Marxist discourse around automation has recently become waylaid with breathless techno-pessimist dystopias and fanciful imaginations of automated luxury communism. This collection of essays by both established veterans of the field and new voices is a refreshingly sober materialist reflection on recent technological developments within capitalist production.It covers a broad range of digital aspects now proliferating across our work and lives, including chapters on the digitalisati...

For years, the critique of capitalism was lost from public discourse; the very word "capitalism" sounded like a throwback to another era. Nothing could be further from the truth today. In this new intellectual atmosphere, Sociology, Capitalism, Critique is a contribution to the renewal of critical sociology, founded on an empirically grounded diagnosis of society's ills. The authors, Germany's leading critical sociologists-Klaus D�rre, Stephan Lessenich, and Hartmut Rosa-share a c...

This book questions the mainstream interpretation of the current political shifts as a move to ultra-conservative and even fascist politics, changing the polities of the Western democracies that can be overcome by “reclaiming democracy”. Instead of following this path, the present work analyses these developments as extreme consequence that emerged from the individualist and short-sighted understanding of rationality that coined the enlightenment and had been translated into an institution...

Pandemics — it seems that it had been the beginning of a new era, after a first shock wave a new normality commenced trying to, repress the complex challenges while living under a new Sword of Damocles. Origins and consequences of the virus had been frequently issued, but only little attention had been paid to structural problems of societies, making it difficult to cope with the exceptional situation. The present book, focusing on the German polity and its structural weakness, analysis th...

The book aims at presenting an updated version of the basic and general human rights debates. While it is frequently suggested that Human Rights are universal and indivisible, it is an undeniable fact that this is far from being true. And if there was ever any justification for talking about an ending to history, that narrative has definitely lost all justification in the light of recent developments. In fact, we are now witnessing a new harsh round of global system competition, often at t...

With international human rights under challenge, this book represents a comprehensive critique that adds a social policy perspective to recent political and legalistic analysis.Expert contributors draw on local and global examples to review constructs of universal rights and their impact on social policy and human welfare. With thorough analysis of their strengths, weaknesses and enforcement, it sets out their role in domestic and geopolitical affairs.Including a forward by...

Translated from the original German Lenin Neuentdecken and available in English for the first time, this volume rediscovers Lenin as a strategic socialist thinker through close examination of his collected works and correspondence. Brie opens with an analysis of Lenin's theoretical development between 1914 and 1917, in preparation for his critical decision to dissolve the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 in a struggle for power. This led from the dialectics of revolutionary pr...

Currently it is fashionable to talk about digitisation, robotisation, industry 4.0, but also about the gig economy, the Millenials, precarisation and the like. However, the relevant issues are too often taken in isolation, referring to an extrapolation of overcome structures. The present collection aims on moving further by qualifying some aspects, and also by approaching the topic from distinct perspectives in order to arrive at an assessment of emerging changes of the socio-economic form...

The distinction between basic and applied research was central to twentieth-century science and policymaking, and if this framework has been contested in recent years, it nonetheless remains ubiquitous in both scientific and public discourse. Employing a transnational, diachronic perspective informed by historical semantics, this volume traces the conceptual history of the basic–applied distinction from the nineteenth century to today, taking stock of European developments alongside compar...

‘The Visionary Realism of German Economics’ forms a collection of Erik S. Reinert’s essays bringing the more realistic German economic tradition into focus as an alternative to Anglo-Saxon neoclassical mainstream economics. Together the essays form a holistic theory explaining why economic development––by its very nature––is a very uneven process. Herein lie the important policy implications of the volume.

'There is no better guide to the populist passions of the present' The New York TimesDonald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, Hugo Chávez - populists are on the rise across the globe. But what exactly is populism?Should everyone who criticizes Wall Street or Washington be called a populist? What precisely is the difference between right-wing and left-wing populism? Does populism bring government closer to the people or is it a threat to democracy? Who are "t...

Is democracy in crisis? On the one hand, it seems to be decaying under the leadership of political elites who make decisions behind closed doors. On the other hand, citizens are taking to the streets to firmly assert their political participation across the globe.Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives, this collection examines the multiple transformations which both the practice and the idea of democracy are undergoing today. It starts by questioning whether t...