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Global Politics of Regionalism
Theory and Practice
Mary Farrell
Pluto Press, 2005
This book explores the phenomenon of regionalism. In a seeming contradiction to globalization, there is a growing tendency for countries to enter into regional arrangements as a response to the pressures of operating in a global marketplace. But regionalism is also emerging as a phenomenon in its own right, serving distinct purposes and taking different forms in different areas. The contributors explore how these patterns impact on wider issues such as global governance, democracy and trade. 

The book reviews the major theoretical approaches to regional cooperation including perspectives from international relations, political economy, economics and sociology. It is divided into three main sections: theoretical approaches to regionalism; issues of regional cooperation (such as security, monetary issues, identity and integration); and an exploration of specific case studies including the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, China, Europe, Asia and the Pacific.

With an international range of contributors, including Bjorn Hettne, Louise Fawcett and Andrew Hurrell, this in-depth and multi-disciplinary guide will be of interest to students across the social sciences and to the wider policy community.
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At the Heart of the State
The Moral World of Institutions
Didier Fassin
Pluto Press, 2015

The state is often regarded as an abstract and neutral bureaucratic entity. Against this common sense idea, At the Heart of the State argues that it is also a concrete and situated reality, embodied in the work of its agents and inscribed in the issues of its time. 

The result of a five-year investigation conducted by ten scholars, this book describes and analyses the police, the court system, the prison apparatus, the social services, and mental health facilities in France. Combining genealogy and ethnography, its authors show that these state institutions do not simply implement laws, rules and procedures: they mobilise values and affects, judgements and emotions. In other words, they reflect the morality of the state. 

Of immense interest to both social scientists and political theorists, this work will make an important contribution to the ever expanding literature on the contemporary state.

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Deepening Divides
How Physical Borders and Social Boundaries Delineate our World
Didier Fassin
Pluto Press, 2019
At a glance, 'borders' and 'boundaries' may seem synonymous. But in the real (geopolitical) world, they coexist as distinct, albeit overlapping entities: the former a state's delimitation of territory; the latter the social delineation of differences. The refugee crisis in Europe showed how racial and ethnic boundaries are often instrumentalised to justify the strengthening of state borders - regardless of the cost in human life. But there are other, less tragic, examples that illustrate this overlapping as well, and ultimately demonstrate that the oft-differentiated spheres of borders and boundaries are best understood through their relationship to one another. Deepening Divides explores this relationship from many distinct perspectives and national contexts, with case studies covering five continents and drawing on anthropology, gender studies, law, political science and sociology for a truly interdisciplinary collection.
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A Marxist History of the World
From Neanderthals to Neoliberals
Neil Faulkner
Pluto Press, 2013

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A People's History of the Russian Revolution
Neil Faulkner
Pluto Press, 2017
The Russian Revolution may be the most misunderstood and misrepresented event in modern history, its history told in a mix of legends and anecdotes. In A People's History of the Russian Revolution, Neil Faulkner sets out to debunk the myths and pry fact from fiction, putting at the heart of the story the Russian people who are the true heroes of this tumultuous tale. In this fast-paced introduction, Faulkner tells the powerful narrative of how millions of people came together in a mass movement, organized democratic assemblies, mobilized for militant action, and overturned a vast regime of landlords, profiteers, and warmongers.
 
Faulkner rejects caricatures of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as authoritarian conspirators or the progenitors of Stalinist dictatorship, and forcefully argues that the Russian Revolution was an explosion of democracy and creativity—and that it was crushed by bloody counter-revolution and replaced with a form of bureaucratic state-capitalism.
 
Grounded by powerful first-hand testimony, this history marks the centenary of the Revolution by restoring the democratic essence of the revolution, offering a perfect primer for the modern reader.
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A Radical History of the World
Neil Faulkner
Pluto Press, 2018

“Staggeringly ambitious.”―New Internationalist

“One of the finest historians on the left.”—John Newsinger, author, The Blood Never Dried



Rejecting the top-down approach of conventional history, Neil Faulkner contends that it is the mass action of ordinary people that drives the transformative events of our many histories. This is a history of power, abuse, and greed, but also one of liberation, progress, and solidarity.            
 
