Political Theory: Verso Student Reading

Book strip #1

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  Mute Compulsion

  by Søren Mau

  Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century lingers on. To understand capital’s paradoxical expansion and entrenchme...
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  The Origin of Capitalism

  by Ellen Meiksins Wood

  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, im...
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  The Automatic Fetish

  by Beverley Best

  The Automatic Fetish traces Marx’s analysis of capital, step by step, through the material compiled posthumously as the third volume of Capital. Identifying the critique of value as the central thr...
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  Towards a Green Democratic Revolution

  by Chantal Mouffe

  In recent years, the promises of the populist moment have faltered, as seen in the defeats of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Melenchon. In addition, the pandemic has brought about a strong...
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  Democracy in the Political Present

  by Isabell Lorey

  ‘Presentist democracy is without a people and without nation. Rather than regimes of borders and migration, its borders are sexism and racism, homo- and transphobia, colonialism and extractivism.’I...
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  A Companion To Marx's Capital

  by David Harvey

  In recent years, we have witnessed a surge of interest in Marx’s work in the effort to understand the origins of our current predicament. For nearly forty years, David Harvey has written and lectur...
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  Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism

  by Anna Kornbluh

  Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but f...
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  Communism and Strategy

  by Isabelle Garo

  If the question of communism is making a comeback today, this renewed interest is often accompanied by an abandonment of any concrete political perspective. Critical philosophies are flourishing an...
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  Classes

  by Erik Olin Wright

  Questions of class, power and distribution have reemerged as central concerns in the public discourse. When we talk about class, we don't always know what is meant. Is class about income or affect ...
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  Late Fascism

  by Alberto Toscano

  The rich archive of twentieth-century debates on fascism can steer a path through an increasingly authoritarian present. Developing anti-fascist theory is an urgent and vital task. From the ‘Great ...
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  Cannibal Capitalism

  by Nancy Fraser

  Shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life-guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for e...
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  Power and Resistance

  by Yoshiyuki Sato

  The "structuralist" theories of power show that the subject is produced and reproduced by the investment of power: but how then can we think of the subject's resistance to power? Based on this fund...
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  Abolition Geography

  by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

  Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, of...
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  Decolonial Marxism

  by Walter Rodney

  Foreword by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

  Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora: in North America and Europe, in the Caribbean and o...
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  Imperium

  by Frédéric Lordon

  What should we do with the ideals of internationalism, the withering away of state and horizontality? Probably start by thinking seriously about them. That is to say, about their conditions of poss...
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  Workers and Capital

  by Mario Tronti

  Workers and Capital is universally recognised as the most important work produced by operaismo, a current of political thought emerging in the 1960s that revolutionised the institutional and extra-...
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  Neither Vertical nor Horizontal

  by Rodrigo Nunes

  A decade ago, a wave of mass mobilisations described as “horizontal” and “leaderless” swept the planet, holding the promise of real democracy and justice for the 99%. Many saw its subsequent ebb as...
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  How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century

  by Erik Olin Wright

  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...
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  History and Class Consciousness

  by Georg Lukács

  Preface by Michael Löwy

  Translated by Rodney Livingstone

  History and Class Consciousness was the most important of Georg Lukács’s early theoretical writings, published in Germany in 1923. The subject of high praise and passionate criticism, it had a majo...
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  The Political Writings

  by Karl Marx

  Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism, he was also a superb journalist, politician and historian. For the first time ever, this book brings together all of his essential political...
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  The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born

  by Nancy Fraser

  Across the globe politics as usual are being rejected and faith in neoliberalism is fracturing beyond repair. Leading political theorist Nancy Fraser, in conversation with Jacobin publisher Bhaskar...
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  The New Spirit of Capitalism

  by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello

  Translated by Gregory Elliott

  In this major work, sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello go to the heart of the changes in contemporary capitalism. Via an unprecedented analysis of the latest management texts that have fo...
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  Imagined Communities

  by Benedict Anderson

  What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and tran...
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  Reading Capital

  by Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey and Jacques Rancière

  Translated by Ben Brewster and David Fernbach

  Originally published in 1965, Reading Capital is a landmark of French thought and radical theory, reconstructing Western Marxism from its foundations. Louis Althusser, the French Marxist philosophe...
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  Hegemony and Socialist Strategy

  by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe

  In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new soci...
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  A Social History of Western Political Thought

  by Ellen Meiksins Wood

  In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory, from Plato to Rousseau. Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines th...
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  Democracy Against Capitalism

  by Ellen Meiksins Wood

  Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of “postmodern” fragmentation, “difference”, and contingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subjec...
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  For a Left Populism

  by Chantal Mouffe

  We are seeing the rise of a populist moment around the world on both the left and the right. Movements like Bernie Sander, Jeremy Corbyn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have emerged in the midst of the ...
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  The Double Shift

  by Jason Read

  Even as the rewards of work decline and its demands on us increase, many people double-down on their commitment to wage slavery—working harder, doing overtime, and learning to hustle. To paraphrase...
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  On the Reproduction of Capitalism

  by Louis Althusser

  Louis Althusser’s renowned short text "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" radically transformed the concept of the subject, the understanding of the state and even the very frameworks o...
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  Red Africa

  by Kevin Ochieng Okoth

  Red Africa makes the case for a revolutionary Black politics inspired by Marxist anticolonial struggles in Africa. Contemporary debates on Black radicalism and decolonisation have lost sight of the...
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  Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility

  by Kojin Karatani

  Introduction by Gavin Walker

  Edited by Gavin Walker

  Translated by Gavin Walker

  Originally published in 1974, Kojin Karatani’s Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility has been among his most enduring and pioneering works in critical theory. Written at a time when the political...
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  The Return of the Political

  by Chantal Mouffe

  Chantal Mouffe is one of the most influential political theorists at work today. Her work has influenced political parties across Europe and continues to inform the direction of left politics. In t...
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  Fortunes of Feminism

  by Nancy Fraser

  Second Wave feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a dec...
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  The Limits to Capital

  by David Harvey

  Now a classic of Marxian economics, The Limits to Capital provides one of the best theoretical guides to the history and geography of capitalist development. In this edition, Harvey updates his cla...

Book strip #11

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  The Revenge of the Real

  by Benjamin Bratton

  The Revenge of the Real envisions a new positive biopolitics that recognises that how populations govern themselves is literally a matter of life and death. We are grappling with multiple interconn...

Book strip #12

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  Decolonial Marxism

  by Walter Rodney

  Foreword by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

  Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora: in North America and Europe, in the Caribbean and o...

Book strip #13

• 

  Imperium

  by Frédéric Lordon

  What should we do with the ideals of internationalism, the withering away of state and horizontality? Probably start by thinking seriously about them. That is to say, about their conditions of poss...

Book strip #14

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  The Tragedy of the Worker

  by Jamie Allinson, China Miéville, Richard Seymour and Rosie Warren

  To understand the scale of what faces us and how it ramifies through every corner of our lives is to marvel at our inaction. Why aren’t we holding emergency meetings in every city, town and village...

Book strip #15

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  Workers and Capital

  by Mario Tronti

  Workers and Capital is universally recognised as the most important work produced by operaismo, a current of political thought emerging in the 1960s that revolutionised the institutional and extra-...

Book strip #16

• 

  The Origin of Capitalism

  by Ellen Meiksins Wood

  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, im...

Book strip #17

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  A Critical Theory of Police Power

  by Mark Neocleous

  The ubiquitous nature and political attraction of the concept of order has to be understood in conjunction with the idea of police. Since its first publication, this book has been one of the most p...

Book strip #18

• 

  Neither Vertical nor Horizontal

  by Rodrigo Nunes

  A decade ago, a wave of mass mobilisations described as “horizontal” and “leaderless” swept the planet, holding the promise of real democracy and justice for the 99%. Many saw its subsequent ebb as...

Book strip #19

• 

  How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century

  by Erik Olin Wright

  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...

Book strip #20

Book strip #21

• 

  The Political Writings

  by Karl Marx

  Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism, he was also a superb journalist, politician and historian. For the first time ever, this book brings together all of his essential political...

Book strip #22

• 

  The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born

  by Nancy Fraser

  Across the globe politics as usual are being rejected and faith in neoliberalism is fracturing beyond repair. Leading political theorist Nancy Fraser, in conversation with Jacobin publisher Bhaskar...

Book strip #23

• 

  Imagined Communities

  by Benedict Anderson

  What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and tran...

Book strip #24

• 

  Hegemony and Socialist Strategy

  by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe

  In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new soci...

Book strip #25

• 

  Democracy Against Capitalism

  by Ellen Meiksins Wood

  Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of “postmodern” fragmentation, “difference”, and contingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subjec...

Book strip #26

• 

  For a Left Populism

  by Chantal Mouffe

  We are seeing the rise of a populist moment around the world on both the left and the right. Movements like Bernie Sander, Jeremy Corbyn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have emerged in the midst of the ...

Book strip #27

• 

  On the Reproduction of Capitalism

  by Louis Althusser

  Louis Althusser’s renowned short text "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" radically transformed the concept of the subject, the understanding of the state and even the very frameworks o...