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Verso at The World Transformed 2019

To celebrate the launch of The World Transformed 2019 programme we're offering 50% off all our essential Labour reading!

Verso Books30 August 2019

Verso at The World Transformed 2019

The World Transformed 2019 will be a four day fringe festival from September 21st-24th alongside the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. Across ten venues there will be a series of talks, skill shares, debates, plays and parties that’ll redefine what it means to do politics and debate new ideas that’ll soon shape the future of Britain.

The programme has just been released online and Jeremy Corbyn says it’s the “most exciting yet”. Speaking at this year's The World Transformed are Verso authors John McDonnell, Ann PettiforMaya GoodfellowMolly Smith and Juno MacLynne SegalDanny DorlingRichard SeymourAaron BastaniPaul MasonNisha KapoorTariq AliOwen JonesLeo PanitchBhaskar SunkaraGeorge Monbiot and Frances Ryan.

Over the course of the four days, hundreds of festival attendees will build a ‘Manifesto For The Movement’ - a radical document that will be presented to MPs at the end of the festival. We’ll hear from #AbolishEton on their viral campaign to end private education, radical US union National Nurses Unite on how to resist the Americanisation of the NHS, and Labour for a Green New Deal on how we can bring a Green New Deal to the UK.

If you can't make it though, fear not as we're offering 50% off all our essential Labour Party reading on our website until Tuesday 24th!

50% off until September 24 (23.59 BST)

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A different kind of politics for a new kind of society—beyond work, scarcity and capitalism. 

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Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into this concise and tightly argued manifesto: analyzing the varieties of anticapitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and an unparalleled guide to help us get there

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Our economy is rigged in favour of a wealthy elite. We need a new approach: an economics for the many.

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How the law harms sex workers—and what they want instead.

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The austerity crisis and threat to disability rights.

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Fully updated new edition: Why we cannot afford the rich in post Brexit Britain.

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For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda—and for the first time in Labour’s history, it defines the leadership.

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The anatomy of Britain on the edge of Brexit, by Orwell Prize–winning journalist. 

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The extradition of terror suspects reveals the worst features of the security state.

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Bestselling investigation into the myth and reality of working-class life in contemporary Britain.

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From one of the most prominent voices on the American left, a galvanizing argument for why we need socialism today.

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What does the good life—and the good society—look like in the twenty-first century?

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 Argues against the assertion that there is no alternative to neo-liberalism.

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A passionate call to rediscover the political and emotional joy that emerges when we share our lives. 

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Why we misunderstand the nature of money, and what we can do about it.

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How can we reinvent politics for the twenty-first century? Srnicek and Williams' urgent manifesto for a new politics has been one of the most influential books on the left in recent years. 

Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.

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  Eyewitness reporting and shrewd analysis from the many centers of the global movement for liberation.

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Owen Hatherley explodes the creation of a false history: a rewriting of the austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the development of a welfare state while the nation crawled out of the devastations of war. This period has been recast to explain and offer consolation for the violence of neoliberalism, an ideology dedicated to the privatisation of our common wealth.

In a brilliant polemical rampage, with subjects ranging from Ken Loach’s documentaries, London vernacular architecture, and Jamie Oliver’s cooking—Hatherley issues a passionate challenge to the injunction to keep calm and carry on. 

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The 2015 general election may well be looked-back on as the defining moment for the politics of the "Extreme Centre," that indistinguishable middle ground fought over by all the main parties. Tariq Ali's prescient account of the school of TINA ('there is no alternative') looks at the people and the events that have informed this moment of political suicide: corruption in Westminster; the failures of the EU and NATO; and the soft power of the American Empire that dominates the world stage uncontested. 

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The BBC is one of the most important institutions in Britain; it is also one of the most misunderstood. Despite its claim to be independent and impartial, and the constant accusations of a liberal bias, the BBC has always sided with the elite. As Tom Mills demonstrates, we are only getting the news that the Establishment wants aired in public. 

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George Monbiot is one of the most vocal, and eloquent, critics of the current consensus. How Did We Get into this Mess?, based on his powerful journalism, assesses the state we are now in: the devastation of the natural world, the crisis of inequality, the corporate takeover of nature, our obsessions with growth and profit and the decline of the political debate over what to do. 

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An icon of the Left, and champion of democracy and social justice, Tony Benn entered the Commons in 1950 and with Ted Heath held the record for post-war service as an MP. Parliament, People and Power features a selection of his interviews with the New Left Review, as Benn sets out his radical agenda for society, and reflects on a life in politics.

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This collection of classic essays from Britain's leading Marxist historian is one of the best sources we have to understand "The Origins of the Present Crisis." Perry's seminal essay, written in 1964, traces the lack of a revolutionary opposition in British politics to England's premature revolutions of the 1640s and its constitutional establishment in 1688. The problem of the English has never been more thoroughly analysed, and the Nairn-Anderson thesis feels as relevant as ever in our crisis prone national landscape.  

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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. 

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Working Class Politics in Crisis contains Panitch's major essay 'The Impasse of Social Democratic Politics', the most substantial critique of Eric Hobsbawm's political writings yet to have appeared. 

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Labour would be unwise to ignore the words of parliamentary socialism's most trenchant critic Ralph Miliband. This classic collection of essays from "The Man Who Hated Britain," recently republished with a new introduction by Tariq Ali, covers Miliband's most famous pronouncements on the state, socialism and the Labour party.

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"The best book on the Thatcher era", according to Naomi Klein, The Enemy Within reveals the astonishing lengths to which her government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destroy the power of Britain’s miners’ union. In this 30th anniversary edition new material brings the story up to date with further revelations about the secret war against organized labour and political dissent, and the devastating price paid for the Thatcher administration's onslaught by communities across Britain.

See our forthcoming essential Labour Party reading:

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Critics on all sides have been quick to observe that the GND is a pipe dream that could never be implemented, and would cost the earth. But, as Ann Pettifor shows, we need to rethink the function of money, and how it works within the global system. How can we bail out the banks but not the planet? We have to stop thinking about the imperative of economic growth—nothing grows for ever. The program will be a long term project but it needs to start immediately.

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The UK government proudly calls the aim of its immigration policy to be the creation of a “hostile environment, ” while refugees drown in the Mediterranean and Britain votes to leave the EU against claims that “swarms”of migrants are entering Britain. Meanwhile, study after study confirms that immigration is not damaging the UK’s economy, nor putting a strain on public services, but immigration is blamed for all of Britain’s ills. Yet concerns about immigration are deemed “legitimate” across the political spectrum, with few exceptions. How did we get here?

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 The remarkable advance of “Corbynism” did not emerge from nowhere. It is the product of developments in socialist and working-class politics over the past forty years and more. The Thatcher era witnessed a wholesale attack on the postwar consensus and welfare state, through a regime of deregulation, attacks on the unions, privatisations, and globalisation. However, at the same time, there existed a persistent resistance to the growing powers of neo-liberalism. This side of the story is rarely told as it was considered to be a history of defeat. Yet out of this struggle emerged a thoroughly modern socialism.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone. New technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism ...
How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century
Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solid...
Economics for the Many
Economics for the Many, edited and with an introduction by Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell, features contributions from the participants in his New Economics conferences, includin...
Revolting Prostitutes
How the law harms sex workers - and what they want insteadDo you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justi...
Crippled
In austerity Britain, disabled people have been recast as worthless scroungers. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and the media alike have made the case that Britain’s 12 milli...
Inequality and the 1%
Since the Great Recession hit in 2008, the 1% has only grown richer while the rest find life increasingly tough. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has turned into a chasm. While the rich ...
Corbyn
Demolishing the Blairite opposition in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn saw off an attempted coup against his leadership under the banner of the “soft left” one year on. This unassuming antiwar socialist now le...
Dreams of Leaving and Remaining
In Dreams of Leaving and Remaining, award winning journalist Meek explores a nation uneasy with itself. In the decades since the twilight of empire, Britain has struggled to find its place, and ide...
Deport, Deprive, Extradite
When Minh Pham was extradited from Britain to the US to face terrorism related charges, his appeal against the deprivation of his British citizenship was still pending. Soon after he arrived his ap...
Chavs
In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain's Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckles...
The Socialist Manifesto
The success of Jeremy Corbyn’s left-led Labour Party and Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign revived a political idea many had thought dead. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would ...
Hardback
Out of the Wreckage
Today, our lives are dominated by an ideology of extreme competition and individualism. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. But we cannot replace it without a positiv...
The End of Parliamentary Socialism

The End of Parliamentary Socialism

This trenchant account of the last twenty-five years of the British Labour Party argues that Tony Blair’s modernizing tendency was profoundly mistaken in asserting that the only alternative to trad...
Radical Happiness
Why are we so obsessed by the pursuit of happiness? With new ways to measure contentment we are told that we have a right to individual joy. But at what cost? In an age of increasing individualis...
The Production of Money
According to leading economist Ann Pettifor, one of the few people to predict the 2008 financial crisis, money is not a commodity but a promise. This radical reconsideration of the power of money m...
Inventing the Future
Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite.Inve...
Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere
Originally published in 2012 to wide acclaim, this updated edition, Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere, includes coverage of the most recent events in the wave of revolt and revolution sweeping ...
The Ministry of Nostalgia
In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nosta...
Paperback
The Extreme Centre
In this fully updated edition of his coruscating polemic, Tariq Ali shows how, since 1989, politics has become a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market. In this urgent and wide-r...
The BBC
The BBC is one of the most important institutions in Britain; it is also one of the most misunderstood. Despite its claim to be independent and impartial, and the constant accusations of a libera...
How Did We Get Into This Mess?
George Monbiot is one of the most vocal, and eloquent, critics of the current consensus. How Did We Get into this Mess?, based on his powerful journalism, assesses the state we are now in: the de...
Parliament, People and Power
An icon of the Left, and champion of democracy and social justice, Tony Benn entered the Commons in 1950 and with Ted Heath held the record for post-war service as an MP. Parliament, People and Pow...
Paperback
English Questions
A set of reflections on British society and culture, this volume falls into two principal parts. The first consists of a pair of essays published in New Left Review in the sixties; “Origins of the ...
How Will Capitalism End?
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 evapo...
Working Class Politics in Crisis
Social democracy has been the focal point of working class politics throughout much of Western Europe. The identification of working class voters with such parties was presumed to be automatic. But...
Paperback
Class War Conservatism
When, in 2013, the Daily Mail labeled Ralph Miliband “The Man Who Hated Britain,” a diverse host rallied to his defense. Those who had worked with him – from both left and right – praised his wor...
The Enemy Within
Margaret Thatcher branded the leaders of the 1984–85 miners' strike “the enemy within.”In this classic account, Seumas Milne reveals the astonishing lengths to which her government and its intell...
Paperback
The Case for the Green New Deal
In 2008, the first Green New Deal was devised by Pettifor and a group of English economist and thinkers, but was ignored within the tumults of the financial crash. A decade later, the ideas was rev...
Hostile Environment
Longlisted for the 2019 Jhalak Prize. From the 1960s the UK’s immigration policy - introduced by both Labour and Tory governments - has been a toxic combination of racism and xenophobia. Maya Good...
Paperback (2019)
The Fall and Rise of the British Left
The remarkable advance of “Corbynism” did not emerge from nowhere. It is the product of developments in socialist and working-class politics over the past forty years and more. The Thatcher era wit...