From the hunter-gatherers two million years ago to the ancient empires of Persia and China, and from the Russian Revolution to modern imperialism, humans have always struggled to create a better society than what came before. All over the world at numerous points in the past, a different way of life has become an absolute necessity, over and over again. This is a history of the humans in these struggles—the hominid and the hunter, the emperor and the slave, the dictator and the revolutionary.
 
Reading against the grain of mainstream histories, Neil Faulkner reveals that what happened in the past has never been predetermined. From antiquity to feudalism, and from fascism to our precarious political present, choices have always been numerous and complex, and the possible outcomes have ranged broadly between liberation and barbarism. His chapters include:
 
*Hunters and Farmers
*The First Class Societies
*Ancient Empires
*The Medieval World
*European Feudalism
*The First Wave of Bourgeois Revolutions
*Absolutist Europe and Capitalist Globalization
*The Rise of Industrial Capitalism
*The Revolutionary Wave
*The Great Depression and the Rise of Fascism
*World War and Cold War
*The New World Disorder
*Capitalism’s Greatest Crisis? The Early Twenty-First Century
 
In our fraught political present—as we face the loss of civil liberties and environmental protections, the rise of ethnonationalism, and the looming threat of nuclear war—we need the perspective of these histories now more than ever. The lesson of A Radical History of the World is that, if we created our past, we can also create a better future.  
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The Battle for Europe
How an Elite Hijacked a Continent - and How we Can Take it Back
Thomas Fazi
Pluto Press, 2014

The Battle for Europe brings into sharp focus the historical importance of the current Eurozone crisis. Thomas Fazi argues that European Union (EU) elites have seized on the financial crash to push through damaging neoliberal policies, undermining social cohesion and vital public services.

Drawing on a wealth of sources, Fazi argues that the EU’s austerity policies are not simply a case of political and ideological short-sightedness, but part of a long-term project by elites to remove the last remnants of the welfare state and complete the neoliberal project.

As well as an urgent critique of the EU and monetary union as currently constituted, The Battle for Europe showcases a programme for progressive reform and outlines how citizens and workers of Europe can radically overhaul EU institutions.

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Right Across the World
The Global Networking of the Far-Right and the Left Response
John Feffer
Pluto Press, 2021

'John Feffer is our 21st-century Jack London' - Mike Davis

In a post-Trump world, the right is still very much in power. Significantly more than half the world’s population currently lives under some form of right-wing populist or authoritarian rule. Today’s autocrats are, at first glance, a diverse band of brothers. But religious, economic, social and environmental differences aside, there is one thing that unites them - their hatred of the liberal, globalized world. This unity is their strength, and through control of government, civil society and the digital world they are working together across borders to stamp out the left.

In comparison, the liberal left commands only a few disconnected islands - Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain and Uruguay. So far they have been on the defensive, campaigning on local issues in their own countries. This narrow focus underestimates the resilience and global connectivity of the right. In this book, John Feffer speaks to the world’s leading activists to show how international leftist campaigns must come together if they are to combat the rising tide of the right.

A global Green New Deal, progressive trans-European movements, grassroots campaigning on international issues with new and improved language and storytelling are all needed if we are to pull the planet back from the edge of catastrophe. This book is both a warning and an inspiration to activists terrified by the strengthening wall of far-right power.

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A Suitable Enemy
Racism, Migration and Islamophobia in Europe
Liz Fekete
Pluto Press, 2009

Liz Fekete is a leading authority on issues of racism, Islamophobia and national security legislation. A Suitable Enemy draws on sixteen years of research to present a comprehensive overview of EU immigration, asylum, race and security policies.

Fekete argues that at the same time as the EU introduces selective migration policies, it closes its borders against asylum seekers who were the first victims of the growth of the security state which now embraces Muslims. She explores the way in which anti-terrorist legislation has been used to evict undesirable migrants, how deportation policies commodify and de-humanise the most vulnerable and how these go hand in hand with evolving forms of racism, particularly Islamophobia.

At the heart of the book is an examination of xeno-racism -- a non-colour coded form of institutionalised racism -- where migrants who do not assimilate, or who are believed to be incapable of assimilation, are excluded.

