Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism PDF Author: Samir Amin
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583676031
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Out of early twentieth-century Russia came the world’s first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union has also produced a movement away from capitalism – a long transition that continues even today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia – and, by extension, the future of socialism itself. Amin manages to combine an analysis of class struggle with geopolitics – each crucial to understanding Russia’s singular and complex political history. He first looks at the development (or lack thereof) of Russian capitalism. He sees Russia’s geopolitical isolation as the reason its capitalist empire developed so differently from Western Europe, and the reason for Russia’s perceived “backwardness.” Yet Russia’s unique capitalism proved to be the rich soil in which the Bolsheviks were able to take power, and Amin covers the rise and fall of the revolutionary Soviet system. Finally, in a powerful chapter on Ukraine and the rise of global fascism, Amin lays out the conditions necessary for Russia to recreate itself, and perhaps again move down the long road to socialism. Samir Amin’s great achievement in this book is not only to explain Russia’s historical tragedies and triumphs, but also to temper our hopes for a quick end to an increasingly insufferable capitalism. This book offers a cornucopia of food for thought, as well as an enlightening means to transcend reductionist arguments about “revolution” so common on the left. Samir Amin’s book – and the actions that could spring from it – are more necessary than ever, if the world is to avoid the barbarism toward which capitalism is hurling humanity.

Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism PDF Author: Samir Amin
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583676031
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Out of early twentieth-century Russia came the world’s first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union has also produced a movement away from capitalism – a long transition that continues even today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia – and, by extension, the future of socialism itself. Amin manages to combine an analysis of class struggle with geopolitics – each crucial to understanding Russia’s singular and complex political history. He first looks at the development (or lack thereof) of Russian capitalism. He sees Russia’s geopolitical isolation as the reason its capitalist empire developed so differently from Western Europe, and the reason for Russia’s perceived “backwardness.” Yet Russia’s unique capitalism proved to be the rich soil in which the Bolsheviks were able to take power, and Amin covers the rise and fall of the revolutionary Soviet system. Finally, in a powerful chapter on Ukraine and the rise of global fascism, Amin lays out the conditions necessary for Russia to recreate itself, and perhaps again move down the long road to socialism. Samir Amin’s great achievement in this book is not only to explain Russia’s historical tragedies and triumphs, but also to temper our hopes for a quick end to an increasingly insufferable capitalism. This book offers a cornucopia of food for thought, as well as an enlightening means to transcend reductionist arguments about “revolution” so common on the left. Samir Amin’s book – and the actions that could spring from it – are more necessary than ever, if the world is to avoid the barbarism toward which capitalism is hurling humanity.

The Long Transition

The Long Transition PDF Author: Robert G. Hollands
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business and education
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This lively, ethnographic study examines the transition, experiences and cultural identities developed amongst a group of young working class people, as they make their way through the established government training schemes. The book uncovers a series of distinct transitions into the world of work, discusses their wider effects on the home, community, leisure, politics, sexuality and ethnicity and assesses the influence such changes will have upon the future of the labour movement.

Lost in the Long Transition

Lost in the Long Transition PDF Author: William L. Alexander
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780739118658
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In Lost in the Long Transition, a group of scholars who conducted fieldwork research in post-dictatorship Chile during the transition to democracy critically examine the effects of the country's adherence to neoliberal economic development and social policies. Shifting government responsibility for social services and public resources to the private sector, reducing restrictions on foreign investment, and promoting free trade and export production, neoliberalism began during the Pinochet dictatorship and was adopted across Latin America in the 1980s. With the return of civilian government, the pursuit of justice and equity worked alongside a pact of compromise and an economic model that brought prosperity for some, entrenched poverty for others, and had social consequences for all. The authors, who come from the disciplines of cultural anthropology, history, political science, and geography, focus their research perspectives on issues including privatization of water rights in arid lands, tuberculosis and the public health crisis, labor strikes and the changing role of unions, the environmental and cultural impacts of export development initiatives on small-scale fishing communities, natural resource conservation in the private sector, the political ecology of copper, the fight for affordable housing, homelessness and citizenship rights under the judicial system, and the gender experiences of returned exiles. In the years leading up to the global financial meltdown of 2008, many Latin American governments, responding to inequities at home and attempting to pull themselves out of debt dependency, moved away from the Chilean model. This book examines the social costs of that model and the growing resistance to neoliberalism in Chile, providing ethnographic details of the struggles of those excluded from its benefits. This research offers a look at the lives of those whose stories may have otherwise been lost in the long transition. Book jacket.

The Long Shadow

The Long Shadow PDF Author: Karl Alexander
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610448235
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology West Baltimore stands out in the popular imagination as the quintessential “inner city”—gritty, run-down, and marred by drugs and gang violence. Indeed, with the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, the area experienced a rapid onset of poverty and high unemployment, with few public resources available to alleviate economic distress. But in stark contrast to the image of a perpetual “urban underclass” depicted in television by shows like The Wire, sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson present a more nuanced portrait of Baltimore’s inner city residents that employs important new research on the significance of early-life opportunities available to low-income populations. The Long Shadow focuses on children who grew up in west Baltimore neighborhoods and others like them throughout the city, tracing how their early lives in the inner city have affected their long-term well-being. Although research for this book was conducted in Baltimore, that city’s struggles with deindustrialization, white flight, and concentrated poverty were characteristic of most East Coast and Midwest manufacturing cities. The experience of Baltimore’s children who came of age during this era is mirrored in the experiences of urban children across the nation. For 25 years, the authors of The Long Shadow tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children through the Beginning School Study Youth Panel (BSSYP). The study monitored the children’s transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults. The authors’ fine-grained analysis confirms that the children who lived in more cohesive neighborhoods, had stronger families, and attended better schools tended to maintain a higher economic status later in life. As young adults, they held higher-income jobs and had achieved more personal milestones (such as marriage) than their lower-status counterparts. Differences in race and gender further stratified life opportunities for the Baltimore children. As one of the first studies to closely examine the outcomes of inner-city whites in addition to African Americans, data from the BSSYP shows that by adulthood, white men of lower status family background, despite attaining less education on average, were more likely to be employed than any other group in part due to family connections and long-standing racial biases in Baltimore’s industrial economy. Gender imbalances were also evident: the women, who were more likely to be working in low-wage service and clerical jobs, earned less than men. African American women were doubly disadvantaged insofar as they were less likely to be in a stable relationship than white women, and therefore less likely to benefit from a second income. Combining original interviews with Baltimore families, teachers, and other community members with the empirical data gathered from the authors’ groundbreaking research, The Long Shadow unravels the complex connections between socioeconomic origins and socioeconomic destinations to reveal a startling and much-needed examination of who succeeds and why.

Thinking Through Transition

Thinking Through Transition PDF Author: Michal Kope?ek
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860857
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
This book is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood both as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy?as well as the older political traditions?and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.

Life Is in the Transitions

Life Is in the Transitions PDF Author: Bruce Feiler
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594206821
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller! A pioneering and timely study of how to navigate life's biggest transitions with meaning, purpose, and skill Bruce Feiler, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Secrets of Happy Families and Council of Dads, has long explored the stories that give our lives meaning. Galvanized by a personal crisis, he spent the last few years crisscrossing the country, collecting hundreds of life stories in all fifty states from Americans who’d been through major life changes—from losing jobs to losing loved ones; from changing careers to changing relationships; from getting sober to getting healthy to simply looking for a fresh start. He then spent a year coding these stories, identifying patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change. What Feiler discovered was a world in which transitions are becoming more plentiful and mastering the skills to manage them is more urgent for all of us. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. We all feel unnerved by this upheaval. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected, that we’ve veered off course, living life out of order. But we’re not alone. Life Is in the Transitions introduces the fresh, illuminating vision of the nonlinear life, in which each of us faces dozens of disruptors. One in ten of those becomes what Feiler calls a lifequake, a massive change that leads to a life transition. The average length of these transitions is five years. The upshot: We all spend half our lives in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now. The most exciting thing Feiler identified is a powerful new tool kit for navigating these pivotal times. Drawing on his extraordinary trove of insights, he lays out specific strategies each of us can use to reimagine and rebuild our lives, often stronger than before. From a master storyteller with an essential message, Life Is in the Transitions can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth.

Theorizing Transition

Theorizing Transition PDF Author: John Pickles
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113471565X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
Examining transformations using a variety of perspectives Theorizing Transition provides both a rich empirical map of the dimensions of post-Communism and raises important theoretical issues about how we interpret these changes.

Books in Transition at the Time of Philip the Fair

Books in Transition at the Time of Philip the Fair PDF Author: Hanno Wijsman
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Belgium
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
In 2006, 500 years after his death, the Royal Library of Belgium organised an exhibition revealing treasures from the era of Philip the Fair (1478-1506), last duke of Burgundy. This volume reunites most of the papers delivered at a conference held during the exhibition, increased with two new articles. Ten specialists from Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States discuss the book market and its place in society in this transitional period when manuscripts and printed books were produced and used next to one another. The contributions are organised in pairs around five topics, whereby in each case one author treats manuscripts and the other printed books: Philip the Fair and his books, art in books, music in books, politics in books, the book market. Contributions by: Renaud Adam, Jean-Marie Cauchies, Lieve De Kesel, Samuel Mareel, Zoe Saunders, Susie Speakman Sutch, Herman Pleij, Jan Van der Stock, Rob Wegman, and Hanno Wijsman.

Making the Transition

Making the Transition PDF Author: Irena Kogan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804778957
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
After the breakdown of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, the role of education systems in preparing students for the "real world" changed. Though young people were freed from coercive state institutions, the shift to capitalism made the transition from school to work much more precarious and increased inequality in early career outcomes. This volume provides the first large-scale analysis of the impact social transformation has had on young people in their transition from school to work in Central and Eastern European countries. Written by local experts, the book examines the process for those entering the workforce under socialism, during the turbulent transformation years, in the early 2000s, and today. It considers both the risks and opportunities that have emerged, and reveals how they are distributed across social groups. Only by studying these changes can we better understand the long-term impact of socialism and post-socialist transformation on the problems young people in this part of the world are facing today.

Growth in Transition

Growth in Transition PDF Author: Friedrich Hinterberger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136505997
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Stimulating growth through adjusting macroeconomic conditions remains the principal policy responses to pressing problems of unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation. However, are the current policy approaches capable of tackling these problems by generating win-win solutions or are they the root causes of these problems? The current growth trajectory has neither lead to a reduction of our overall resource use – as we use resources and energy more efficiently we consume more – nor create the conditions for employment and well-being. Increasingly, there is the realization that it is necessary to make substantial interventions into our national economies and create better framework conditions and incentive systems in order to more widely and rapidly develop and disseminate workable, innovative solutions for realizing sustainable development. This is the task of politics, and the concrete design of the measures must be built upon a broad public debate and shared long-term visions. The authors of this book intend to trigger a dialogue among stakeholders about how we can shape this transformation process towards sustainability. Following a detailed presentation of the key arguments for reconsidering the necessary conditions for sustainable economies, an international cast of commentators from politics, administration, civil society, business and science engage with the central question: is there an alternative trajectory for Western economies that sustains wellbeing whilst confronting ecological and social breakdown?