Through a discussion with current perspectives in philosophy of history and a rigorous reading of his oeuvre this book highlights the possibilities of the best Marx in terms of his capacity to account for the development of spatiotemporally complex societies.

Part of the SAGE Social Thinkers series, this brief and clearly-written book provides a concise introduction to the work, life, and influences of Karl Marx, one of the most revered, reviled, and misunderstood figures in modern history. The book serves as an excellent introduction to the full range of Marx’s major themes—alienation, economics, social class, capitalism, communism, materialism, environmental sustainability—and considers the extent to which they are relevant today. It is ideal for use as a self-contained volume or in conjunction with other sociological theory textbooks.

A New York Times Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) Time and Space were compiled to establish a multidisciplinary platform for presenting, interacting, and disseminating research. It also aims to foster awareness and discussion on Time and Space, focusing on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design and Social Sciences, and its importance and benefits for the sense of identity, both individual and communal. The idea of Time and Space has been a powerful motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.

Over the past ten to fifteen years there has emerged an increasing concern with mobility in the social sciences and humanities. In Mobility, Space and Culture, Peter Merriman provides an important and timely contribution to the mobilities turn in the social sciences, encouraging academics to rethink the relationship between movement, embodied practices, space and place. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon theoretical and empirical work from across the social sciences and humanities to provide a critical evaluation of the relationship between 'mobility' and 'place'/'site', reformulating places as in process, open, and dynamic spatial formations. Merriman draws upon post-structuralist writings on space, practice and society to demonstrate how movement is not simply practised or experienced in relation to space and time, but gives rise to rhythms, forces, atmospheres, affects and materialities which are often more crucial to embodied apprehensions of events than sensibilities of spatiality and temporality. He draws upon detailed empirical research on experiences of, and social reactions to, driving in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain to trace how the motor-car became associated with sensations of movement-space and enmeshed with debates about embodiment, health, visuality, gender and politics. The book will be essential reading for undergraduates and postgraduates studying mobility in sociology, geography, cultural studies, politics, transport studies, and history.

Karl Marx is a revolutionary. He is not alone. It is November 1849 and London is full of them: a bunch of fanatical dreamers trying to change the world. Persecuted by a tyrannical housekeeper and ignored by his sexually liberated wife, Marx immerses himself in his writing, believing that his book on capital is the surest way of ushering in the workers’ revolution and his family out of poverty. But when a mysterious figure begins to take an obsessive interest in his work Marx’s revolutionary journey takes an unexpected turn... Marx Returns combines historical fiction, psychological mystery, philosophy, differential calculus and extracts from Marx and Engels's collected works to reimagine the life and times of one of history's most exceptional minds, in this next fiction offering from Zero Books.

The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.

"There is no question that David Harvey's work has been one of the most important, influential, and imaginative contributions to the development of human geography since the Second World War. . . . His readings of Marx are arresting and original--a remarkably fresh return to the foundational texts of historical materialism."--Derek Gregory, author of Geographical Imaginations

This new exploration of Marx as a Jewish thinker presents “a perceptive and fair-minded corrective to superficial treatments” of his life and work (Jonathan Rose, Wall Street Journal). A philosopher, historian, sociologist, economist, current affairs journalist, and editor, Karl Marx was one of the most influential and revolutionary thinkers of modern history. But he is rarely thought of as a Jewish thinker, and his Jewish background is either overlooked or misrepresented. Here, distinguished scholar Shlomo Avineri argues that Marx’s Jewish origins made a significant impression on his work. Marx was born in Trier, then part of Prussia, and his family had enjoyed full emancipation under earlier French control of the area. But then its annexation to Prussia deprived the Jewish population of its equal rights. These developments led to the reluctant conversion of Marx’s father, and similar tribulations radicalized many other Jewish intellectuals of that time. Avineri puts Marx’s Jewish background in its proper and balanced perspective, and traces Marx’s intellectual development in light of the historical, intellectual, and political contexts in which he lived.

Fiscal crises have cascaded across much of the developing world with devastating results, from Mexico to Indonesia, Russia and Argentina. The extreme volatility in contemporary political economic fortunes seems to mock our best efforts to understand the forces that drive development in the world economy. David Harvey is the single most important geographer writing today and a leading social theorist of our age, offering a comprehensive critique of contemporary capitalism. In this fascinating book, he shows the way forward for just such an understanding, enlarging upon the key themes in his recent work: the development of neoliberalism, the spread of inequalities across the globe, and ‘space’ as a key theoretical concept. Both a major declaration of a new research programme and a concise introduction to David Harvey’s central concerns, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences.