Passion, Craft and Method in Comparative Politics ed G Munck and R Snyder
(2007) A brilliant book which focuses on the writings of a range of work from
people such as Almond, Barrington Moore, Lipjart, Skocpol and Linz Understanding Socialism Richard Wolff (2019) A short (145 pp) book which
superbly demonstrates the power of the concept
Introduction
Chapter I A Brief History: How Socialism Got to its Here and Now p9
Chapter 2 What ls Socialism? p27
Chapter 3 Capitalism and Socialism: Struggles and Transitions p41
Chapter 4 Russia and China: Major Experiments in Constructing Socialism p55
Chapter 5 Two Anti-socialist Purges: Fascism and Anti-communism p87
Chapter 6 Socialism's Future and Worker Co-ops p109
ln this book's lntroduction we referred to socialism as a yearning for something better than capitalism. As capitalism has changed and as experiments with socialism have accumulated - both good and bad - socialist yearnings, too, have changed. However, a bizarre disconnect surfaces as capitalism's gross dysfunction during and since its 2008 crash brings socialism again into public discussion. Large numbers of people debate the pros and cons of socialism as if what it is in the 21st century were identical to what it was in the 20tn. ls it reasonable to presume that the last century's two purges, the Cold War, the implosion of the USSR, and the explosive emergence of the People's Republic of China inspired no critical reflections on socialism by socialists themselves? No. The remarkable lack of awareness of new and different definitions of socialism since 1945, their elaborations, and their implications reflects the fact that sustained engagement with socialism was taboo in the US for decades. That people are now mostly unaware of socialism's evolution in theory, practice, and self-criticism over the last half century is therefore no surprise. The taboo against socialism resulted in a mass retreat from engaging with developments in socialism and connecting these developments to the problems of modern capitalism. Socialism rather became one of two things in the minds of most. On the one hand, many politicians, academics, and media pundits portrayed socialism as coinciding with Soviet efforts to subvert global capitalism. Socialism for such people meant moving from private to state-owned and -operated workplaces and from market to centrally planned distributions of resources and products. These same people equated opposing capitalism with opposing democracy and freedom. This equation was then repeated endlessly in an effort to make it "common sense." On the other hand, socialism was the name adopted by Western European - and especially Scandinavian – "welfarestate" governments, which aimed to regulate markets comprised still mostly of private capitalist firms. This led many people to associate socialism with robust public spending and government intervention in the marketplace. Consequently, socialism was viewed as more or less extreme, depending on whether it involved state-owned and -operated firms with centrat planning at one end or merely welfare-state policies with market regulation on the other.
Ch 7 Conclusion p127
Global Statesman – how Gordon Brown took New Labour to the world David
Webber (2017)
Placing increased emphasis upon ‘competition, supervision and the right conditions for growth’, Brown knelt at the altar of the market as the only means through which poverty and underdevelopment might be addressed. Under Brown’s close watch, many of New Labour’s international development policies adopted precisely the self-same neoliberal doctrine preached by the ‘post-Washington Consensus’. This revised orthodoxy, still based upon the principles of free trade and private investment that lay at the heart of the original Washington Consensus, now required national governments to put in place a much more robust and transparent regulatory framework.
This ostensibly new set of political and economic reforms would promote both stability – so as to reduce the exposure of countries to the financial crises that had, since the start of the 1970s, punctured the global economy – and growth. If investors could be made to feel more confi dent that their capital would be ‘safe’ in a particular country, they would be more likely to scale up their investment and contribute more towards the economic growth of that country and, concomitantly, its development. Crucially, insofar as Gordon Brown was concerned, although an anti-poverty agenda provided the pretext for his appeal for a ‘new economic architecture’ (as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5), it was, in reality, his own general growth theory that informed this framework.
The Global Casino – how Wall Street gambles with people and the planet Ann
Pettifor (2026)
President Roosevelt was explicit about these enemies of democracy. In a famous speech in Madison Square Garden in 1936, he explained that his administration had to ‘struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. ‘They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We now know that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.’
Government by organised money has become unbearable for human society. Financial markets that dictate high prices of unaffordable services essential to humanity – services like water, housing, energy, health and education – have triggered powerful political reactions. Society has turned to strongmen, dictators and authoritarians for ‘protection’ from markets. The reasoning, as Karl Polanyi explained in 1944, is straightforward: government by markets could not exist for long before ‘annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man [sic] and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness’. Inevitably, society took measures to protect itself, he continued. But whatever measures it took – for example, the election of Donald Trump, who promised protection from Chinese and Mexican markets – impaired those markets, disorganised industrial life and endangered society in other ways.
If society is to restore stability to the economic system, to manage climate breakdown and the power of the fossil interest, then we must first transform, regulate and manage the Global Casino. Only then can we hope to build a fairer and more stable world order.
What Is to Be Done?
This book is about seeing, and paying attention to, the international financial and monetary system and its role in accelerating the exploitation of people and the extraction of the earth’s precious finite assets. We must base our comprehension and understanding on this simple reality: the globalised financial system is man-made and designed to be remote and unaccountable. Its design is intentional. The ultimate hidden truth of the world, David Graeber wrote, is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently. Like the divine right of kings, it is a system that can and will be transformed. How can we change a system that economists systematically ignore, one whose governors are determined to evade public accountability? First there must be widespread understanding of the international financial system and of the fact it is designed and governed to serve the interests of the wealthy –the 1 per cent. Only with that understanding will we be able to organise, to once again redesign the system to serve all of society and the ecosystem.
We know that can be done because it has been transformed before, in the blink of an eye. The system was redesigned, reregulated and even transformed both before and after the Second World War. And again in 1971 when President Nixon unilaterally, and virtually overnight, dismantled the global Bretton Woods system and launched what came to be known as ‘globalisation’. Another catastrophic global war would inevitably lead to radical change. But we need not accept that inevitability. I believe that with wider understanding, political will and radical action, the system can be transformed and remade. This book is mainly concerned with the first aim, throwing light on the invisible, globalised financial system, its evolution over the past century and its powerful masters. I then outline the impact of the financial system on pensions, food, energy and housing, as well as on the climate. Finally drawing on the wisdom of economists and historians, I propose ways in which the international financial system can be transformed and made subordinate to the interests of society and the ecosystem. Scientists and the UN have warned that if human civilisation is to survive, we must cut greenhouse gas emissions and restore stability to the global climate system. Such a worthy aim is futile and delusional until we, the people, take back control, taming and subordinating the money system to serve the interests of both the biosphere and humanity, not just, as at present, the interests of wealth.
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