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The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time

Author: István Mészáros

Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Published: 2008-08-01

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9781583671702

An extraordinary new work by the leading Marxian philosopher of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time represents a breakthrough in the development of socialist thought. It can be seen both as a companion volume to his earlier pathbreaking Beyond Capital and a major theoretical contribution in its own right. Its focus is on the “decapitation of historical time” in today’s capitalism and the necessity of a new “socialist time accountancy” as a revolutionary response to the debilitating present. Extending Mészáros’s earlier analysis of capitalism as a social-metabolic system caught in an irreversible structural crisis, it represents a crushing refutation of the view that “there is no alternative” to the current social order. Mészáros’s wide-ranging analysis explores the forces behind the expansion of world inequality, the return of imperial interventionism, the growing structural crisis of the capitalist state, and the widening planetary ecological crisis—along with the new hope offered by the reemergence of concrete socialist alternatives. At the heart of his book is an examination of the preconditions of Latin America’s historic Bolivarian journey, which is producing new revolutionary transformations in Venezuela, Bolivia and elsewhere. The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time is a work of great political as well as philosophical importance, one that defines the challenges and burdens facing all those who are committed to a more rational, more egalitarian future.

Challenge and Burden of Historical Time

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9788189833787

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The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time

Author: István Mészáros

Publisher:

Published: 2008-08

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13:

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A leading Marxian philosopher and the author of 'Beyond Capital', Mészáros here defines the challenges and burdens facing those committed to a more rational, egalitarian future. At the heart of the book is an examination of Latin America's Bolivarian journey.

The Work of Sartre

Author: István Mészáros

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012-07-01

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1583672958

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This landmark book, first published in 1979, met acclaim as a doubly important work of radical philosophy. Its subject, Jean-Paul Sartre, was among the twentieth century's most controversial and influential philosophers; its author, István Mészáros, was himself establishing a reputation for profound contributions to the Marxian tradition, which would continue into the next century. The Work of Sartre was thus considered essential for its insights on Sartre and as a piece of Mészáros 's developing politico-philosophical project. In this completely updated and expanded volume, Mészáros examines the manifold aspects of Sartre's legacy—as novelist, playwright, philosopher, and political actor—and in so doing casts light upon the enture oeuvre, situating it within the historical and social context of Sartre's time. Although critical of aspects of Sartre's philosophy, Mészáros celebrates his unyielding commitment to the struggle against the power of capital, and elucidates what this means for the individual in their search for freedom.

The Ecological Rift

Author: John Bellamy Foster

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1583672192

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Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the delicate fabric of the biosphere. The economy and the earth are headed for a fateful collision—if we don't alter course. In The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth environmental sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a radical assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that the source of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in capitalist society, which expands individual riches at the expense of public wealth, including the wealth of nature. In the process, a huge ecological rift is driven between human beings and nature, undermining the conditions of sustainable existence: a rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature that is irreparable within capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of motion. Critically examining the sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and technologists, Foster, Clark, and York insist instead that fundamental changes in social relations must occur if the ecological (and social) problems presently facing us are to be transcended. Their analysis relies on the development of a deep dialectical naturalism concerned with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction with the economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable human development.

The Socialist Alternative

Author: Michael A. Lebowitz

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2010-07

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1583672141

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“A good society,“ Michael Lebowitz tells us, “is one that permits the full development of human potential.” In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a conflict between profits and human development, profits take precedence. Just ask the unemployed, those toiling at dead-end jobs, the sick and infirm, the poor, and the imprisoned. But if not capitalism, what? Lebowitz is also critical of those societies that have proclaimed their socialism, such as the former Soviet Union and China. While their systems were not capitalist and were capable of achieving some of what is necessary for the “development of human potential,” they were not “good societies.” A good society as Lebowitz defines it must be marked by three characteristics: social ownership of the means of production, social production controlled by workers, and satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Lebowitz shows how these characteristics interact with and reinforce one another, and asks how they can be developed to the point where they occur more or less automatically—that is, become both a society’s premises and outcomes. He also offers fascinating insights into matters such as the nature of wealth, the illegitimacy of profits, the inadequacies of worker-controlled enterprises, the division of labor, and much more.

Beyond Leviathan

Author: István Mészáros

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2022-02-22

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1583679499

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A field-defining masterwork, this posthumous publication maps the evolution of the idea of the state from ancient Greece to today István Mészáros was one of the greatest political theorists of the twentieth century. Left unfinished at the time of his death, Beyond Leviathan is written on the magisterial scale of his previous book, Beyond Capital, and meant to complement that work. It focuses on the transcendence of the state, along with the transcendence of capital and alienated labor, while traversing the history of political theory from Plato to the present. Aristotle, More, Machiavelli, and Vico are only a few of the thinkers discussed in depth. The larger objective of this work is no less than to develop a full-edged critique of the state, in the Marxian tradition, and set against the critique of capital. Not only does it provide, for the first time, an all-embracing Marxian theory of the state, it gives new political meaning to the notion of “the withering away of the state.” In his definitive, seminal work, Mészáros seeks to illuminate the political preconditions for a society of substantive equality and substantive democracy.

Changing Schools

Author: Terry Wrigley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-08-09

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1136734511

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Changing Schools places educational and social aims at the centre of a discussion of educational change. It draws on forteen case studies to explore school change which is oriented towards social justice and democracy. In an age of global mobility, economic polarization and unprecedented environmental and cultural challenges, the education of all children and young people to higher levels has become a key issue of international policy. Educational reform in such a context requires a serious rethinking and reworking of school and classroom practices. Social justice is integral to the challenge of raising standards, since this requires removing the ongoing influence of poverty on school success. This thoughtful book presents new thinking and practice for bringing about school change, drawn from diverse contexts around the world. It distils and compares the experiences and theories-in-action of engaged teachers, school principals and academics. It seeks to challenge the dominance that human capital theories of school improvement currently hold on policy making. The authors draw on contemporary innovations in practice and theory and also long-standing traditions of alternative thinking and practice. Linking together and articulating other ways of conceiving of and implementing school change, the collection bases its findings on values of equality and global citizenship. It shows how schools can work to make different languages, knowledge, narratives, and truths integral to the mainstream curriculum, everyday pedagogy, assessment and general culture of the school. Changing Schools is directed at all who are concerned with progressive school change and the promotion of democratic citizenship and social justice. It will prove an invaluable source of inspiration for all involved in schools, including teachers, head teachers, policy makers, and those currently studying for school leadership positions.

The Necessity of Social Control

Author: István Mészáros

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1583675388

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As John Bellamy Foster writes in his foreword to the present book, “István Mészáros is one of the greatest philosophers that the historical materialist tradition has yet produced. His work stands practically alone today in the depth of its analysis of Marx’s theory of alienation, the structural crisis of capital, the demise of Soviet-style post-revolutionary societies, and the necessary conditions of the transition to socialism. His dialectical inquiry into social structure and forms of consciousness—a systematic critique of the prevailing forms of thought—is unequaled in our time.” Mészáros is the author of magisterial works like Beyond Capital and Social Structures of Forms of Consciousness, but his work can seem daunting to those unacquainted with his thought. Here, for the first time, is a concise and accessible overview of Mészáros’s ideas, designed by the author himself and covering the broad scope of his work, from the shortcomings of bourgeois economics to the degeneration of the capital system to the transition to socialism.