A fresh look at how three important twentieth-century British thinkers viewed capitalism through a moral rather than material lensWhat’s wrong with capitalism? Answers to that question today focus on material inequality. Led by economists and conducted in utilitarian terms, the critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century is primarily concerned with disparities in income and wealth. It was not always so. The Moral Economists reconstructs another crit...

Karl Marx is one of the most influential philosophers of all time, whose theories have shaped and directed political, economic, and social thought for 150 years. Considering Marx's life and impact, renowned philosopher Peter Singer identifies the central vision that unifies Marx's thought, enabling us to grasp Marx's views as a whole. Presenting Marx as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as an economist or a social scientist, Singer explains Marx's key ideas ...

This booklet discusses a major recent study on Antonio Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" - Peter Thomas's "The Gramscian Moment" - and argues that the Notebooks were in fact a powerful contribution to the working-out of revolutionary working-class strategy in developed capitalist societies.

In recent years we could be forgiven for assuming that Marx has nothing left to say to us. Marxist regimes have failed miserably, and with them, it seemed, all reason to take Marx seriously. The fall of the Berlin Wall had enormous symbolic resonance: it was taken to be the fall of Marx as well as of Marxist politics and economics. This book argues that we can detach Marx the critic of current society from Marx the prophet of future society, and that he remains the most impressive critic w...

Through exploring the battle of ideas set in motion in August 1914, First World War: Still No End In Sight provides a framework for understanding the changing focus of political conflict from ideology to culture.That the conflicts unleashed by Great War did not end in 1918 is well known. World War II and the Cold War clearly constitute key moments in the drama that began in August 1914. This book argues that the battle of ideas which crystallised during th...

"Eley brilliantly probes transformations in the historians' craft over the past four decades. I found A Crooked Line engrossing, insightful, and inspiring."--Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers' Republic"A Crooked Line brilliantly captures the most significant shifts in the landscape of historical scholarship that have occurred in the last four decades. Part personal history, part insightful analysis of key methodological and theoretical historio...

While there have been historical accounts of the anarchist school movement, there has been no systematic work on the philosophical underpinnings of anarchist educational ideas—until now.Anarchism and Education offers a philosophical account of the neglected tradition of anarchist thought on education. Although few anarchist thinkers wrote systematically on education, this analysis is based largely on a reconstruction of the educational thought of anarchist thinkers gleaned...

International thought is the product of major political changes over the last few centuries, especially the development of the modern state and the industrialisation of the world economy. While the question of how to deal with strangers from other communities has been a constant throughout human history, it is only in recent centuries that the question of ‘foreign relations’ (and especially imperialism and war) have become a matter of urgency for all sectors of society throughout the world...

This classic introduction to the study of history invites the reader to stand back and consider some of its most fundamental questions – what is the point of studying history? How do we know about the past? Does an objective historical truth exist and can we ever access it?In answering these central questions, John Tosh argues that, despite the impression of fragmentation created by Postmodernism in recent years, history is a coherent discipline which still bears the imprint of its...

Covering the life, work, ideas and impact of some of the most significant thinkers in sociology, Fifty Key Sociologists: The Formative Theorists concentrates on figures in the field writing principally in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Including entries on Jane Addams, Theodor Adorno, George Lukács, Max Weber and Pitrim Sorokin, this practical text:is presented in an accessible A–Z format for maximum ease-of-useprovides full cross-refe...

The first major study in over three decades to explore the essential arguments of all the major theoretical interpretations of nationalism, from the modernist approaches of Gellner, Nairn, Breuilly, Giddens and Hobsbawm to the alternative paradigms of van den Bergh and Geertz, Armstrong and Smith himself. In a style accessible to the student and the general reader Smith traces the changing view of this hotly discussed topic within the current political, cultural and socioeconomic arena. He...

This biography tells the story of one of the most important public figures of the twentieth century, Friedrich Hayek.Here is the first full biography of Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist who became, over the course of a remarkable career, the great philosopher of liberty in our time. In this richly detailed portrait, Alan Ebenstein chronicles the life, works, and legacy of a visionary thinker, from Hayek's early years as the scholarly son of a physician in fi...