This book studies the work of five Russian liberal thinkers who were active in the period 1840-60 against the general background of Russian history, literature and thought in that period. All five thinkers (to each of whom a separate chapter is devoted) played an important part in the flowering of Russian letters in the 1840s, and were involved in the attempt of the intelligentsia, the conscience of the nation, to bring more humane and enlightened values to their backward and semi-feudal country. By the 1850s, when a more radical wing began to emerge in the intelligentsia, the moderation of these liberals became more apparent. While the radicals were prepared to countenance revolutionary upheaval, the liberals counselled patience, toleration, and gradualism. In his conclusion Dr Offord explores the possible reasons for the failure of the liberal tendency, represented by these thinkers, to establish itself properly in Russia.

Product Description: Working with the body’s seven chakras (energy centers) is an ancient practice to help attain optimal health and wellbeing. One way to do this is through the foods you eat. From light bites to main meals and Sarah’s wonderful chakra cakes, this book will inspire you to prepare simple meals that will nourish you in a whole new way...read more

Product Description: Rosa Luxemburg’s theoretical masterpieceThe second volume in Rosa Luxemburg’s Complete Works, entitled Economic Writings 2, contains a new English translation of Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital: A Contribution to the Economic Theory of Imperialism, one of the most important works ever composed on capitalism’s incessant drive for self-expansion and the integral connection between capitalism and imperialism...read more

Product Description: A Pollan-esque look at the truth about wheat: meal or menace? No topic in nutrition is more controversial than wheat. While mega-sellers like Grain Brain and Wheat Belly suggest that wheat may be the new asbestos, Stephen Yafa finds that it has been wrongly demonized...read more

Product Description: E. P. Thompson is a towering fi gure in the fi eld of labor history, best known for his monumental and path-breaking work, The Making of the English Working Class. But as this collection shows, Thompson was much more than a historian: he was a dedicated educator of workers, a brilliant polemicist, a skilled political theorist, and a tireless agitator for peace, against nuclear weapons, and for a rebirth of the socialist project...read more

With its original contribution to the consideration of the most important social movements of our time, this book has become one of the greatest works of social theory written this century.

Product Description: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe provide unique examples of large-scale relatively highly developed centrally planned economies. In the 1980s economists in both the East and West began to focus with increasingly critical attention on the economies of the Soviet Bloc, in an attempt to explain why they were performing so poorly in comparison with the economies of the Western powers and the capitalist countries of South-East Asia...read more

Product Description: Bitter Harvest, a historical ethnographic study, examines the property changes prompted by the early post-socialist neoliberal reforms designed to build capitalism in Poland. Historically, the book traces the halting but steady emergence of privatization and liberalization, even under socialism, and how these anticipated the reforms of the post-socialist period...read more

Product Description: The Political Economy of Property Rights investigates the transformation of property rights in post-communist countries and China. The movement to effective market economies requires the creation of more effective supporting institutions, especially systems of property rights that decentralize the control of economic resources...read more

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Product Description: Unusual book

Product Description: Visionary English Socialist and pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris argued that all work should be a source of pride and satisfaction, and that everyone should be entitled to beautiful surroundings – no matter what their class...read more

Product Description: This exceptionally thorough treatment of the Hungarian economy and its experience of economic reform over the past twenty years investigates the decentralizing measures and market mechanisms that have been progressively introduced...read more

Product Description: The rise of China as a great power is one of the most important developments in the twenty-first century. But despite dramatic economic progress, China’s prospects remain uncertain. In a book sure to provoke debate, Minxin Pei examines the sustainability of the Chinese Communist Party’s reform strategy―pursuing pro-market economic policies under one-party rule...read more

This text provides a comparative approach to the process of transformation of the economies of Eastern Europe and Russia. Supplying factual and statistical information this edition also includes consideration of progress in the areas of macroeconomic stabilization, and microeconomic restructuring.

Characteristically readable, controversial and full of insights, Alec Nove's new book is essential reading for anyone concerned with evaluating the relevance of Marxism to contemporary social and economic problems.

The work details the emergence, in the post-Napoleonic War period, of a growing popular interest in the critical potentialities of political economy. It considers why this occurred and discusses how the conceptual and analytical tools of political economy were utilised to formulate a critique of early industrial capitalism. The book examines the theories of labour exploitation and capitalist crisis which represented the essence of that critique both as they were elaborated by early-nineteenth-century British anti-capitalist and socialist writers and as they were popularised by writers in the working-class press of the period 1816-34. The book argues that by 1834 in consequence of the efforts of writers such as Hodgskin, Thompson, Gray, Owen and their popularisers the foundations of a distinctively anti-capitalist and socialist political economy had been established and widely disseminated. But these foundations were theoretically flawed. They were flawed by an overconcentration on the sphere of exchange which derived from a particular conception of the determination of exchange value under capitalism; an overconcentration which led on to the suggestion of remedies for the problem of working-class poverty and distress which were necessarily doomed to failure. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Focusing on the theories of 20th-century economist Major C. H. Douglas and the social credit movement, this study explores the guild socialist origins of Douglas’s work, documents the subsequent history of the movement, and condenses the economic and social theories found in his original texts into a concise exposition...read more

Radical politics have been defined in modern times-and distinguished from earlier traditions of protest-by the idea that economic, social and political structures are contradictory. Systems of exploitation create not only wealth and prosperity for the powerful, but at the same time bring into being the forces which ensure their own eventual downfall. But it is a large step from the general assertion that social forms contain their own contradictions to analysis of the specific contradictions which occur in a given historical context, their interaction and movement, and their possible historical outcomes. This collection of essays examines social contradictions in the age of globalization in which old antagonisms often appear to be overcome, and new cracks are emerging in the facade of capitalist progress. Where do they occur? Where can they be expected to appear in future? How can they be grasped in a spirit of sober radicalism, which neither accepts the limits of the present nor overcomes them through wishful thinking alone? What possibilities do they offer for mobilizing resistance? These issues define an agenda which is critical for socialism in our time. Contributors to this volume are especially concerned with capitalism as a global system today, dependent on the strength of the U.S. economy and currency and on global financial institutions such as the World Bank capable of carrying out the capitalist agenda. They provide a timely and critical analysis of what big corporations want and of the problems their agenda creates for their own continued dominance and prosperity. Contributors include: Jim O'Connor, Ellen Wood, Gerard Dumenil, Aijaz Ahmad, Naomi Klein, Mino Carchedi, Reg Whitaker, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock, Mike Kidron, David Harvey, Pablo Gonzalez-Casanova, Elmar Altvater, Paul Cammack.