mkmk's bookshelf: essentials-to-read-x en-US Wed, 29 Jan 2025 01:14:54 -0800 60 mkmk's bookshelf: essentials-to-read-x 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)]]> 134443
Underpinning the analysis is the notion of the `risk society′. The changing nature of society′s relation to production and distribution is related to the environmental impact as a totalizing, globalizing economy based on scientific and technical knowledge becomes more central to social organization and social conflict.]]> 272 Ulrich Beck 0803983468 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.85 1986 Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)
author: Ulrich Beck
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism]]> 1237300 The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.]]> 558 Naomi Klein 0805079831 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.28 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
author: Naomi Klein
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/03
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]]> <![CDATA[A Dying Colonialism (Fanon, Frantz)]]> 66935 181 Frantz Fanon 0802150276 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.26 1959 A Dying Colonialism (Fanon, Frantz)
author: Frantz Fanon
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming]]> 25614450 How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power.

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess?

In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy—but rather superior control of subordinate labour. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.

]]> 496 Andreas Malm 1784781290 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.32 2015 Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming
author: Andreas Malm
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2015
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]]> <![CDATA[Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future]]> 56769578 Finalist for the 2022 George Perkins Marsh Prize
Finalist for the 2022 Hagley Prize in Business History

An authoritative and eye-opening history that examines how Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system. Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018―but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. When researchers found trace amounts of the firm’s blockbuster herbicide in breakfast cereal bowls, Monsanto faced public outcry. Award-winning historian Bartow J. Elmore shows how the Roundup story is just one of the troubling threads of Monsanto’s past, many told here and woven together for the first time. A company employee sitting on potentially explosive information who weighs risking everything to tell his story. A town whose residents are urged to avoid their basements because Monsanto’s radioactive waste laces their homes’ foundations. Factory workers who peel off layers of their skin before accepting cash bonuses to continue dirty jobs. An executive wrestling with the ethics of selling a profitable product he knew was toxic. Incorporating global fieldwork, interviews with company employees, and untapped corporate and government records, Elmore traces Monsanto’s astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agribusiness powerhouse. Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products―including PCBs and Agent Orange―to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology. Skyrocketing sales of Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready system stunned even those in the seed trade, who marveled at the influx of cash and lavish incentives into their sleepy sector. But as new data emerges about the Roundup system, and as Bayer faces a tide of lawsuits over Monsanto products past and present, Elmore’s urgent history shows how our food future is still very much tethered to the company’s chemical past. 10 illustrations]]> 400 Bartow J. Elmore 1324002042 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.05 Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future
author: Bartow J. Elmore
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average rating: 4.05
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]]> <![CDATA[Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism]]> 1032019 The World Is Flat head-on—a crisp, contrarian history of global capitalism.

One economist has called Ha-Joon Chang "the most exciting thinker our profession has turned out in the past fifteen years." With Bad Samaritans, this provocative scholar bursts into the debate on globalization and economic justice. Using irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a battery of examples, Chang blasts holes in the "World Is Flat" orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and other liberal economists who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers—from the U.S. to Britain to his native Korea—all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry. We have conveniently forgotten this fact, telling ourselves a fairy tale about the magic of free trade and—via our proxies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization—ramming policies that suit ourselves down the throat of the developing world.

Unlike typical economists who construct models of how the marketplace should work, Chang examines the past: what has actually happened. His pungently contrarian history demolishes one pillar after another of free-market mythology. We treat patents and copyrights as sacrosanct—but developed our own industries by studiously copying others' technologies. We insist that centrally planned economies stifle growth—but many developing countries had higher GDP growth before they were pressured into deregulating their economies. Both justice and common sense, Chang argues, demand that we reevaluate the policies we force on nations that are struggling to follow in our footsteps.]]> 288 Ha-Joon Chang 1596913991 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.19 2007 Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
author: Ha-Joon Chang
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2007
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]]> <![CDATA[The Revolutionary 카지노싸이트 of Marxism-Leninism]]> 178037958
Marxism-Leninism is the partisan science of the working class —a class that is moving from being a class in itself to a class for itself. Workers are studying Marxist books all over the world. For workers in the U.S., oppressed people and others who are sick of capitalism, The Revolutionary 카지노싸이트 of Marxism-Leninism provides some excellent reading.]]> 282 J. Sykes mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.75 The Revolutionary 카지노싸이트 of Marxism-Leninism
author: J. Sykes
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.75
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]]> <![CDATA[The Collapse of Complex Societies]]> 477 264 Joseph A. Tainter 052138673X mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.13 1988 The Collapse of Complex Societies
author: Joseph A. Tainter
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World]]> 53328332 The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we must face up to its primary cause: capitalism. Our economic system is based on perpetual expansion, which is devastating the living world. There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: degrowth.

If we want to have a shot at surviving the Anthropocene, we need to restore the balance. We need to change how we see the world and our place within it, shifting from a philosophy of domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity with our planet’s ecology. We need to evolve beyond the dusty dogmas of capitalism to a new system that’s fit for the twenty-first century.

But what about jobs? What about health? What about progress? This book tackles these questions and offers an inspiring vision for what a post-capitalist economy could look like. An economy that’s more just, more caring, and more fun. An economy that enables human flourishing while reversing ecological breakdown. By taking less, we can become more.]]> 336 Jason Hickel 1786091216 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.51 2020 Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
author: Jason Hickel
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2020
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]]> What Is Posthumanism? 6968406
Exploring how both critical thought along with cultural practice have reacted to this radical repositioning, Cary Wolfe-one of the founding figures in the field of animal studies and posthumanist theory-ranges across bioethics, cognitive science, animal ethics, gender, and disability to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of ourselves and our world. Then, in performing posthumanist readings of such diverse works as Temple Grandin's writings, Wallace Stevens's poetry, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, the architecture of Diller+Scofidio, and David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, he shows how this philosophical sensibility can transform art and culture.

For Wolfe, a vibrant, rigorous posthumanism is vital for addressing questions of ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems and their inclusions and exclusions, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity. In What Is Posthumanism? he carefully distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality. In doing so, Wolfe reveals that it is humanism, not the human in all its embodied and prosthetic complexity, that is left behind in posthumanist thought.]]> 357 Cary Wolfe 0816666156 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.70 2009 What Is Posthumanism?
author: Cary Wolfe
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2009
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]]> <![CDATA[Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism]]> 60473842 300 Kōhei Saitō 1108933548 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.94 Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism
author: Kōhei Saitō
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.94
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]]> <![CDATA[Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene]]> 22822953
Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter. From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labor might yet build. From the Russian revolution, Wark unearths the work of Alexander Bogdanov—Lenin’s rival—as well as the great Proletkult writer and engineer Andrey Platonov.

The Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for the new organizational challenges of our time. From deep within the Californian military-entertainment complex, Wark retrieves Donna Haraway’s cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian utopia as powerful resources for rethinking and remaking the world that climate change has wrought. Molecular Red proposes an alternative realism, where hope is found in what remains and endures.]]> 304 McKenzie Wark 1781688273 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.64 2015 Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene
author: McKenzie Wark
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work (English and French Edition)]]> 486962 English, French (translation) 120 André Gorz 0896082423 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.84 1980 Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work (English and French Edition)
author: André Gorz
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1980
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]]> <![CDATA[Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm]]> 61006 In an era of privatism, kicks, introversion, and post-modernist nihilism, Murray Bookchin forcefully examines the growing nihilistic trends that threaten to undermine the revolutionary tradition of anarchism and co-opt its fragments into a harmless personalistic, yuppie ideology of social accommodation that presents no threat to the existing powers that be. Includes the essay, "The Left That Was."
]]> 86 Murray Bookchin 187317683X mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.35 1995 Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
author: Murray Bookchin
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.35
book published: 1995
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]]> <![CDATA[Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Working Classics)]]> 312957 Library Journal

