On February 21, 1803, Colonel Edward (Ned) Marcus Despard was publicly hanged and decapitated in London before a crowd of 20,000 for organizing a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow King George III. His black Caribbean wife, Catherine (Kate), helped to write his gallows speech in which he proclaimed that he was a friend to the poor and oppressed. He expressed trust that “the principles of freedom, of humanity, and of justice will triumph over falsehood, tyranny, and delusion.”And...

In this tour de force, celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the thieves of land, the polluters of the seas, the ravagers of the forests, the despoilers of rivers and the removers of mountaintops. Scarcely a society has existed that has not had commoning at its heart. These essays kindle the embers of memory to ignite our future commons. From Thomas Paine to the Luddites, from Karl Marx to the practical dreamer William Morris, to the 20th-century communist historian E.P. Thomps...

Winner of the International Labor History AwardLong before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization...

Peter Linebaugh's groundbreaking history has become an inescapable part of any understanding of the rise of capitalism. In eighteenth-century London the spectacle of a hanging was not simply a form of punishing transgressors.Rather it evidently served the most sinister purpose-for a prvileged ruling class-of forcing the poor population of London to accept the criminalization of customary rights and the new forms of private property. Necessity drove the city's poor into inevitable co...

'May Day is about affirmation, the love of life, and the start of spring, so it has to be about the beginning of the end of the capitalist system of exploitation, oppression, war, and overall misery, toil, and moil.' So writes celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh in an essential compendium of reflections on the reviled, glorious and voltaic occasion of the first of May. The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day is a forceful reminder of the potentialities of the fut...

In her clear and combative voice, Federici provides readers with an analysis of some of the key issues and debates in contemporary thinking on this subject. Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the connections between the previous forms of enclosure that occurred with the birth of capitalism and the destruction of the commons and the 'new enclosures' at the heart of the present phase of global capitalist accumulation. Considering the commons from a feminist perspective, this colle...

Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motely crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, labourers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would for ever change history. The Many-Headed Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.

'Capitalist critique and proletarian reasoning fit for our time' - Peter LinebaughTaking the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as its subject, this book breaks new ground in focusing its lens on a little-studied aspect of Hume's thinking: his understanding of money.George Caffentzis makes both an intervention in the field of monetary philosophy and into Marxian conceptions of the relation between philosophy and capitalist development. He vividly charts the ways ...

Published to commemorate the bicentennial of Thomas Paine's death, these texts have remained two of the most influential arguments for liberty in political thought. Common Sense is a pamphlet that Paine wrote in support of American independence. Due to its original and simple style it spread like wildfire through the colonies, inspiring the American Revolution. The Rights of Man is Paine's passionate defense of the French Revolution that led to his trial for sedition and ...

A New York Times bestseller: “This terrific new book . . . [explores] the ‘notion of whiteness,’ an idea as dangerous as it is seductive.”—Boston GlobeTelling perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race but also the frequent praise of “whiteness” for economic, scientific, and political ends. A ...

Welcome to my library.Dog-eared paperbacks falling to pieces.Second-hand books from the stores and barrows of four continents.Modern first editions, some inscribed ...In My Reading Life, a personal investigation into the nature of democracy, dictatorship, decency and the hardwired human condition, Bob Carr shares his profound love of books and reading - books you've never heard of, books you've always wanted to read,...