Piquant, irksome, challenging, head-turning, maddening—a collection that successfully endeavors to get your blood pumping.
Leftist considerations of a number of contemporary sociopolitical issues, edited by Nation senior editor Leonard and Jacobin founding editor Sunkara.
“From capital’s point of view,” writes Jacobin contributing editor Chris Maisano, “the social and political relations of production that come with [full employment] are untenable. Accepting such an economy would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament in the class struggle.” They may sound hoary, but these words have a stirring quality, a reminder that it is more fun to read the subversive broadsides of Vonnegut than the Grundrisse, but the latter’s analytical tools continue to find a trenchant foothold. “The ideas in this volume draw on a rich tradition of socialist proposals, long a force in American politics,” writes Leonard, and what the collection lacks in humor and self-skepticism, it makes up for not just in radical traditions, but also in original thinking on life beyond today’s ruinous oligarchy. Throughout the book, there is plenty to argue with—e.g., “for socialists, freedom is exclusively identified with the time we spend outside the sphere of material production,” a contention that denies the genuinely meaningful possibilities of work. But engagement—with the essays, with the world—is the point. The contributors explore the horizontal structure of local autonomy, exemplified by Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and Fight for $15; the organizations at work in the LGBT movement confronting the economic marginalization and violence that still plague this community (the time has come to move from “legal equality to lived equality”); and the plentiful instances when small is not necessarily better. The contributors address both sweeping concerns—echoing Thomas Piketty, particularly regarding the African-American population: “As bad as income inequality is in the United States, wealth inequality is even worse”—and specific issues, including the idea of the “work-life balance”: as Leonard rightly notes, “working-class women have always ‘done it all.’ ”
Piquant, irksome, challenging, head-turning, maddening—a collection that successfully endeavors to get your blood pumping.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9829-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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