Blog

  • Building a “Green New Deal”: Lessons From the Original New Deal

    Building a “Green New Deal”: Lessons From the Original New Deal

    Demands centering on the need for a "Green New Deal", focused on the creation of a public works “green jobs” infrastructure policy, have helped energise the American left in recent weeks. In this article Matt Huber offers four vital lessons from the original New Deal that contemporary activists and policymakers must learn.

  • Should We Defend the University? Between Market Constraints and Academic Utopia

    Should We Defend the University? Between Market Constraints and Academic Utopia

    Although the university space has historically been a site of autonomy and resistance, the last few decades have seen market forces invade this sanctuary of critical thought. But is it enough to oppose the ideal of the autonomy of knowledge and science to the commercial imperatives and bureaucratic controls that govern many universities today? In this essay, first published on Contretemps in 2006, Daniel Bensaïd argues that critical forces in the university must move beyond a defence of the "sanctuary" status, towards the creation of a broader strategy of social transformation, that can only be achieved by collaborating with other centres of knowledge production.

  • Disappear together, March together

    Disappear together, March together

    France’s Rosa Parks Collective has called for a “disappearance” on 30 November: a strike from workplaces, schools, universities, and even social media, to be followed by protests on 1 December. Driven by anti-racist movements and their allies, the Collective insists that there can be “No France without Us”. In this vein, it has combined opposition to police violence with a mobilization against state racism, attacks on migrants, unemployment, neoliberalism and colonial counter-revolution.

  • Verso Spring 2019 Catalogue

    Verso Spring 2019 Catalogue

    Our Spring 2019 catalogue is here! Featuring new books from Fredric Jameson, Natasha Lennard, Priyamvada Gopal, James Meek and more.

  • What is good for Goldman Sachs is good for America: the origins of the current crisis

    What is good for Goldman Sachs is good for America: the origins of the current crisis

    The financial crisis of 2008-9 was the largest and most devastating crisis since the Great Depression. What started on Wall Street soon spread to the rest of world and into the balance sheets of nation states. The cycle of austerity and recession in the subsequent decade is still effecting households and the real economy to this day. But what caused the crisis in the first place? In this now classic essay, Robert Brenner traces the origins of the crisis to the long downturn since the mid '70s, and offers what is still one of the best analyses of the financial system.

  • Money: 5,000 Years of Debt and Power

    Money: 5,000 Years of Debt and Power

    In this excerpt from Money, Michel Aglietta insists that money be seen as "an essentially political animal," arguing against the "three lies" relied upon by financial theory and the financial lobby it serves.