The revolutionary movements of 1848 viewed the political cataclysm of continental Europe as an explosion of liberty, a new age of freedom and equality. This collection focuses on the relationship between democratic and socialist currents in 1848, seeking to reassess the relevance of these currents to the present era of global economic liberalism. Published in English.

Thompson examines the neglected concept of democratic revolutions, spontaneous popular uprisings which topple unyielding dictators and begin a transition process that eventually results in the consolidation of democracy.

A New Social Question: Capitalism, Socialism and Utopia brings together a selection of papers presented at the conference on “Capitalism and Socialism: Utopia, Globalization and Revolution” at New Harmony, Indiana, in 2014. New Harmony is best known as the site of industrialist Robert Owen’s experiment in communal living in 1825, and it was Owen’s legacy that drew scholars from across the Atlantic. Owen’s work and his experiment at New Harmony again have currency as the world looks back on the 2008 economic crisis and as “socialism,” seemingly banished with the failure of experiments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union at the end of the last century has returned to the political and economic lexicon. As David Harvey, Thomas Piketty and Joyce Appleby have lately reminded us, capitalism, particularly the forms it has assumed since 1945, is probably exceptional, perhaps ephemeral, but also dynamic and resilient. If the Great Recession has derailed personal lives, destabilized economies and unnerved politicians, it has also reminded us that we have not reached the “end of history.” Where there was once a Social Question, there is now a New Social Question. This edited, multi-disciplinary volume will appeal to readers in political science, economics, history, sociology, anthropology, literature, communications and cultural studies, and to academic audiences in North America, Britain and elsewhere.

In recent years, the promises of the populist moment have faltered, as seen in the defeats of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Melenchon. In addition, the pandemic has brought about a strong need for protection, creating a favorable terrain for authoritarian forms of politics. This new situation represents a challenge for the left, whose rationalism and modernist idea of progress is rightly suspicious of such demands. How, therefore, can the left deal with the economic, social and ecological crisis that the pandemic has brought to the fore? Chantal Mouffe argues that the left should not underestimate the importance of affects when developing a strategy for political change. In fact, after years of 'post-politics', we are witnessing a 'return of the political'. And in response Mouffe proposes the creation of a broad coalition of movements under the banner of a 'Green Democratic Revolution'. This entails the protection of society and its material conditions in a way that empowers people instead of making them retreat in a defensive nationalism or in a passive acceptance of technological solutions. It is protection for the many, not the few, providing social justice and fostering solidarity. Towards a Green Democratic Revolution is a bold rallying cry for political organisation in the post-pandemic era.

This book explores the theoretical paradoxes and practical dilemmas that flow from the still radical idea that in a democracy it is the people who rule, and argues that accepting the open and uncertain character of democratic politics can lead to more sustainable and widespread forms of democratic engagement. The author engages theorists from a range of democratic thought—Rousseau, Arendt, Benhabib, Sandel, Laclau, and Mouffe—to show how each either ignores or downplays the difficulties that democratic principles pose. Though there can be no entirely valid solution to the paradoxes that plague democracy, the author nonetheless argues that democratic politics—particularly under contemporary conditions of social fragmentation and insecurity—urgently requires new practical and rhetorical strategies. The book concludes by addressing the American context, elaborating the need for a language of democratic engagement less ensnared in the anti-political logic of moralism and resentment that now characterizes the American political spectrum.

For the Western world, the period from 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being. Here for the first time in one volume is R. R. Palmer's magisterial account of this incendiary age. Palmer argues that the American, French, and Polish revolutions—and the movements for political change in Britain, Ireland, Holland, and elsewhere—were manifestations of similar political ideas, needs, and conflicts. Palmer traces the clash between an older form of society, marked by legalized social rank and hereditary or self-perpetuating elites, and a new form of society that placed a greater value on social mobility and legal equality. Featuring a new foreword by David Armitage, this Princeton Classics edition of The Age of the Democratic Revolution introduces a new generation of readers to this enduring work of political history.

Comparative historical investigations of gender and political culture in 18th- and 19th-century revolutionary movements

From the John Holmes Library collection.