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Women and Work
Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction
Susan Ferguson
Pluto Press, 2019
"A masterful analysis of three centuries of feminist deliberations on work, carefully tracing how the fault lines of social-reproduction theory emerged."—Historical Materialism  
 
Feminism is once again on the political agenda. Across the world women are taking to the streets to protest unfair working conditions, abortion laws, and sexual violence. They are demanding decent wages, better schools and free childcare.
 
But why do some feminists choose to fight for more women CEOs, while others fight for a world without CEOs?
 
To understand these divergent approaches, Susan Ferguson looks at the ideas that have inspired women to protest, exploring the ways in which feminists have placed work at the center of their struggle for emancipation. Two distinct trajectories emerge: “equality feminism” and “social reproduction feminism.” Ferguson argues that socialists have too often embraced the “liberal” tendencies of equality feminism, while neglecting the insights of social reproduction feminism. Engaging with feminist anti-work critiques, She proposes that women's emancipation depends upon a radical reimagining of all labor and advocates for a renewed social reproduction framework as a powerful basis for an inclusive feminist politics. Chapters here include;
 
*The Rational-Humanist Roots of Equality Feminism
*Socialist Feminism: Two Approaches to Understanding Women's Work
*Equal Work for and against Capital
*Anti-Racist Feminism and Women's Work
*A Political Economy of 'Women's Work': Producing Patriarchal Capitalism
*Renewing Social Reproduction Feminism
*The Social Reproduction Strike: Life-Making Beyond Capitalism

 
Women and Work offers a timely and important look at the intersectionality of feminism and workers rights. Scholars and students will both find valuable insights into the history of feminist theory and social movement.
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The Political Economy of NGOs
State Formation in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh
Jude L. Fernando
Pluto Press, 2011

Jude L. Fernando explores the paradoxical relationship between NGOs and capitalism, showing that supposedly progressive organisations often promote essentially the same policies and ideas as existing governments.

The book examines how a diverse group of NGOs have shaped state formation in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It argues that, rather than influencing state formation for the better, NGOs have been integrated into the capitalist system and their language adopted to give traditional exploitative social relations a transformative appearance.

This enlightening study will give pause to those who see NGOs as drivers of true social change and will encourage students of development studies to make a deeper analysis of state formation.

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Here to Stay, Here to Fight
A Race Today Anthology
Paul Field
Pluto Press, 2019
From 1973 to 1988, Race Today, the journal of the revolutionary Race Today Collective was at the epicentre of the struggle for racial justice in Britain. Placing race, sex and social class at the core of its analysis, it featured in its articles and pamphlets contributions from some of the leading writers and activists of the time: C. L. R. James, Darcus Howe, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Walter Rodney, Bobby Sands, Farrukh Dhondy and Mala Sen and many more. Here to Stay, Here to Fight, draws together many of these key articles and extracts into an impressive collection - the first book-length anthology of its kind - rescuing many contributions from the obscurity of inaccessible archives. Framing the original contributions, there is a general introduction, which provides an overview of Race Today's 15-year history, section introductions providing context for each extract, written by writers and activists associated with the Collective, and a concluding section exploring the legacy of Race Today in contemporary social movements and debates around race, gender and class.
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Behind Closed Doors
Sex Education Transformed
Natalie Fiennes
Pluto Press, 2019
One thing we know for certain is that sex is personal: perhaps the most intimate thing of all. But sex is also shaped by a complicated web of cultural, social and political forces outside of ourselves.

Fear-mongering, moral panic and outdated attitudes prevail, but if #MeToo has taught us anything, it's how dangerous it is to keep conversations about sex hidden from view. Behind Closed Doors invests in a radical, inclusive and honest sex education, taking us beyond learning about the 'birds and the bees', to identifying inequality that stands in the way of sexual freedom.

From contraceptives to virginity, consent to pornography, transphobia to sexual abuse, the book shows how our desires are influenced by powerful political processes that can be transformed.
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Salvador Allende
Revolutionary Democrat
Victor Figueroa Clark
Pluto Press, 2013

This is a political biography of one of the 20th century’s most emblematic left-wing figures - Salvador Allende, who was president of Chile until he was ousted by General Pinochet in a US-supported coup in 1973.

Victor Figueroa Clark guides us through Allende's life and political project, answering some of the most frequently asked questions. Was he a revolutionary or a reformist? A bureaucrat or inspirational democrat? Clark argues that Allende and the Popular Unity Party created a unique fusion which was both revolutionary and democratic.

The process led by Allende was a symbol of hope for the left during his short time in power. Forty years on, and with left governments back in power across Latin America, this book looks back at the man and the process in order to draw vital lessons for the left in Latin America and around the world today.

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Using Gramsci
A New Approach
Michele Filippini
Pluto Press, 2016
The notebooks kept by Antonio Gramsci while he was in prison in fascist Italy in the 1920s have been an inspiration to Marxist political thinkers and activists around the world for decades. With Using Gramsci, Michele Filippini teases out a number of previously ignored aspects of Gramsci’s works to create a book that stands apart from previous analyses. While Filippini does examine the aspects of Gramsci’s thought that have long attracted scholars—including his thinking on hegemony, organic intellectuals, and civil society—she foregrounds new concepts, including the individual, crisis, and space and time. The result is a rethinking of Gramsci for our era  that offers a number of promising new ways forward.
 
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Microeconomics
A Critical Companion
Ben Fine
Pluto Press, 2016
The culmination of forty years of teaching, researching, and advising on political economy, Ben Fine’s Microeconomics offers a clear and concise exposition of mainstream microeconomics from a heterodox perspective. Covering topics from consumer and producer theory to general equilibrium to perfect competition, it sets the emergence and evolution of microeconomics in both its historical and interdisciplinary context. Fine critically exposes the methodological and conceptual content of dominant microeconomic models without sacrificing the technical detail required for those completing a first degree in economics or entering postgraduate study. The result is a book which is sure to establish a strong presence on undergraduate reading lists and in comparative literature on the subject.
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Macroeconomics
A Critical Companion
Ben Fine
Pluto Press, 2016
Macroeconomics is fundamental to our understanding of how the world functions today. But too often our understanding is based on orthodox, canonized analysis. In this rule-breaking book, Ben Fine and Ourania Dimakou provides an engaging, heterodox primer for those interested in an alternative to mainstream macroeconomic theory and history. From classical theory to the Keynesian revolution and more modern forms including the Monetarist counterrevolution, New Classical Fundamentalism, and New Consensus Macroeconomics, Fine and Dimakou rigorously and comprehensively lay out the theories of mainstream economists, warts and all.
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Marx's 'Capital'
Ben Fine
Pluto Press, 2016
This brilliantly concise book has established itself over twenty-five years and five editions as the standard companion to Karl Marx’s most important work, the sprawling Capital. This new edition retains the features that have made it a crucial teaching tool—a clear explanation of the structure of Marx’s analysis, an exploration of his method and terminology, and the significance of his central concepts—while also bringing it fully up to date with the latest scholarship and a clearly written analysis of the continuing relevance of Capital to today’s ongoing discussions of politics, economics, and the struggles of capitalism.
 
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Disaster Anarchy
Mutual Aid and Radical Action
Rhiannon Firth
Pluto Press, 2022

As disasters become more commonplace, we need to think of alternatives for relief.

'Commendable - a book that prepares us to think about and react to system failures' - Peter Gelderloos

Anarchists have been central in helping communities ravaged by disasters, stepping in when governments wash their hands of the victims. Looking at Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and the social movements that mobilized relief in their wake, Disaster Anarchy is an inspiring and alarming book about collective solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world.

As climate change and neoliberalism converge, mutual aid networks, grassroots direct action, occupations, and brigades have sprung up in response to this crisis with considerable success. Occupy Sandy was widely acknowledged to have organized relief more effectively than federal agencies or NGOs, and following Covid-19 the term ‘mutual aid’ entered common parlance.

However, anarchist-inspired relief has not gone unnoticed by government agencies. Their responses include surveillance and co-option, extending at times to violent repression involving police brutality. Arguing that disaster anarchy is one of the most important political phenomena to emerge in the 21st century, Rhiannon Firth shows through her research on and within these movements that anarchist theory and practice are needed to protect ourselves from the disasters of our unequal and destructive economic system.

