Despite the depth of the Greek crisis, the exorbitant burdens placed upon the working people and the massive popular resistance movement to capitalist policies, there is a definite lack of consistently Marxist analyses of the Greek problem. International debates regarding the Greek crisis have been dominated by orthodox (Neoclassical and neo-Keynesian) approaches. The heterodox side of these debates has been occupied by Radical Political Economy approaches (usually radical post-Keynesian or Marxo-Keynesian perspectives). Moreover, they are dominated by the ‘financialisation’ thesis which is quite alien to Marxism, neglects the sphere of production and professes that the global crisis is simply a financial crisis that has nothing to do with ‘real’ accumulation and the profit rate. This book argues that by emphasising the sphere of production and profitability, classical Marxist analysis better explains the Greek crisis than its orthodox and heterodox competitors. The contributors present critiques of the prevalent approaches and offer studies of the Greek crisis that use the methodology and the analytical and empirical tools of classical Marxist Political Economy. In particular, it is shown that the Greek crisis was caused by falling profitability and the ensuing overaccumulation crisis. The ‘broad unequal exchange’ existing between the euro-center and the euro-periphery contributed to Greek capital’s falling profitability. This book enriches the debate about the Greek economic crisis by demonstrating the insights that can be drawn by considering the Marxist alternative to the dominant mainstream and heterodox approaches.

This book reviews the profound transformation to the Greek political economy in recent years and considers the reasons that have led to this transformation. Further, the author explores the social experimentation and social diversity that evolved as a result of the Greek and international economic crises. By challenging various assumptions made about the crisis, the author sheds light on Greek social relations and the country’s particular type of capitalist development. This book will be of value to both economists and sociologists, linking discussions about social class with economic, political and institutional analyses.

The contributors to this volume draw on a non-dogmatic Marxist approach to explain the systemic and conjunctural dynamics of crisis inherent in global capitalism. Their analysis asks what is historically specific to capitalism's crises while avoiding catastrophic or defeatist claims. At the same time the volume situates left agency within actual patterns of resistance and class struggle to clarify the potential for transformative change. The cycle of resistance strengthened by the World Socal Forum and transnational activism is now punctuated by the experience of the Arab Spring, the agency of anti-systemic movements, left think tanks, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, labour unions, left parties in Europe such as Syrizia and Podemos and peoples' budgeting in Kerala, India. On the down side, we are witnessing the waning of the Workers Party in Brazil and serious challenges for South Africa's once powerful labour movement and still formative social justice activism. All these developments are assessed in this volume. This is the second volume in the Democratic Marxism series. It elaborates on crucial themes introduced in the first volume, Marxism in the 21st Century: Crisis, Critique and Struggle (edited by Michelle Williams and Vishwas Satgar).

“The leading socialist economist in the country” explores the roots of the Great Recession and its immense impact on working people (Cornel West). While most mainstream commentators view the crisis that provoked the Great Recession as having passed, these essays from Richard Wolff paint a far less rosy picture. Drawing attention to the extreme downturn in most of capitalism’s old centers, the unequal growth in its new centers, and the resurgence of a global speculative bubble, Wolff—in his uniquely accessible style—makes the case that the crisis should be grasped not as a passing moment, but as an evolving stage in capitalism’s history. Praise for Richard Wolff and Democracy at Work “Probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist.” —The New York Times Magazine “Richard Wolff’s constructive and innovative ideas suggest new and promising foundations for much more authentic democracy and sustainable and equitable development, ideas that can be implemented directly and carried forward. A very valuable contribution in troubled times.” —Noam Chomsky “Wolff offers a rich and much-needed corrective to the views of mainstream economists and pundits. It would be difficult to come away from this with anything but an acute appreciation of what is needed to get us out of this mess.” —Stanley Aronowitz “Bold, thoughtful, transformative—a powerful and challenging vision that takes us beyond both corporate capitalism and state socialism. Richard Wolff at his best!” —Gar Alperovitz

Discussing crises through diverse examples, including the UK's National Theatre, public art installations, Occupy LSX, repatriation ceremonies and performances of the everyday, this book asks how performance captures and resists what is considered (politically, ideologically, culturally or socially) 'inside' or 'outside' Europe.

The autumn and winter of 2010 saw an unprecedented wave of student protests across the UK, in response to the coalition government’s savage cuts in state funding for higher education, cuts which formed the basis for an ideological attack on the nature of education itself. Involving universities and schools, occupations, sit-ins and demonstrations, these protests spread with remarkable speed. Rather than a series of isolated incidents, they formed part of a growing movement that spans much of the Western world and is now spreading into North Africa. Ever since the Wall Street crash of 2008 there has been increasing social and political turbulence in the heartlands of capital. From the US to Europe, students have been in the vanguard of protest against their governments’ harsh austerity measures. Tracing these worldwide protests, this new book explores how the protests spread and how they were organized, through the unprecedented use of social networking media such as Facebook and Twitter. It looks, too, at events on the ground, the demonstrations, and the police tactics: kettling, cavalry charges and violent assault. From Athens to Rome, San Francisco to London and, most recently, Tunis, this new book looks at how the new student protests developed into a strong and challenging movement that demands another way to run the world. Consisting largely of the voices that participated in the struggle, Springtime will become an essential point of reference as the uprising continues.

A collection of short, sharp essays exploring the value of shared and accessible public knowledge in the face of its erosion. The Death of Public Knowledge argues for the value and importance of shared, publicly accessible knowledge, and suggests that the erosion of its most visible forms, including public service broadcasting, education, and the network of public libraries, has worrying outcomes for democracy. With contributions from both activists and academics, this collection of short, sharp essays focuses on different aspects of public knowledge, from libraries and education to news media and public policy. Together, the contributors record the stresses and strains placed upon public knowledge by funding cuts and austerity, the new digital economy, quantification and target-setting, neoliberal politics, and inequality. These pressures, the authors contend, not only hinder democracies, but also undermine markets, economies, and social institutions and spaces everywhere. Covering areas of international public concern, these polemical, accessible texts include reflections on the fate of schools and education, the takeover of public institutions by private interests, and the corruption of news and information in the financial sector. They cover the compromised Greek media during recent EU negotiations, the role played by media and political elites in the Irish property bubble, the compromising of government policy by corporate interests in the United States and Korea, and the squeeze on public service media in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States. Individually and collectively, these pieces spell out the importance of maintaining public, shared knowledge in all its forms, and offer a rallying cry for doing so, asserting the need for strong public, financial, and regulatory support. Contributors Toril Aalberg, Ian Anstice, Philip Augar, Rodney Benson, Aeron Davis, Des Freedman, Wayne Hope, Ken Jones, Bong-hyun Lee, Colin Leys, Andrew McGettigan, Michael Moran, Aristotelis Nikolaidis, Justin Schlosberg, Henry Silke, Roger Smith, Peter Thompson, Janine R. Wedel, Karel Williams, Kate Wright

This unique volume brings together various academic voices and critical reflections on discursive manifestations of hate and radicalism in contemporary public discourses. The authors venture into an array of socio-political contexts and public spaces, providing a compelling overview of similarities and divergences, continuities and discontinuities, outward hatred and the “politics of denial”, the use of collective symbols and construction of individual identities. Multiple genres are taken under scrutiny, including blogs, forums, internet websites and newspaper coverage, political speeches and debates, news reports and broadcast interactions, with a view to capturing the themes and pragma-rhetorical strategies within texts abundant with radical and hateful messages. In addition to examining discourse dynamics and the underlying logic of such texts, the contributors to this monograph explore the ideological motivations and the consequences they might have for social actions on both an individual and collective level. Highly relevant in the contemporary world, divided by conflicts, power and resource struggles, right-wing extremism, and crusades against the imaginary Other, the book presents state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research that should be of interest to specialists in pragmatics, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, as well as media and communication studies. Originally published as a special issue of Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3:1 (2015).

In Acquiring Modernity, Paul B. Paolucci, updating classical theory, examines the nature of modern society. Investigated from a sociological perspective but written in accessible everyday language, this book provides a multifaceted account of what makes modern society what it is, from its historical roots to its current conditions. Neither traditional classroom text nor a work of detailed erudition for the specialist few, Acquiring Modernity draws on material from known historical events, scholarly research, and recent global developments to tell modernity’s story through topics such as the modern classes, religious practice, relations of gender and race, politics, environmental issues, and economic crises. Valuable reading for anyone interested in understanding contemporary life and society.

The current crises in the financialization of capitalism, and their repercussions on the financial viability of entire countries, severely question the achievements of mainstream economics and its disregard of Keynes's theory of effective demand and finance. In view of this, Peter Flaschel and Sigrid Luchtenberg consider roads to a type of capitalism that could eventually be considered as 'social' in nature. The authors underpin their study with theory, empirical evidence, and policy from a positive as well as a normative perspective. As points of departure for their concept of social capitalism, the theoretical framework provides a synthesis of the work of Marx, Keynes, and Schumpeter on ruthless capitalism, regulated capitalism, and competitive socialism.