Murray Bookchin has been an active voice in the ecology and anarchist movements for more than 40 years.]]> 242 Murray Bookchin 1904859062 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.98 1971 Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Working Classics)
author: Murray Bookchin
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford Handbooks)]]> 26401334
Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists--including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing--and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.]]> 682 Teena Gabrielson 0199685274 mkmk 0 0.0 2016 The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford Handbooks)
author: Teena Gabrielson
name: mkmk
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Marx's Capital 186818 216 Ben Fine 074532049X mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.04 2004 Marx's Capital
author: Ben Fine
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2004
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]]> Why Marx Was Right 13220896
In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism—that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on—he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are. In a world in which capitalism has been shaken to its roots by some major crises, Why Marx Was Right is as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. Written with Eagleton's familiar wit, humor, and clarity, it will attract an audience far beyond the confines of academia.]]> 258 Terry Eagleton 0300181531 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.84 2011 Why Marx Was Right
author: Terry Eagleton
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2011
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles (Red Letter)]]> 53425730 While accounting for violence and disaster, Harvey also chronicles hope and possibility. By way of conversations about neoliberalism, capitalism, globalization, the environment, technology, social movements and crises like COVID-19, he outlines, with characteristic brilliance, how socialist alternatives are being imagined under very difficult circumstances.
In understanding the economic, political and social dimensions of the crisis, Harvey’s analysis in  The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles  will be of strategic importance to anyone wanting to both understand and change the world.]]> 224 David Harvey 0745342086 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.12 The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles (Red Letter)
author: David Harvey
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average rating: 4.12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism]]> 7502073 Beginning in the 1970s, profitability pressures led the capitalist class in advanced countries to shift away from investment in industrial production at home toward the higher returns that financial products promised. Accompanying this was a shift towards privatization, an absolute decline in the bargaining power of labor, and the dispersion of production throughout the developing world. The decades-long and ongoing decline in wages that accompanied this turn produced a dilemma: how can goods--especially real estate--sell at the same rate as before if workers are making less in relative terms? The answer was a huge expansion of credit that fueled the explosive growth of both the financial industry and the real estate market. When one key market collapsed--real estate--the other one did as well, and social devastation resulted.
Harvey places today's crisis in the broadest possible context: the historical development of global capitalism itself from the industrial era onward. Moving deftly between this history and the unfolding of the current crisis, he concentrates on how such crises both devastate workers and create openings for challenging the system's legitimacy. The battle now will be between the still-powerful forces that want to reconstitute the system of yesterday and those that want to replace it with one that prizes social justice and economic equality. The new afterword focuses on the continuing impact of the crisis and the response to it in 2010.
One of Huffington Post's Best Social and Political Awareness Books of 2010
Winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for 2010
Praise for the Hardcover:
"A lucid and penetrating account of how the power of capital shapes our world."
--Andrew Gamble, Independent
"Elegant... entertainingly swashbuckling... Harvey's analysis is interesting not only for the breadth of his scholarship but his recognition of the system's strengths."
--John Gapper, Financial Times
]]> 296 David Harvey 1846683084 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.03 2010 The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism
author: David Harvey
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2010
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]]> <![CDATA[Four Futures: Life After Capitalism]]> 22551901 An exhilarating exploration into the utopias and dystopias that could develop from present society

Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism, socialism and exterminism might actually entail.

Could the current rise of real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender’s Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there’s no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of “likes,” wouldn’t rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.]]> 150 Peter Frase 1781688133 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.76 2015 Four Futures: Life After Capitalism
author: Peter Frase
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2015
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]]> On Ideology 1450671
The publication of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most controversial figures in the Western Marxist tradition, and one of the most influential renewals of Marxist thought. Collected here are Althusser’s most significant philosophical writings from the late sixties and through the seventies. Intended to contribute, in his own words, to a ‘left-wing critique of Stalinism that would help put some substance back into the revolutionary project here in the West’, they are the record of a shared history. At the same time they chart Althusser’s critique of the theoretical system unveiled in his own major works, and his developing practice of philosophy as a ‘revolutionary weapon’.

The collection opens with two lucid early articles - "Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical Formation" and "On Theoretical Work." The title piece - Althusser’s celebrated lectures in the "Philosophy Course for Scientists" — is the fullest exploration of his new definition of philosophy as politics in the realm of theory, a conception which is further developed in "Lenin and Philosophy." "Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?" provides an invaluable account of Althusser’s intellectual development. The volume concludes with two little-known late pieces - "The Transformation of Philosophy," in which the paradoxical history of Marxist philosopher is investigated; and "Marxism today," a sober balance-sheet of the Marxist tradition. Attesting to the unique place that Althusser has occupied in modern intellectual history - between a tradition of Marxism that he sought to reconstruct, and a "post-Marxism" that has eclipsed its predecessor - these texts are indispensable reading.]]> 179 Louis Althusser 1844672026 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.02 1984 On Ideology
author: Louis Althusser
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1984
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]]> <![CDATA[The Social Atom: Why The Rich Get Richer, Cheats Get Caught, And Your Neighbour Usually Looks Like You]]> 6068059 256 Mark Buchanan 0462099148 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.67 2007 The Social Atom: Why The Rich Get Richer, Cheats Get Caught, And Your Neighbour Usually Looks Like You
author: Mark Buchanan
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything]]> 301931
The answer: Freakonomics. It's at the heart of everything we do and the things that affect us daily, from sex to crime, parenting to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. And it's all about using information about the world around us to get to the heart of what's really happening under the surface of everyday life.

Now updated with the authors' New York Times columns and blog entries, this cult bestseller will show you how, by unravelling your life's secret codes, you can discover a totally new way of seeing the world.
--back cover]]> 320 Steven D. Levitt 0141019018 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.82 2005 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
author: Steven D. Levitt
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2005
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]]> <![CDATA[Marx's Ghost: Midnight Conversations on Changing the World]]> 13500967 176 Charles Derber 1612050662 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.93 2011 Marx's Ghost: Midnight Conversations on Changing the World
author: Charles Derber
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality]]> 11758943
Rather than focus attention on the hierarchy of jobs and power—where most jobs require relatively little education, and the poor enjoy very little political power—money is funneled into educational endeavors that ultimately do nothing to challenge established social structures, and in fact reinforce them. And when educational programs prove ineffective at reducing inequality, the ones whom these programs were intended to help end up blaming themselves. Marsh’s struggle to grasp the connection between education, poverty, and inequality is both powerful and poignant.]]> 328 John Marsh 1583672435 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.94 2011 Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality
author: John Marsh
name: mkmk
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
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]]> THE CHAOS MACHINE 71497354 0 Max Fisher 152941637X mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.25 2022 THE CHAOS MACHINE
author: Max Fisher
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Democracy at Work: Contract, Status and Post-Industrial Justice]]> 89167754 180 Ruth Dukes 1509548998 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.00 Democracy at Work: Contract, Status and Post-Industrial Justice
author: Ruth Dukes
name: mkmk
average rating: 4.00
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]]> <![CDATA[Critical Encounters: Capitalism, Democracy, Ideas]]> 55035615 An anthology of long-read book reviews by one of the European left’s foremost political economistsFrom the acclaimed author of How Will Capitalism End? comes an omnibus of long-form critical essays engaging with leading economists and thinkers. Critical Encounters draws on Wolfgang Streeck’s inimitable writing for the London Review of Books and New Left Review, among other publications. It opens with treatments of two contrasting historical eras—factory capitalism and financialization—and three of the world’s major the United States, France and Germany. A middle section surveys the hollowing out of Western democracies and reviews Yanis Varoufakis’s “strange but indispensable” memoir of the eurozone crisis. Delving into the world of ideas, Streeck discusses the work of Quinn Slobodian, Mark Blyth, Jürgen Habermas and Perry Anderson. Finally, he zooms out to compare his home discipline of sociology to natural history, giving a remarkable and non-deterministic reading of Charles Darwin. In the preface, Streeck reflects on the art (or craft) of book reviewing and the continuing merits of the book form. Critical Encounters also includes a series of “Letters from Europe,” penned as the coronavirus descended upon the Continent.]]> 225 Wolfgang Streeck 1788738764 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.72 Critical Encounters: Capitalism, Democracy, Ideas
author: Wolfgang Streeck
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]]> <![CDATA[How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System]]> 25733863 The provocative political thinker asks if it will be with a bang or a whimper

After years of ill health, capitalism is now in a critical condition. Growth has given way to stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the money economy has all but evaporated.

In How Will Capitalism End?, the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues that the world is about to change. The marriage between democracy and capitalism, ill-suited partners brought together in the shadow of World War Two, is coming to an end. The regulatory institutions that once restrained the financial sector’s excesses have collapsed and, after the final victory of capitalism at the end of the Cold War, there is no political agency capable of rolling back the liberalization of the markets.