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Post-capitalist Futures
Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope
Adam Fishwick
Pluto Press, 2021
This book critically engages with the proliferation of literature on postcapitalism, which is rapidly becoming an urgent area of inquiry, both in academic scholarship and in public life. It collects the insights from scholars working across the field of Critical International Political Economy to interrogate how we might begin to envisage a political economy of postcapitalism. The authors foreground the agency of workers and other capitalist subjects, and their desire to engage in a range of radical experiments in decommodification and democratization both in the workplace and in their daily lives. It includes a broad range of ideas including the future of social reproduction, human capital circulation, political Islam, the political economy of exclusion and eco-communities. Rather than focusing on the ending of capitalism as an implosion of the value-money form, this book focuses on the dream of equal participation in the determination of people's shared collective destiny.
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Privatising Justice
The Security Industry, War and Crime Control
Wendy Fitzgibbon
Pluto Press, 2020
Privatising Justice takes a broad historical view of the role of the private sector in the British state, from private policing and mercenaries in the eighteenth century to the modern rise of the private security industry in armed conflict, policing and the penal system. 

The development of the welfare state is seen as central to the decline of what the authors call 'old privatisation'. Its succession by neoliberalism has created the ground for the resurgence of the private sector. The growth of private military, policing and penal systems is located within the broader global changes brought about by neoliberalism and the dystopian future that it portends.

The book is a powerful petition for the reversal of the increasing privatization of the state and the neoliberalism that underlies it.
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Repealed
Ireland’s Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights
Camilla Fitzsimons
Pluto Press, 2021

*Winner of the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize 2022*

In Ireland, 2018, a constitutional ban that equated the life of a woman to the life of a fertilized embryo was overturned and abortion was finally legalized. This victory for the Irish feminist movement set the country alight with euphoria. But the celebrations were short-lived - the new legislation turned out to be one of the most conservative in Europe. This book tells the story of the ‘Repeal’ campaign through the lens of the activists.

The authors trace the shocking history of the origins of the eighth amendment, which was drawn up in fear of a tide of liberal reforms across Europe. They draw out the lessons learned through the decades and from the groundbreaking campaign in 2018, which was an inspiring example of modern grassroots activism. They also recount the tensions between a medicalized approach and reproductive justice approach to abortion, as well as the harsh effect of the campaign on the health of activists.

Grounded in a radical feminist politics, this book is an honest and inspirational account of a movement that is only just beginning.

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Martin Monath
A Jewish Resistance Fighter Amongst Nazi Soldiers
Nathaniel Flakin
Pluto Press, 2019
A dramatisation of Martin Monath's short life (1913-1944) would need little artistic embellishment; his identity shrouded in mystery, and executed by the Gestapo - twice - the historical record reads like a detective novel. Pieced together for the first time by Wladek Flakin, this biography tells the story of the Jewish socialist and editor of Arbeiter und Soldat ('Worker and Soldier'), and his efforts to turn German rank-and-file soldiers against their Nazi officers in occupied France. Born in Berlin in 1913, Martin Monath was a child of war and revolution. In the 1930s he became a leader of the socialist Zionist youth organisation Hashomer Hatzair in Germany. Fleeing from Berlin to Brussels in 1939, he joined the underground Trotskyist party led by Abraham Leon, and soon became a leading member of the Fourth International in Europe. His relocation to Paris in 1943 saw the birth of Arbeiter und Soldat and his work organising illegal cells of German soldiers for a revolutionary struggle against the Nazis. Drawing on extensive archival research, Flakin uses letters, testimonies and unpublished documents to bring Monath's story to life - weaving a tale rich with conviction and betrayal, ideology and espionage.
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Revolutionary Berlin
A Walking Guide
Nathaniel Flakin
Pluto Press, 2022
'Inspirational - with a deliciously bone-dry Berlinische humour' - Owen Hatherley

Few European cities can boast a history as storied and tumultuous as that of Berlin. For more than 150 years it has been at the center of revolutionary politics; of era-defining struggles between the Left and the Right. It has been bombed, rebuilt and carved in two.

