Book Description
This book tells the fascinating story of the reemergence of the American political left over the last quarter century in the form of the new Progressive Movement. Born out of Liberalism's crushing defeats at the hands of conservative strategists of the Reagan/Bush era, this new movement has cleverly reverse engineered the conservative's institutional networking strategy to plan and finance its resurgence. Progressive strategists have constructed an elaborate network of foundations, advocacy groups, and other institutions to advance their agenda. But where the conservatives relied on affirmative corporate support to help power their movement, the Progressive Left has used an anti-corporate strategy whose purpose is three-fold:
1. To reclaim the moral high ground of politics by challenging corporate power and influence.
2. To gain effective control over "other people's money" (e.g., pension funds, mutual funds) and use it to press for changes in corporate social policies.
3. To leverage this influence over corporate decision-making to change the direction of American politics and public policy.
Biz War extends the argument of Manheim's 2001 book, The Death of A Thousand Cuts, by showing how anti-corporate campaigns have evolved from economically-oriented labor actions to ideological and programmatic political struggles. It details how the strategies and tactics crafted by organized labor are being employed with increasing effect by the political left.
The book will be of interest to students of contemporary American politics, strategic communication, political movements, and business management. Likewise it will help corporate executives and financial analysts understand more fully the proxy wars and other attacks against their companies.
Customer Reviews:
Fine treatment of an overlooked topic.......2006-02-13
The left in the US is so awash in self-pity that it took a centrist fairly removed from the progressive movement to note the consolidation of a set institutions increasingly able to challenge corporate power (the point finds interesting confirmation in Barbara Ehrenreich's book Bait and Switch, when (while undercover) she attends a seminar on how to defend corporations against such attacks)--a set of foundations, think tanks, publications and organizations that constitute an 'out-of-power' elite to challenge the traditional power elite (the center) and the more recent right wing network. Mannheim calls attention to such phenomena as the impact of the 'SDS alumni association', which has developed many progressive institutions, the branding of 'the corporation' as an evil that much of the populace can relate to, and the 'anti-corporate' campaign, which borrows tactics from labor union's corporate campaigns, but rather than seeking concrete demands, tends to seek to discredit corporate power in general ('the issue is not the issue', as the slogan used to go). On the other hand, it is debatable whether the new progressive formation can be equated with the traditional centrist power elite or the right wing formation. Between 1945 and 1970, centrists held sway over virtually every major institution in American life. The right wing network is actually a disparate coalition that unites economic libertarians, macho militarists, and religious conservatives. The left these days simply doesn't have a mass base comparable to the latter two. And it certainly helps the right that most of the corporate elite sympathize with the message of the first group. Indeed, as elites go, the progressive elite amounts to little more than a small minority of rich kids and some prominent names in the academic and non-profit world. So as an elite, the progressive movement isn't too fearsome, and as a mass movement it isn't in great shape either. I don't think the right and center have too much to fear--yet. A sober assessment of the left's prospects would have to come to grips with the huge racial and class based gulf that isolates the progressive elite from its potential mass base (one might usefully look at the SNCC alumni association, in terms of what kinds of organizations it has created, and the funds it has on hand compared to SDS old-timers). Nevertheless, I strongly recommend this book to all progressives (as well as liberals slightly to their right and marxists to their left) as an effort to take stock of progressive activities over the last twenty years. Much better to read and reflect on that than one more book bashing Bush.
The Progressives Are Back (Maybe).......2005-10-19
As Manheim outlines here, there are still many Progressives out there, even though they've been decimated in numbers and (especially) influence by the Reaganites and Neocons. These committed folks are working on ways to shed the dreaded "L" word and claw their way back into prominence. According to Manheim, the newest Progressives have marshaled their forces around a battle against the disproportionate power of corporations, a sociopolitical inequity that is seriously damaging participatory democracy. In organized efforts that have mostly slipped beneath the notice of the mainstream media (itself overwhelmingly corporatist), a new Progressive movement has had some success in beginning to bring corporations into line, mostly through socially responsible investing, coordinated fundraising for protest efforts, and the building of activist networks. Manheim lays this out in prose that is surprisingly engaging for an academic dissertation, and he truly believes in the activists and organizations that he covers.
However, below the useful information on the presence and activities of modern Progressives, Manheim has accomplished little more than simply proving that they exist and that they've had a few isolated successes. A sizable chunk of this book is made up of selective and sometimes repetitive lists of organizations and their accomplishments. This is impressive information in quantity, but there is precious little enlightenment on the larger systemic issues of the American political environment. Also, Manheim's running contention that the leaders of the new Progressive movement are an ascendant counter-elite just doesn’t come to fruition. And worst of all, Manheim mostly avoids the crucial issue of how these efforts can really lead to any real curative effect on social and economic conditions in America. Granted, a few corporations have made encouraging concessions toward the ideals of social and environmental responsibility. But the new Progressive movement is still a puppy nipping at the heels of the eight-million-pound gorilla that is corporate conservatism. A few isolated successes don’t make for an encouraging trend. When it comes to real changes in the sociopolitical status quo anytime soon, Manheim is enthusiastic, but the knowledgeable reader will probably be more pessimistic. [~doomsdayer520~]
Book Description
In Cuba something curious has happened over the past fifteen years. The government has allowed vocal criticism of its policies to be expressed within the arts. Filmmakers, rappers, and visual and performance artists have addressed sensitive issues including bureaucracy, racial and gender discrimination, emigration, and alienation. How can this vibrant body of work be reconciled with the standard representations of a repressive, authoritarian cultural apparatus? In Cuba Represent! Sujatha Fernandes—a scholar and musician who has performed in Cuba—answers that question.
Combining textual analyses of films, rap songs, and visual artworks; ethnographic material collected in Cuba; and insights into the nation’s history and political economy, Fernandes details the new forms of engagement with official institutions that have opened up as a result of changing relationships between state and society in the post-Soviet period. She demonstrates that in a moment of extreme hardship and uncertainty, the Cuban state has moved to a more permeable model of power. Artists and other members of the public are collaborating with government actors to partially incorporate critical cultural expressions into official discourse. The Cuban leadership has come to recognize the benefits of supporting artists: rappers offer a link to increasingly frustrated black youth in Cuba; visual artists are an important source of international prestige and hard currency; and films help unify Cubans through community discourse about the nation. Cuba Represent! reveals that part of the socialist government’s resilience stems from its ability to absorb oppositional ideas and values.
Customer Reviews:
structural analysis.......2004-03-14
This book Focuses on the power structure of the nazi party. It doesn't reveal much about personalities or everyday life, but describes the interrelation between the beauracrats, industrialists, land owners, populace, and nazi party members. It is appropriate for anyone interested in political structures and how they are held together. It gives a fascinating look into the accumulation of power into one charismatic leader and the appointed henchmen/disciples who would literrally do anything to please the whims of their demigod, and thus gain more power for themselves, And how this monopolistic and 'anarchic' power structure ultimately led to such a terribly disfunctional outcome.
Excellent study by the best Hitler biographer.......2003-05-09
Ian Kershaw is the premier historian on Hitler and Nazi Germany and this book from the Profiles in Power series is an excellent study on the roots, success, and ultimate destruction of the "Fuehrercult." Two schools of thought are used by historians to understand the power of Nazism. "Intentionalists" see the Nazi regime as the embodiment of Hitler as the totalitarian leader. "Structuralists," however, believe the policies and, ultimately, the crimes of Nazi Germany were stumbled upon by underlings working under a loose framework rather than a deliberate program. As one would expect, Kershaw takes from both these theories to develop his comprehensive profile.
Kershaw examines Hitler's worldview of racial struggle, anti-Semitism, and living space for the German empire--how these ideas developed (Hitler's background) and how Hitler used them to create his leadership image. This Fuehrercult unified a fractional party, helped repress opposition, and created a mass following. Through Hitler's charismatic leadership the German people would be prepared to fight the Nazi fight (inevitably WWII). Kershaw also looks at the feudal-like power relations inside the Third Reich; a regime of open-ended decrees that left no "smoking gun" pointing at Hitler for the Final Solution. Finally, Kershaw examines the destruction of Hitler's power during which the irrational optimism that "Providence" (i.e. Hitler's will) would prevail was still believed by many (particularly the 'court' of Hitler's bunker). I recommend this book especially to advanced history students who want an in-depth examination of Hitler's power in a compact 230-page book. The book includes footnotes, an index, a chapter on further readings, and a chronology of events.
