Revolutionary Rehearsals In The Neoliberal Age

This ambitious volume examines revolutionary situations during a non-revolutionary historical conjuncture--the neoliberal era. The last three decades have seen an increase in the number of political upheavals that challenge existing power structures, many of them taking the form of urban revolts. This book compellingly explores a series of such upheavals--in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Indonesia, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, sub-Saharan Africa (including Congo, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso) and Egypt. Each chapter studies the ways in which protest movements developed into insurgent challenges to state power, and the strategies that regimes have deployed to contain and repress revolt. In addition to empirical chapters, the book engages in theorization of revolution, dealing with questions such as the patterning of revolution in contemporary history, the relationship between class struggle and social movements, and the prospects of socialist revolution in the twenty-first century.

An abridged edition of the insightful work praised as “an impressive contribution both to the history of ideas and to political philosophy” (Alasdair MacIntyre, author of After Virtue). Once of central importance to left historians and activists alike, recently the concept of the “bourgeois revolution” has come in for sustained criticism from both Marxists and conservatives. In this abridged edition of his magisterial How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Neil Davidson expertly distills his theoretical and historical insights about the nature of revolutions, making them accessible for general readers. Through extensive research and comprehensive analysis, Davidson demonstrates that what’s at stake is far from a stale issue for the history books—understanding that these struggles of the past offer far reaching lessons for today’s radicals.

Five times in the last 40 years, the working class has posed a radical alternative to the status quo. France 1968: A general strike and factory occupations by millions of workers shake the country. Chile 1972: Workers defending the Popular Unity government set up workers' councils--the cordones--and demand control over production. Portugal 1974: Army officers overthrow the dictator Caetano and release an upsurge of "popular power" whichs last 18 months. Iran 1979: The viciously repressive Shah is toppled and workers set up independent councils, the shoras. Poland 1980: Demanding radical change, workers build the independent trade union Solidarity to fight for their own interests, exposing the false socialism of the Eastern Bloc. In each of these cases, the actions of workers themselves were the driving force of struggles with revolutionary potential. They demonstrate that workers can and will fight back on a mass scale. Each episode offers an inspiring glimpse of the way in which workers rise to the challenge of fighting for a better world--and pose their own alternative to the system. Although none of these struggles ultimately achieved their goals, they were "revolutionary rehearsals" that hold important lessons about the struggle for socialism under modern conditions.

Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity. Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research. Contributors include: Paul Blackledge, Marc Blecher, Patrick Bond,Chik Collins, Ralph Darlington, Neil Davidson, Ashwin Desai, Jeff Goodwin, Chris Hesketh, Gabriel Hetland, Elizabeth Humphrys, Christian Høgsbjerg, David McNally, Trevor Ngwane, Heike Schaumberg and Hira Singh.

Davidson explores classic themes in historical materialism as he explains: the moments of transition from the dominance of one mode of production to another; the process of social revolution which accompany these transitions; and the problem of nationalism, both as a theoretical challenge to Marxism's capacity for historical explanation and as a practical obstacle to socialist consciousness.

At a time of almost unimaginable inequality, the mainstream still tries to ignore class. Radical Chains: Why Class Matters argues that denial of class is no coincidence but in fact central to the system's survival. Exploring largely ignored histories of struggle and challenging the many myths about class today, Radical Chains puts forward the case that it is time to place class once again at the centre of emancipatory politics.

Susan Buck-Morss asks: What does revolution look like today? How will the idea of revolution survive the inadequacy of the formula, “progress = modernization through industrialization,” to which it has owed its political life? Socialism plus computer technology, citizen resistance plus a global agenda of concerns, revolutionary commitment to practices that are socially experimental and inclusive of difference—these are new forces being mobilized to make another future possible. Revolution Today celebrates the new political subjects that are organizing thousands of grass roots movements to fight racial and gender violence, state-led terrorism, and capitalist exploitation of people and the planet worldwide. The twenty-first century has already witnessed unprecedented popular mobilizations. Unencumbered by old dogmas, mobilizations of opposition are not only happening, they are gaining support and developing a global consciousness in the process. They are themselves a chain of signifiers, creating solidarity across language, religion, ethnicity, gender, and every other difference. Trans-local solidarities exist. They came first. The right-wing authoritarianism and anti-immigrant upsurge that has followed is a reaction against the amazing visual power of millions of citizens occupying public space in defiance of state power. We cannot know how to act politically without seeing others act. This book provides photographic evidence of that fact, while making us aware of how much of the new revolutionary vernacular we already share. Susan Buck-Morss is distinguished professor of political philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, NYC. Her work crosses disciplines, including art history, architecture, comparative literature, cultural studies, German studies, philosophy, history, and visual culture.

This book considers the detrimental changes that have occurred to the institution of the university, as a result of the withdrawal of state funding and the imposition of neoliberal market reforms on higher education. It argues that universities have lost their way, and are currently drowning in an impenetrable mush of economic babble, spurious spin-offs of zombie economics, management-speak and militaristic-corporate jargon. John Smyth provides a trenchant and excoriating analysis of how universities have enveloped themselves in synthetic and meaningless marketing hype, and explains what this has done to academic work and the culture of universities – specifically, how it has degraded higher education and exacerbated social inequalities among both staff and students. Finally, the book explores how we might commence a reclamation. It should be essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of education and sociology, and anyone interested in the current state of university management.