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ISBN:
978-1-58367-181-8
$25.00 paper
296 pp.
Politics
Other Issues
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VIOLENCE TODAY
Actually Existing Barbarism
Socialist Register 2009
edited
by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys
Amidst the carnage of the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg posed a stark choice for humanity: socialism or barbarism. Violence Today asks if current patterns mark a descent into the barbarism that Luxemburg feared and if a just society, one capable of transcending the endemic violence of the neoliberal order, is possible in the new century.
This powerful and provocative new collection explores the roots of violence—military, terrorist, criminal, and casual—in contemporary society. It analyzes the social context, history, and structure of modern violence, casting light on patterns and practices from America’s inner cities and prisons to “failed states” like Afghanistan. Violence Today also gives special attention to debate within the Left about violence, including a controversial defense of armed struggle.
Contributions by John Berger, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, Peter Thomas, Vivek Chibber, Christian Parenti, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Georgi Derluguian, Sofiri Joab-Peterside, Ulrich Oslender, Achin Vanaik, Barbara Harriss-White, Lynne Segal, Joe Sim and Steve Tombs, Dennis Rodgers, Avishai Ehrlich, Philip Green, Garance Upham, Mary des Chenes & Stephen Mikesell, and Samir Amin.
Leo Panitch is professor of political science at York University in Toronto and author of Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy, and Imagination.
Colin Leys is emeritus professor at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario and author of Market-Driven Politics.
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