Political Philosophy

Soon after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky led the Red Army against the counter-revolutionary White armies. Written in the white heat of the Civil War, "Terrorism and Communism" is one of the most potent defences of revolutionary dictatorship of the twentieth century. In his provocative commentary in this new edition, the coruscating critic Slavoj Zizek argues that Trotsky's attack on the illusions of democracy has a vital relevance to today.

What moral values do human beings hold in common? As globalization draws us together economically, are our values converging or diverging? In particular, are human rights becoming a global ethic? These were the questions that led Michael Ignatieff to embark on a three-year, eight-nation journey in search of answers. The Ordinary Virtues presents Ignatieff's discoveries and his interpretation of what globalization - and resistance to it - is doing to our conscience and our moral understanding.

The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

Die Party ist vorbei. Der Crash ist da. Aus der Bankenkrise 2008 wurde über Nacht eine Krise der Weltwirtschaft. Da ist guter Rat teuer, und man beginnt sich an die Spekulationsblasen und Krisen der Vergangenheit zu erinnern. Kapitalismuskritik ist wieder in Mode, bleibt aber meist an der Oberfläche. Doch wie keinem anderen Ökonomen ist es vor 150 Jahren Karl Marx gelungen, die aberwitzigen Bewegungen des Kapitals und seinen Hang zur Selbstzerstörung zu beleuchten.

First published as articles in El Sol in 1929, the essays in The Revolt of the Masses serve as a prescient analysis of a 20th-century creature - the "mass man" - and the mass society that he makes up. With strains of Jamesian pragmatism and the sociology of Gustave Le Bon, Ortega shows how technological and political changes reduced Western civilization to the lowest common denominator and made it susceptible to the pressures of statism.

From poverty and policing, homelessness and overrun prisons to Grenfell and hostile environments, Britain has long been failing those who need our help the most. There is arguably one unifying theme that links all these afflictions: proximity. Proximity is how close we are to the action and how that affects how we assess, relate to and address whatever that action happens to be. Almost every job requires a level of experience and training with the notable exception of the most powerful people in the country—our political class.

In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women's rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard of: Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States.

Si en sus anteriores libros Pedro Baños ofrecía un lúcido análisis de las relaciones de poder, esta nueva obra no solo describe con detalle las excepcionales circunstancias que se están dando en el presente y las que padeceremos en el futuro inmediato en nuestro mundo hiperconectado, sino que va mucho más allá y propone soluciones que sirvan a todas las personas, en cualquier país, convirtiéndose en un manual práctico imprescindible.

Las fórmulas del siglo pasado ya no son válidas. Hemos entrado de lleno en la era digital, una verdadera revolución industrial...

Around the world today, nationalism is back - and it’s often deeply troubling. Populist politicians exploit nationalism for authoritarian, chauvinistic, racist, and xenophobic purposes, reinforcing the view that it is fundamentally reactionary and antidemocratic. But Yael (Yuli) Tamir makes a passionate argument for a very different kind of nationalism - one that revives its participatory, creative, and egalitarian virtues, answers many of the problems caused by neoliberalism and hyperglobalism, and is essential to democracy at its best.

Reparations for slavery have become a reinvigorated topic for public debate over the last decade. Most theorizing about reparations treats it as a social justice project—either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present; or, they focus on the past, emphasizing restitution for historical wrongs. Olúfemi O. Táiwò argues that neither approach is optimal, and advances a different case for reparations—one rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core.

One of the most profound studies of warfare ever written, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China presents us with an Eastern tradition of strategic thought that emphasizes outwitting one's opponent through speed, stealth, flexibility, and a minimum of force - an approach very different from that stressed in the West, where the advantages of brute strength have overshadowed more subtle methods.

L'Occident est-il coupable ? Le philosophe et romancier Pascal Bruckner s'interroge, dans une perspective historique, sur le sentiment de mauvaise conscience en Europe. Il nous propose une généalogie à la fois saisissante et libératrice du mythe de l'infamie de l'homme blanc. Depuis le Tiers-Mondisme du XXe siècle jusqu'à la critique anticoloniale dans les banlieues du XXIe siècle, ce mythe a érigé l'autoflagellation comme horizon indépassable de la pensée occidentale.

Karl Marx's devastating critique of capitalism, and his proposal of communism as the answer to the failings of the capitalist system, bore their greatest fruits in the twentieth century with the formation of the communist state in the Soviet Union. This great venture has now all but completely failed. Yet the force of the communist belief offered the prospect of "justice on this earth" to countless numbers. And Marx's critique has influenced generations of thinkers who call themselves Marxists.

In every issue of modern society - from climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense - we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded, three-part war on science: the identity politics war on science, the ideological war on science, and the industrial war on science.

El francés Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) es considerado uno de los fundadores de la psicología social. Introdujo un tema importante como la psicología del comportamiento colectivo. Le Bon desarrolló sus ideas y puntos de vista durante numerosos viajes a diferentes pueblos de África y Asia. En su obra principal "Psicología de las masas" de 1895, describe el cambio en el comportamiento del individuo que resulta de pertenecer a un grupo más grande de personas, una masa. Este audiolibro está basado en la traducción al español de 1921 de J. M. Navarro de Palencia.

Taming the Rascal Multitude is a judicious selection of essays and interviews from Z Magazine from 1997 to 2014. In each, Chomsky takes up some question of the moment. As such, in sum, the essays provide a historical overview of the history that preceded Trump and the reaction to Trump. The essays situate what followed even without having known what would follow. They explicate what preceded the current era and provide a step-by-step revelation, or how-to, for successfully comprehending social events and relations.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky burst onto the world stage in November 1917 as coleader of a Marxist Revolution seizing power in Russia. It made him one of the most recognized personalities of the 20th century, a global icon of radical change. Yet just months earlier, this same Lev Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else? New York.

Incredible facts about this Ottoman Empire still surprise anyone who starts discovering those stories. You’ll find out that, for quite a while, this Islamic state was effectively ruled by women, and that’s just the beginning.

The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage - to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than 70 years of great-power peace, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history.

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon - one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, Jacoby surveys an antirationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought".