State Transformations

State Transformations

Author: Greg Albo

Publisher: Studies in Critical Social Sci

Published: 2022-07-05

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 9781642597769

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This landmark volume re-centres class analysis as a critical method in the study of states.


State Transformations: Classes, Strategy, Socialism

State Transformations: Classes, Strategy, Socialism

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-07-05

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 9004462260

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This volume addresses the ‘impoverishment of state theory’ over the last decades and insists on the continued salience of class analysis to the study of capitalist states – neoliberal restructuring, the political architecture of imperialism, and the potentials for democratic transformation.


Elites and Classes in the Transformation of State Socialism

Elites and Classes in the Transformation of State Socialism

Author: David Lane

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1351297309

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The year 2011 marks the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union. This may be an appropriate time to evaluate the adoption by previously state socialist societies of other economic and political models. The transition has sometimes been described in positive terms, as a movement to free societies with open markets and democratic elections. Others have argued that the transition has created weak, poverty-stricken states with undeveloped civil societies ruled by unresponsive political elites. Which is the more accurate assessment?David Lane examines a few of the theoretical approaches that help explain the trajectory of change from socialism to capitalism. He focuses on two main approaches in this volume - elite theories and social class. Theories dwelling on the role of elites regard the transformation from socialism to capitalism as a type of system transfer in which elites craft democratic and market institutions into the space left by state socialism. Lane contrasts this interpretation with class-based theories, which consider transformation in terms of revolution, and explain why such theories have not been considered the best way of framing the transition in the post-socialist states.While recognizing that elites can play important roles and have the capacity to transform societies, Lane contends that elite theories alone are inadequate to explain a system change that brings free markets. In contrast, he proposes a class approach in which two groups characterize state socialism: an administrative class and an acquisition class.


Encyclopedia of Critical Political Science

Encyclopedia of Critical Political Science

Author: Clyde W. Barrow

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2024-03-14

Total Pages: 813

ISBN-13: 1800375913

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An indispensable and exemplary reference work, this Encyclopedia adeptly navigates the multidisciplinary field of critical political science, providing a comprehensive overview of the methods, approaches, concepts, scholars and journals that have come to influence the disciplineÕs development over the last six decades.


Capital and Politics

Capital and Politics

Author: Greg Albo

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2022-12

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1583679863

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The 59th annual volume of the Socialist Register examines the growth of corporate power and other important organizational trends in global capitalism. Rejecting such notions as “stakeholder capitalism,” it reviews the organization and strategies of unions and the left as it searches for new routes to socialism.


The Capitalist Transformation of State Socialism

The Capitalist Transformation of State Socialism

Author: David Lane

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1135008817

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David Lane outlines succinctly yet comprehensively the development and transformation of state socialism. While focussing on Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe, he also engages in a discussion of the Chinese path. In response to the changing social structure and external demands, he outlines different scenarios of reform. He contends that European state socialism did not collapse but was consciously dismantled. He brings out the West’s decisive support of the reform process and Gorbachev’s significant role in tipping the balance of political forces in favour of an emergent ascendant class. In the post-socialist period, he details developments in the economy and politics. He distinguishes different political and economic trajectories of countries of the former USSR, the New Member States of the European Union, and China; and he notes the attempts to promote further change through ‘coloured’ revolutions. The book provides a detailed account not only of the unequal impact of transformation on social inequality which has given rise to a privileged business and political class, but also how far the changes have fulfilled the promise of democracy promotion, wealth creation and human development. Finally, in the context of globalisation, the author considers possible future political and economic developments for Russia and China. Throughout the author, a leading expert in the field, brings to bear his deep knowledge of socialist countries, draws on his research on the former Soviet Union, and visits to nearly all the former state socialist countries, including China.


From Consent to Coercion

From Consent to Coercion

Author: Bryan Evans

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2023-02-27

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1487534213

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From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living. The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada – an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada’s capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion – on force and on fear – to secure that subordination. From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics – of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.


Shifting Gears

Shifting Gears

Author: Stephanie Ross

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2024-09-03

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0774870885

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In the decades following the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labour movement. Their union urged members to rally in the streets and use the ballot box to effect change for all working-class people. But by the turn of this century, the Canadian Auto Workers union had begun to pursue a more defensive political direction. Shifting Gears traces the evolution of CAW strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships as relationships between the union, employers, and governments were refashioned. This new approach was maintained when the CAW merged with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union in 2013 to create Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union. Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics, offering a critical perspective on the current state of working-class politics.


New Polarizations and Old Contradictions: The Crisis of Centrism

New Polarizations and Old Contradictions: The Crisis of Centrism

Author: Greg Albo

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2021-12-27

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1583679391

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Takes the buzzword "polarization" as its point of departure to describe the vast, and ever-growing economic inequality worldwide "Polarization" is a word commonly used by everyone from mainstream journalists to the person in the street, whatever their political stripe. But this widely recognized phenomenon deserves scrutiny. The 58th volume of the Socialist Register takes up the challenge, asking such questions as: Are the current tendencies towards polarization new, and if so, what is their significance? What underlying contradictions—between race, class, income, gender, and geopolitics—do the latest polarization trends expose? And to what extent can "centrist" politics continue to hold and contain these internal contradictions? This volume's original essays examine the escalating polarization of national, racial, generational, and other identities, all in the context of growing economic inequality, new forms of regional and urban antagonism, "vaccine nationalism," and the shifting parameters of rivalry between the "Great Powers."


State, Power, Socialism

State, Power, Socialism

Author: Nicos Poulantzas

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2014-01-14

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1781681481

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In State, Power, Socialism, the leading theorist of the state and European communism advances a vigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories of the state. Arguing against a general theory of the state, Poulantzas identifies forms of class power crucial to socialist strategy that go beyond the state apparatus.