In Revolutionary Berlin, veteran tour guide Nathaniel Flakin invites you to stand in the places where this history was written, and to follow in the footsteps of those who helped write it. Through nine self-guided tours illustrated with maps and photographs, readers enter the heady world of 19th century anti-colonial struggles, the 1918 November Revolution and the 1987 May Day riots - encountering the city's workers, queer community and radical women along the way.

The first English-language guidebook to tell the story of Berlin's radical history, this is a must-have for Berliners and visitors alike.
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Dark Academia
How Universities Die
Peter Fleming
Pluto Press, 2021
'Fleming's books are sparklingly sardonic and hilariously angry' - Guardian

There is a strong link between the neoliberalisation of higher education over the last 20 years and the psychological hell now endured by its staff and students. While academia was once thought of as the best job in the world - one that fosters autonomy, craft, intrinsic job satisfaction and vocational zeal - you would be hard-pressed to find a lecturer who believes that now.

Peter Fleming delves into this new metrics-obsessed, overly hierarchical world to bring out the hidden underbelly of the neoliberal university. He examines commercialisation, mental illness and self-harm, the rise of managerialism, students as consumers and evaluators, and the competitive individualism which casts a dark sheen of alienation over departments.

Arguing that time has almost run out to reverse this decline, this book shows how academics and students need to act now if they are to begin to fix this broken system.
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The Death of Homo Economicus
Work, Debt and the Myth of Endless Accumulation
Peter Fleming
Pluto Press, 2017
For neoclassical economists, Homo economicus, or economic human, represents the ideal employee: an energetic worker bee that is a rational yet competitive decision-maker. Alternatively, one could view the concept as a cold and selfish workaholic endlessly seeking the accumulation of money and advancement—a chilling representation of capitalism. Or perhaps, as Peter Fleming argues, Homo economicus does not actually exist at all.
 
In The Death of Homo Economicus, Fleming presents this controversial claim with the same fierce logic and perception that launched his Guardian column into popularity. Fleming argues that as an invented model of a human being, Homo economicus is, in reality, a tool used by economists and capitalists to manage our social world through the state, business, and even family. As workers, we are barraged with constant reminders that we should always strive toward this ideal persona. It’s implied—and sometimes directly stated—that if we don’t then we are failures. Ironically, the people most often encouraged to emulate this model are those most predisposed to fail due to their socioeconomic circumstances: the poor, the unemployed, students, and prisoners.
 
Fleming illuminates why a peculiar proactive negativity now marks everyday life in capitalist societies, and he explores how this warped, unattainable model for workers would cause chaos if enacted to the letter. Timely and revelatory, The Death of Homo Economicus offers a sharp, scathing critique of who we are supposed to be in the workplace and beyond.
 
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The Mythology of Work
How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself
Peter Fleming
Pluto Press, 2015
Once, work was inextricably linked to survival and self-preservation: the farmer ploughed his land so that his family could eat. In contrast, today work has slowly morphed into a painful and meaningless ritual for many, colonizing almost every part of our day, endless and inescapable.
            In The Mythology of Work, Peter Fleming examines how neoliberal society uses the ritual of work—and the threat of its denial—to maintain the late capitalist class order. Work becomes a universal reference point, devoid of any moral or political worth, transforming our society into a factory that never sleeps. Blending critical theory with recent accounts of job-related suicides, office-induced paranoia, fear of relaxation, managerial sadism, and cynical corporate social responsibility campaigns, Fleming paints a bleak picture of a society in which economic and emotional disasters greatly outweigh any professed benefits.
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Marxist Literary Criticism Today
Barbara Foley
Pluto Press, 2019
In the first introduction to Marxist literary criticism in decades, Barbara Foley argues that Marxism continues to offer the best framework for exploring the relationship between literature and society. She lays out in clear terms the principal aspects of Marxist methodology—historical materialism, political economy, and ideology critique—as well as key debates about the nature of literature and the goals of literary criticism and pedagogy. Examining a wide range of texts through the empowering lens of Marxism—from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, from Frederick Douglass’s ‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’ to Annie Proulx’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’—Foley provides a clear and compelling textbook of Marxist literary criticism.
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Talking to North Korea
Ending the Nuclear Standoff
Glyn Ford
Pluto Press, 2018
Few attempts have been made to understand the internal logic of Kim Jong-un’s regime and why life in North Korea is so difficult.
 
This provocative insider’s account blasts apart the myths which paint North Korea as a rogue state run by a mad leader. Informed by extraordinary access to the country's leadership, Glyn Ford investigates the regime from the inside, providing game-changing insights. Acknowledging that North Korea is a deeply flawed and barbaric state, he nonetheless shows that sections of the leadership are desperate to modernize and end their isolation.
 
With chapters on recent developments including the Trump / Kim summit, Ford supports a dialogue between East and West and provides a road map to avert the looming threat of a war that would threaten the lives of millions.
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The Fall of the US Empire
Global Fault-Lines and the Shifting Imperial Order
Vassilis K. Fouskas
Pluto Press, 2012

Whither the US empire? Despite Washington's military supremacy, its economic foundations have been weakening since the Vietnam war – accelerated by the great recession and credit-rating downgrade – and its global authority dented by the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this accessible, punchy text, Vassilis K. Fouskas and Bülent Gökay intervene in the debates that surround the US's status as an Empire. They survey the arguments amongst Marxist and critical scholars, from Immanuel Wallerstein and others who argue that the US is in decline, to those who maintain that it remains a robust superpower. By explaining how America's neo-imperial system of governance has been working since WWII, Fouskas and Gökay link the US's domestic and foreign vulnerabilities.

The Fall of the US Empire argues that the time has come to understand the US empire not by its power but by its systemic vulnerabilities of financialisation, resource depletion and environmental degradation. Its informed and accessible style will have wide appeal to students looking for an introduction to these issues.

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Cyprus
The Post-Imperial Constitution
Vassilis K. Fouskas
Pluto Press, 2009

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Theorizing Social Movements
Joe Foweraker
Pluto Press, 1995

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Bringing It All Back Home
Class, Gender and Power in the Modern Household Today
LastName
Pluto Press, 1994

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Rethinking War and Peace
Diana Francis
Pluto Press, 2004

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Capitalism's Conscience
200 Years of the Guardian
Des Freedman
Pluto Press, 2021
'A lively and well-researched history and critique' - Jonathan Steele, former Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Guardian

Since its inception in Manchester in 1821 as a response to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, the Guardian has been a key institution in the definition and development of liberalism. The stereotype of the 'Guardianista', an environmentally-conscious, Labour-voting, progressively-minded public sector worker endures in the popular mythology of British press history.

Yet the title has a complex lineage and occupies an equivocal position between capital and its opponents. It has both fiercely defended the need for fearless, independent journalism and handed over documents to the authorities; it has carved out a niche for itself in the UK media as a progressive voice but has also consistently diminished more radical projects on the left.

Published to coincide with its 200th anniversary, Capitalism's Conscience brings together historians, journalists and activists in an appraisal of the Guardian's contribution to British politics, society and culture - and its distinctive brand of centrism. Contextualising some of the main controversies in which the title has been implicated, the book offers timely insights into the publication's history, loyalties and political values.
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Peter Fryer
Pluto Press, 1988

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Rhythms of Resistance
African Musical Heritage in Brazil
Peter Fryer
Pluto Press, 2000
African rhythms are at the heart of contemporary black Brazilian music. Surveying a musical legacy that encompasses over 400 years, Rhythms of Resistance traces the development of this rich cultural heritage.

Acclaimed author Peter Fryer describes how slaves, mariners and merchants brought African music from Angola and the ports of East Africa to Latin America. In particular, they brought it to Brazil – today the country with the largest black population of any outside Africa. Fryer examines how the rhythms and beats of Africa were combined with European popular music to create a unique sound and dance tradition. Fryer focuses on the political nature of this musical crossover and the role of an African heritage in the cultural identity of Brazilian blacks today.

Rhythms of Resistance is an absorbing account of a theme in global music and is rich in fascinating historical detail.
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Black People in the British Empire
Peter Fryer
Pluto Press, 2021
'Fantastic … the most important book on Black British history’ - Akala

Black People in the British Empire is a challenge to the official version of British history. It tells the story of Britain's exploitation and oppression of its subject peoples in its colonies, and in particular the people of Africa, Asia and Australasia

Peter Fryer reveals how the ideology of racism was used as justification for acquiring and expanding the Empire; how the British Industrial Revolution developed out of profits from the slave trade; and how the colonies were deliberately de-industrialised to create a market for British manufacturers.

In describing the frequency and the scale of revolts by subject peoples against slavery and foreign domination - and the brutality used in crushing them - Peter Fryer exposes the true history of colonialism, and restores to Black people their central role in Britain's past.
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Black People in the British Empire
Peter Fryer
Pluto Press, 2021

'Fantastic … the most important book on Black British history’ - Akala

Black People in the British Empire is a challenge to the official version of British history. It tells the story of Britain's exploitation and oppression of its subject peoples in its colonies, and in particular the people of Africa, Asia and Australasia

Peter Fryer reveals how the ideology of racism was used as justification for acquiring and expanding the Empire; how the British Industrial Revolution developed out of profits from the slave trade; and how the colonies were deliberately de-industrialised to create a market for British manufacturers.

In describing the frequency and the scale of revolts by subject peoples against slavery and foreign domination - and the brutality used in crushing them - Peter Fryer exposes the true history of colonialism, and restores to Black people their central role in Britain's past.

[more]

front cover of Staying Power
Staying Power
The History of Black People in Britain
Peter Fryer
Pluto Press, 2018
Staying Power is a panoramic history of black Britons. First published in 1984 amid race riots and police brutality, Fryer’s history performed a deeply political act, revealing how Africans, Asians, and their descendants had been erased from British history.
            Stretching back to the Roman conquest, encompassing the court of Henry VIII, and following a host of characters from the pioneering nurse and war hero Mary Seacole to the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Peter Fryer paints a picture of two thousand years of black presence in Britain. By rewriting black Britons into British history, showing where they influenced political traditions, social institutions, and cultural life, Staying Power presented a radical challenge to racist and nationalist agendas. This edition includes a new foreword by Gary Younge examining the book’s continued significance in shaping black British identity today, alongside the now-classic introduction by Paul Gilroy.
 
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front cover of Digital Demagogue
Digital Demagogue
Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter
Christian Fuchs
Pluto Press, 2018
We’re all familiar by now with the ways that Donald Trump uses digital media to communicate, from the ridiculous to the terrifying. This book digs deeper into the use of those tools in politics to show how they have facilitated the rise of authoritarianism, nationalism, and right-wing ideologies around the world. Christian Fuchs here applies an updated Marxist frame, along with insights drawn from the Frankfurt School, to show the pernicious role of social media in the hands of nationalist politicians, and the ways in which it has been used to spread right-wing ideology far and wide, and make it seem like an ordinary part of contemporary political discourse. Fuchs diagnoses this problem in stark terms, but he doesn’t stop there: he also lays out ways to fight it, and analyzes the prospects for pushing past capitalism and renewing the left.
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front cover of Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism
Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism
Christian Fuchs
Pluto Press, 2019
The 'end of history' has not taken place. Ideological and economic crisis and the status quo of neoliberal capitalism since 2008 demand a renewed engagement with Marx. But if we are to effectively resist capitalism we must truly understand Marx: Marxism today must theorise how communication technologies, media representation and digitalisation have come to define contemporary capitalism. There is an urgent need for critical, Marxian-inspired knowledge as a foundation for changing the world and the way we communicate from digital capitalism towards communicative socialism and digital communism. Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism does exactly this. Delving into Marx's most influential works, such as Capital, The Grundrisse, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, The German Ideology and The Communist Manifesto, Christian Fuchs draws out Marx's concepts of machinery, technology, communication and ideology, all of which anticipate major themes of the digital age. A concise and coherent work of Marxist media and communication theory, the book ultimately demonstrates the relevance of Marx to an age of digital and communicative capitalism.
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Mythical Pasts, Elusive Futures
History and Society in an Anxious Age
Frank Furedi
Pluto Press, 1992

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New Ideology of Imperialism
Renewing the Moral Imperative
Frank Furedi
Pluto Press, 1994

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The Silent War
Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race
Frank Furedi
Pluto Press, 1998


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