York Times essays, pieces that have generated passionate discussion and debate. Addressing controversies about such hot-button topics as atheism, affirmative action, free speech, identity politics, guns, and postmodernism, Fish dissects the arguments put forth by different sides in order to explain how their arguments work or don't work. Brief and accessible yet challenging, these essays teach you not what to think but how to think more clearly, and provide all the powerful intellectual, cultural, and political analysis one expects from Fish, one of America's most influential thinkers.
In Thinking in an Emergency, Elaine Scarry lays bare the realities of emergency politics and emphasizes what she sees as the ultimate ethical concern: equality of survival. She reveals how regular citizens can reclaim the power to protect one another and our democratic principles. Government leaders sometimes argue that the need for swift national action means there is no time for the population to think, deliberate, or debate. But Scarry shows that clear thinking and rapid action are not in opposition. Examining regions as diverse as Japan, Switzerland, Ethiopia, and Canada, Scarry identifies forms of emergency assistance that represent thinking at its most rigorous and remarkable. She draws on the work of philosophers, scientists, and artists to remind us of our ability to assist one another, whether we are called upon to perform acts of rescue as individuals, as members of a neighborhood, or as citizens of a country."
Written in prison two decades apart, these two essays reflect Antonio Negri's abiding interest in the philosophy of time and resistance. The first essay traces the fracture lines that force capitalist society into perpetual crisis. The second, written immediately after the global bestseller, Empire, develops the two key concepts of empire and multitude.
Time for Revolution explores the burning issue of our times: is there still a place for resistance in a society utterly subsumed by capitalism?