Ours has become a world defined by declining growth, oligarchic rule, a shrinking public sphere, institutional corruption and international anarchy, and no cure to these ills is at hand.]]> 272 Wolfgang Streeck 1784784036 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.87 2016 How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System
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]]> <![CDATA[Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism]]> 23898262
In this book, compiled from his Adorno Lectures given in Frankfurt, Wolfgang Streeck lays bare the roots of the present financial, fiscal and economic crisis, seeing it as part of the long neoliberal transformation of postwar capitalism that began in the 1970s. Linking up with the crisis theories of that decade, he analyses the subsequent tensions and conflicts involving states, governments, voters and capitalist interests—a process in which the defining focus of the European state system has shifted from taxation through debt to budgetary “consolidation.” The book then ends by exploring the prospects for a restoration of social and economic stability. Buying Time is a model of enlightenment. It shows that something deeply disturbing underlies the current situation: a metamorphosis of the whole relationship between democracy and capitalism.]]> 348 Wolfgang Streeck 178168619X mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.06 2013 Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
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]]> Bullshit Jobs: A Theory 34466958 From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences.

Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.

There are millions of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.

Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.]]> 335 David Graeber 150114331X mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.03 2018 Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
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]]> <![CDATA[Steal As Much As You Can: How to Win the Culture Wars in an Age of Austerity]]> 45688217
The 2010s have been a double-edged decade. Socioeconomic factors have led to the widespread and increased disenfranchisement of poorer people from the mainstream media and the institutions shaping it. This has coincided with a growing number of people from low income backgrounds also receiving better educations than ever before, and having the means at their disposal to both name and resent it.

Steal as much as you can is the story of how this bright generation came to be, and what effective means are still at their disposal to challenge the establishment and ultimately win. By rejecting the established routines of achieving prosperity, and by stealing what you can from them on the way, this book offers hope to anyone who feels increasingly frustrated by our increasingly unequal society.]]> 300 Nathalie Olah 1912248565 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.88 Steal As Much As You Can: How to Win the Culture Wars in an Age of Austerity
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]]> How to Blow Up a Pipeline 51686708
In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines.

Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has occurred, from the democratic revolutions overthrowing dictators to the movement against apartheid and for women’s suffrage, Malm argues that the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only route for revolutionary change. In a braided narrative that moves from the forests of Germany and the streets of London to the deserts of Iraq, Malm offers us an incisive discussion of the politics and ethics of pacifism and violence, democracy and social change, strategy and tactics, and a movement compelled by both the heart and the mind. Here is how we fight in a world on fire.]]> 208 Andreas Malm 1839760257 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.94 2021 How to Blow Up a Pipeline
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]]> <![CDATA[Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications]]> 77985 488 Herman E. Daly 1559633123 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 4.16 Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
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]]> <![CDATA[Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet]]> 6489716
The modern economy is reliant on economic growth for stability. When growth falters, politicians panic, businesses fail, people lose jobs, and recession looms. Tim Jackson argues, however, that continual growth is just not possible, not sustainable—to believe so is ignoring our knowledge of the finite resource base and fragile ecology in which we live.

The book starts with a compelling analysis of the consequences—for the planet and for people’s wellbeing—of the relentless pursuit of economic growth and material goods. It illustrates why a return to business as usual after the current financial crisis is not an option. Prosperity for a few founded on ecological destruction and persistent social injustice is no foundation for a civilized society.

The current economic crisis presents a unique opportunity to invest in change and a future that delivers lasting prosperity for the predicted 9 billion people who will inhabit the earth in 2050. The author—a leading expert and advisor to the UK government—concludes by outlining pathways towards a sustainable economy. It involves radically changing our “shop until you drop” mentality, as well as engaging other disruptive economic practices. Jackson doesn’t claim this will be easy, but points out that while action is urgent, it is possible.

The book opens up dialogue on the most urgent task of our times—the challenge of a new prosperity encompassing our ability to flourish as human beings—within the ecological limits of a finite planet.]]> 286 Tim Jackson 1844078949 mkmk 0 to-read, essentials-to-read-x 3.94 2009 Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet
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]]> <![CDATA[Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back]]> 60098290 A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media

Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)--or both.

In Culture Heist, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue that thanks to "chokepoint capitalism," exploitative businesses create insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that rightfully belongs to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon's role in radically changing publishing's economics, to the influence of Spotify in leveraging digital rights management, these few vicious monopsonists have lobbied for more barriers for new entrants.

By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow first deftly show how powerful corporations construct "anti-competitive flywheels" designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.

In the book's second half, Giblin and Doctorow explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.
Culture Heist is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that's been siphoned away--before it's too late.]]> 312 Rebecca Giblin 0807007064 mkmk 0 essentials-to-read-x, to-read 4.24 2022 Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back
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