Unique investigation of Hitler and his rise to power........1999-04-02
It is not your typical biography of Hitler. It is a thorough examination and analysis of Hitler's rise to power. It examines how he got power, how he maintained power, how he used power, and, finally, how he lost power. Quite an interesting book. Be sure to check out other books in this "Profiles in Power" series.
Average customer rating:
- A so-so effort gone terribly astray
- An excellant book
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Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism
Richard Gid Powers
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Modern Library Paperbacks)
ASIN: 0300074700 |
Customer Reviews:
A so-so effort gone terribly astray.......2004-02-14
I bought this book in the mistaken belief that the author might have something to add to the debate. Boy, was I wrong. I gave him one star for excellence in pagination.
Powers attempts to sort out the good anti-communists from the lunatic fringe (Hoover, McCarthy, Martin Dies, the Hearst Press etc.) and thus demonstrate that the anti-communist effort of the 40s and 50s was actually a positive good discredited only by the excesses of the fringe. The problem is that he himself can't sort them out, or even maintain his own premise. By the end of the book he's lamenting the demise of the very extremists he attacked in the beginning of the book as giving anti-communism a bad name!
He then goes on to claim, most strangely, that the fall of McCarthy (which effectively happened in 1954) silenced anti-communism in America, and that Eisenhower discouraged such for fear of reawakening McCarthyism -- as if it ever had been asleep, as if Eisenhower himself was not responsible for some of the worst excesses, including the tightening of Truman's infamous Loyalty and Security program, and the mass arrests of party leaders on grounds that were tossed out by the supreme court(but no doubt the court was a bunch of commies anyway).
What becomes evident (certainly in the last of the book) is that Powers himself suffers from the very malaise he is attempting to save anticommunism from. He condemns Kennedy for abandoning the struggle as a "holy war" and rationally viewing it as power struggle; Carter and Nixon become "appeasers"; and anti-anti-communists are responsible for the debacle of Vietnam. He then extolls Norman Podhoretz, a rabid extremist if there ever was one, in terms befitting a demi-god:"the one man with the will, the strength, the imagination to commence the giant task of rebuilding the anticommunist coalition," (for a moment I thought I was reading a love scene by Ayn Rand). He even, most bizarrely, gives partial credit to Podhoretz for winning the Cold War, and condemns George F. Kennan, the author of our containment policy and a most honorable anti-communist, as an appeaser and villain.
I'd return this book if I could, but in my disgust I've thrown it against the wall too many times. There were honorable opponents of Communism in those days -- those who believed in the marketplace of ideas and not repression -- but it remains unclear if this author could recognize one.
An excellant book.......2003-07-20
This book is a history of American anti-communism from 1917 to 1991. It covers the good (Sidney Hook, Norman Podhoretz, William F. Buckley) and the bad (Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover). Mr. Powers conclusion is the bad does not stain the good and that American anti-communism was a positive force in the world, helping to free millions from the communist nightmare.
Book Description
This is a new, updated edtion of John Holloway's acclaimed guide to the politics of revolution and protest.
The wave of political demonstrations since Seattle have crystallised a new trend in left-wing politics. Modern protest movements are grounding their actions in both Marxism and Anarchism, fighting for radical social change in terms that have nothing to do with the taking of state power. This is in clear opposition to the traditional Marxist theory of revolution which centres on taking state power. In this book, John Holloway asks how we can reformulate our understanding of revolution as the struggle against power, not for power.
After a century of failed attempts by revolutionary and reformist movements to bring about radical social change, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. John Holloway opens up the theoretical debate, reposing some of the basic concepts of Marxism in a critical development of the subversive Marxist tradition represented by Adorno, Bloch and Lukacs, amongst others, and grounded in a rethinking of Marx's concept of 'fetishisation'-- how doing is transformed into being.
Book Description
Developing themes of his earlier works, Poulantzas here advances a vigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories of the state, arguing against a general theory of the state, and identifying forms of class power crucial to socialist strategy that goes beyond the apparatus of the state. This new edition includes an introduction by Stuart Hall, originally published in New Left Review, which critically appraises Poulantzas's achievement.
Customer Reviews:
Return of an old classic.......2001-06-06
The premature death of Nicos Poulantzas was, indeed, a great disaster for Marxism, and for all social theorists concerned with the critical evaluation of the State. In this, perhaps his most readable work, Poulanztas rejects the simple instrumentalist interpretation of the State in favour of a complex structuralist approach which views the state not as an instrument, but a CONTESTED FIELD. Poulantzas portrays a state that is rent through with internal contradictions: which is itself a site of struggle. For Poulantzas, the class struggle IMPRINTS itself upon the state. As he argues, "the State bathes in struggles that continually submerge it." Hence Poulantzas's view of the State as a 'strategic field' is radically opposed to the 'fortress State' perspective, where the state is an intsrument firmly in the hands of a ruling class - and must be laid seige to or 'stormed' in order to be 'smashed' and then reconstructed. There are difficulties with Poulantzas's analysis. In a fashion akin to all Structuralists, his structural determinism seems to deny to possibility of agency. From my own perspective, I would argue that class struggle does not ONLY occur structurally, but reaches a higher level with the dawning of class consciousness and the establishment of the working class as a true collective-historical ACTOR. What is more, it is not only the class struggle that imprints itself upon the state, but political struggles of all varieties. Finally, I find the non-Marxist concept of a state contested by competing 'elites' quite convincing also - in the sense that this is at least ONE dimension of the nature of the State. Hence, it is true that I harbour serious differences with the perspective put forward by Poulantzas. Nevertheless, I must conclude by asserting that his account of the State in its true, contradictory form, was one of the greatest contributions to the political theory of the State. This is a must read of Marxists and political science students alike.
A rigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories.......2001-04-08
In State, Power, Socialism, Nicos Poulantzas (a member of the Greek Communist Party of the Interior from 1968 until his death in 1979 at the age of 43) advances a rigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories of the state. Poulantzas argues against a general theory of the state, and identifying forms of class power crucial to socialist strategy that goes beyond the apparatus of the state. Long out of print, this new and highly recommended Verso Books edition of State, Power, Socialismis enhanced for students of political science with an informative introduction by Stuart Hall, critically appraising Poulantzas' achievement.
Book Description
The authority of Polish communists in 1944-1945 was usurpatory; it was not given to them by the Polish people. Nor was the power they held the result of their own actions; they were installed as the country's rulers by the Soviet army. Yet Polish Communists set out to produce credible claims to authority and legitimacy for their power by reshaping the nation's culture and traditions. Jan Kubik begins his study by demonstrating how the strategy for remodeling the national culture was implemented through extensive use of public ceremonies and displays of symbols by the Gierek regime (1970-1980). He then reconstructs the emergence of the Catholic Church and the organized opposition as viable counter-hegemonic subcultures. Their growing strength opened the way for counter-hegemonic politics, the delegitimization of the regime, the rise of Solidarity, and the collapse of communism. He is not studying politics per se, but rather culture and the subtle and indirect ways power is realized within it, often outside of traditionally defined politics. Kubik's approach, which draws heavily on modern anthropological theory, helps explain why Solidarity happened in Poland and not elsewhere in the Communist bloc.
Average customer rating:
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Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village
Glennys Young
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
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ASIN: 0271017201 |
Customer Reviews:
a new vision.......2005-02-08
An amazing book,you get chills when you find out who is really in charge,donn is an amazing writer,he takes you threw it all,he refines your thinking,buy it.,m.b
The Hard Edge of Reality.......2004-08-16
I`ve read all three books By Col.Donn de-Grand Pre, Barbarians Inside the Gates. I can only say to every red bloodied American out there that you must read these books. Why? It appears life as we know it for Americans is at a crossroad. WE`ve been duped on the World Trade Center attack from the beginning. We are being led by evil-powers within our gates that seek our ruin and have sent our brave American warriors to die fighting under the guise of patriotism to do their bidding. A coup d`etat has occurred within our government and 2,000 plus of our people were murdered at the World Trade Center while we pursue the wrong enemy. Our young warriors are dying daily fighting an enemy that had nothing to do with the World Trade Center. If corrective change does not occur now I fear we will lose our nation and our freedom. Speaking as veteran and a patriot, buy the books,....... prepare yourself and do it for your children. Capt.U.S.M.C.
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- Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change: Contribution of Working Group III to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
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