Our world is in the grips of the most calamitous economic crisis since the Great Depression—and its epicenter is the imperial United States, where hallowed investment banks have disappeared overnight, giants of industry have gone bankrupt, and the financial order has been shaken to the core.While many around the globe are increasingly wondering if another world is indeed possible, few are mapping out potential avenues – and flagging wrong turns – en route to a post-capitalist futur...

Since the 2016 upsurge in enthusiasm for electoral organizing and party-building, the terrain has shifted. It was not so long ago that a new wave of democratic socialist organizing exploded onto the scene. Quickly, the defeat of candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn had a deflating effect. This followed on the crumbling of the “new parties” in Europe: In Greece, Syriza buckled in the face of the iron straitjacket imposed by EU institutions; in Spain, Podemos fractured under t...

What is neoliberalism transforming into? This year’s Socialist Register identifies gaps in Marxist state theory by examining the ongoing, differentiated development of capitalism, from counter-revolutions in public finance and central banking, to changing economic policies under globalizing forms of contemporary fascism and trade in the midst of Trumpism. Puzzling through the rubble left behind, Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins, some see a new ‘post-indust...

The war in Afghanistan has been a major policy commitment and central undertaking of the Canadian state since 2001: Canada has been a leading force in the war, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on aid and reconstruction. After a decade of conflict, however, there is considerable debate about the efficacy of the mission, as well as calls to reassess Canada’s role in the conflict. An authoritative and strongly analytical work, Empire’s Ally provides a much-needed critica...

The Socialist Register has been at the forefront of intellectual enquiry and strategic debate on the left for five decades. This expertly curated collection analyzes technological innovation against the backdrop of the recurrent crises and forms of class struggle distinctive to capitalism.As we enter what some term the "fourth industrial revolution" and both mainstream commentators and the left grapple with the implications of rapid technological development, this volume is...

Essays which aim to create a world of agency and justiceHow can we build a future with better health and homes, respecting people and the environment? The 2020 edition of the Socialist Register, Beyond Market Dystopia, contains a wealth of incisive essays that entice readers to do just that: to wake up to the cynical, implicitly market-driven concept of human society we have come to accept as everyday reality. Intellectuals and activists such as M...

No government jurisdiction in Canada has so radically transformed its public policies over the past decades as Ontario, and yet the province has also maintained a striking degree of political stability in its party system. Since the 1990s, neoliberalism has been the point of reference in constructing policy agendas for all of Ontario's political parties. It has guided the strategy for governance of the dominant Liberal Party since 2003, even as it divides the province between workers and e...

No government jurisdiction in Canada has so radically transformed its public policies over the past decades as Ontario, and yet the province has also maintained a striking degree of political stability in its party system. Since the 1990s, neoliberalism has been the point of reference in constructing policy agendas for all of Ontario's political parties. It has guided the strategy for governance of the dominant Liberal Party since 2003, even as it divides the province between workers and e...

Since beginning publication in1964, The Socialist Register has been one of the most important sources of engaged, critical, and influential theoretical interventions on the socialist left. Released as an annual with a focus on publishing rigorous, sustained pieces that take up particular themes, it has always been committed to developing an independent, nonsectarian relationship with Marxism.This volume—the Register’s first-ever reader—grapples with the question o...

For years, intellectuals have argued that, with the triumph of capitalist, liberal democracy, the Western World has reached “the end of history.” Recently, however, there has been a rise of authoritarian politics in many countries. Concepts of post-democracy, anti-politics, and the like are gaining currency in theoretical and political debate. Now that capitalist democracies are facing seismic and systemic challenges, it becomes increasingly important to investigate not only the inherent a...

A World Turned Upside Down? poses two overarching questions for the new period opened by the Trump election and the continued growth of right-wing nationalisms. Is there an unwinding of neoliberal globalization taking place, or will globalization continue to deepen, but still deny the free cross-border movement of labor? Would such an unwinding entail an overall shift in power and accumulation to specific regions of the Global South that might overturn the current world order and foster th...

A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequali...