Kathi Weeks: The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · autonomy, basic income, capitalism, critique, feminism, fordism, labour, marxism, politics, postwork, production, productivism, value, work
In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory.
Publisher Duke University Press, 2011
a John Hope Franklin Center Book
ISBN 0822351129, 9780822351122
304 pages
Charles Eisenstein: Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, & Society in the Age of Transition (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · banking, commons, debt, economics, economy, gift culture, gift economy, money, production
Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.
This book is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with “right livelihood” and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen.
Publisher North Atlantic Books, 2011
ISBN 1583943978, 9781583943977
469 pages
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Lawrence H. White: The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, economics, economy, history, liberalism, market, money, production
The Clash of Economic Ideas interweaves the economic history of the last hundred years with the history of economic doctrines to understand how contrasting economic ideas have originated and developed over time to take their present forms. It traces the connections running from historical events to debates among economists, and from the ideas of academic writers to major experiments in economic policy. The treatment offers fresh perspectives on laissez faire, socialism and fascism; the Roaring Twenties, business cycle theories and the Great Depression; Institutionalism and the New Deal; the Keynesian Revolution; and war, nationalization and central planning. After 1945, the work explores the postwar revival of invisible-hand ideas; economic development and growth, with special attention to contrasting policies and thought in Germany and India; the gold standard, the interwar gold-exchange standard, the postwar Bretton Woods system and the Great Inflation; public goods and public choice; free trade versus protectionism; and finally fiscal policy and public debt.
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2012
ISBN 1107012422, 9781107012424
440 pages
discussion with the author (with Russ Roberts, EconTalk)
review (Alberto Mingardi, The Washington Times)