Books published by Verso Books

Italy's political disaster analysed

Exploring the philosophy of disobedienceThe world is out of joint, so much so that disobeying should be an urgent question for everyone. In this provocative essay, Frédéric Gros explores the roots of political obedience. Social conformity, economic subjection, respect for authorities, constitutional consensus? Examining the various styles of obedience provides tools to study, invent and induce new forms of civic disobedience and lyrical protest. Nothing can be taken for granted: neither supposed certainties nor social conventions, economic injustice or moral conviction.Thinking philosophically requires us never to accept truths and generalities that seem obvious. It restores a sense of political responsibility. At a time when the decisions of experts are presented as the result of icy statistics and anonymous calculations, disobeying becomes an assertion of humanity.To philosophize is to disobey. This book is a call for critical democracy and ethical resistance.

Trump in the Middle East: Chaos or Retreat?

The Chicago Teachers Union strike was the most important domestic labor struggle so far this centuryand perhaps for the last forty yearsand the strongest challenge to the conservative agenda for restructuring education, which advocates for more charter schools and tying teacher salaries to standardized testing, among other changes.In 2012, Chicago teachers built a grassroots movement through education and engagement of an entire union membership, taking militant action in the face of enormous structural barriers and a hostile Democratic Party leadership. The teachers won massive concessions from the city and have become a new model for school reform led by teachers themselves, rather than by billionaires. Strike for America is the story of this movement, and how it has become the defining struggle for the labor movement today.

Throughout the ages and across every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protest--rallying others around them and inspiring uprisings in eras yet to come. Their echoes reverberate from Ancient Greece, China and Egypt, via the dissident poets and philosophers of Islam and Judaism, through to the Arab slave revolts and anti-Ottoman rebellions of the Middle Ages. These sources were tapped during the Dutch and English revolutions at the outset of the Modern world, and in turn flowed into the French, Haitian, American, Russian and Chinese revolutions. More recently, resistance to war and economic oppression has flared up on battlefields and in public spaces from Beijing and Baghdad to Caracas and Los Angeles. This anthology, global in scope, presents voices of dissent from every era of human history: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos. Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book of Dissent will become an invaluable resource, reminding today's citizens that these traditions will never die.

Win or lose, Bernie has reshaped the landscape of American politics. Where does the political revolution go next?

Presents an analysis of the transition from a comprehensive and universal service to New Labour's 'mixed economy of health care', in which hospitals with foundation status, loosely supervised by an independent regulator, are run on largely market principles. This book also aims to demystify slogans such as 'diversity' and 'local ownership'.

"Parts of this book appeared originally under the same title in Harper's Magazine, May 17, 2017" -- T.p verso.

Charts the history of women's liberation and calls for a revitalized feminism

A new and essential history of the Labour new left from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn.

Classic study of Marx by Japan's leading critical theorist.