Bøger udgivet af Verso Books

Shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the 19th century, rather than in biblical times when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation. This book demonstrates the construction of a nationalist myth and the collective mystification that this requires.

Presents the changes in contemporary business culture. Using an analysis of the management texts that have formed the thinking of employers in their reorganization of business, this book traces the contours of a new spirit of capitalism. It shows that from the middle of the 1970s, capitalism abandoned the hierarchical Fordist work structure.

A comprehensive philosophy of contemporary life and politics, by one of the sharpest critics of the present

Following the death of Henry Kissinger, his legacy is assessed

What is money, where does it come from, and who controls it?In this accessible, brilliantly argued book, leading political economist Ann Pettifor explains in straightforward terms history's most misunderstood invention: the money system. Pettifor argues that democracies can, and indeed must, reclaim control over money production and restrain the out-of-control finance sector so that it serves the interests of society, as well as the needs of the ecosystem.The Production of Money examines and assesses popular alternative debates on, and innovations in, money, such as ';green QE' and ';helicopter money.' She sets out the possibility of linking the money in our pockets (or on our smartphones) to the improvements we want to see in the world around us.

How did the dynamic economic system we know as capitalism develop among the peasants and lords of feudal Europe?In The Origin of Capitalism, a now-classic work of history, Ellen Meiksins Wood offers readers a clear and accessible introduction to the theories and debates concerning the birth of capitalism, imperialism, and the modern nation state. Capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the relationship between humans and nature.

How capitalism became caught up in the carbon-burning trap

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it?Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic rootsand therefore requires a radical response.

Henri Lefebvre's magnum opus: a monumental exploration of contemporary society.Henri Lefebvre's three-volume Critique of Everyday Life is perhaps the richest, most prescient work by one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. Written at the birth of post-war consumerism, the Critique was a philosophical inspiration for the 1968 student revolution in France and is considered to be the founding text of all that we know as cultural studies, as well as a major influence on the fields of contemporary philosophy, geography, sociology, architecture, political theory and urbanism. A work of enormous range and subtlety, Lefebvre takes as his starting-point and guide the ';trivial' details of quotidian experience: an experience colonized by the commodity, shadowed by inauthenticity, yet one which remains the only source of resistance and change.This is an enduringly radical text, untimely today only in its intransigence and optimism.

What is a homeland, and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for them throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land?Following the acclaimed and controversial Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest running national struggle of the twentieth-century. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand's account dissects the concept of ';historical right' and tracks the invention of the modern geopolitical concept of the ';Land of Israel' by nineteenth cntury Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of israel; it is also what is threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

From Athens to New York, recent mass movements around the world have challenged austerity and authoritarianism with expressions of real democracy. For more than forty years, Murray Bookchin developed these democratic aspirations into a new left politics based on popular assemblies, influencing a wide range of political thinkers and social movements.With a foreword by the best-selling author of The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Next Revolution brings together Bookchin's essays on freedom and direct democracy for the first time, offering a bold political vision that can move us from protest to social transformation.

Traces the epochal shifts in the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period. This book concludes with an examination of the forces which have shaped and are poised to undermine America's world power.

Why speed, flow, and direct expression now dominate cultural style

POLITICIANS AND SCIENTISTS HAVE DEBATED CLIMATE CHANGE FOR CENTURIES IN TIMES OF RAPID CHANGE

A provocative study of the ‘non-space’ which defines our age’s love for excess of information and space

In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How should we name, map and respond to this state of affairs?

This isn't a book for people who want to fix Big Tech. It's a detailed disassembly manual for people who want to dismantle it.

Did NATO cause the crisis in Ukraine?

All hail the new masters of Capitalism: How asset managers acquired the world

An argument for bold action to halt climate destruction, adapted for young people from Andreas Malm's best-selling book by an experienced educator.

The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a brilliant fictional journey through Western political philosophy by one of our most original thinkers. Professor Caritat, a middle-aged Candide, walks naively through the neighbouring countries of Utilitaria, Communitaria and Libertaria, in his quest to find the best of all possible worlds. Cut loose from the confines of his ivory tower, this wandering professor is made to confront the perplexed state of modern thinking in this dazzling comedy of ideas.

Twenty-four economists discuss how they promote their commitments to egalitarianism, democracy and ecological sanity through their research, activism and policy engagement

Groundbreaking analysis of the birth of racism in AmericaThe Invention of the White Race is a comprehensive, tour de force analysis of the cruel ingenuity that gave birth to racism and made our modern world. Long heralded as a classic study of the origin of white privilege from the activist who first coined the term, Theodore W. Allen’s work remains an indispensable resource for making sense of our conflicted present, a reference point for everyone from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Nell Irvin Painter to Reni-Eddo Lodge and Aníbal Quijano. When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no “white” people there. Nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years. In this seminal work, available for the first time here in a single volume, Allen tells how America’s ruling classes created the category of the “white race” as a means of social control. Since that early invention, white privileges have enforced the myth of racial superiority, a fact central to maintaining rulingclass domination over ordinary working people of all colors throughout the history of the Atlantic world. Spanning centuries and nations, Allen’s analysis takes us from the plantations of Northern Ireland and the mines of Peru to the sugar fields of Brazil and colonies of Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. His account records lives of hardscrabble immigrant survival, Faustian bargains with white supremacy, the tragedy of human bondage, and the stubborn, unbreakable resistance to the global color line. Available for the first time in one volume.

A wide-ranging exploration of the present, and the future, of the Unconcious.

A cultural and intellectual balance-sheet of the twentieth century's age of revolutions