Books published by Verso Books

This text provides an explanation of the political correctness argument: how it emerged and how right-wing pundits have used it to undermine contemporary criticism. In a series of essays, Berube examines such issues as the current state of cultural studies and the significance of postmodernism.

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, which critically appraises Poulantzas's achievement.

Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, this prize-winning author offers reflections on how the history of white racism continues to have impact on political and social life today. His previous book, "The Wages of Whiteness" won the Merle Curti Prize for Social History in 1991.

Fascinating study of the relationship between the philosopher and the psychoanalyst by major Slovenian scholar.

This fully updated edition of Red Brotherhood at War – the most comprehensive account of events since 1975 in Indochina – explains why communist victory did not usher in a period of peace based on proletarian internationalism. While victorious revolutionaries in Vietnam and Laos strengthened their special relationship, Vietnam’s relations with fraternal Cambodia and China deteriorated into full-scale war. The Vietnamese overthrow of Pol Pot’s regime in 1979 was condemned by the West, which joined with China to support the Khmer Rouge-dominated anti-Vietnamese resistance in Cambodia. An inter-communist war thus became one of the focal points of the New Cold War in the 1980s.This complex and paradoxical tangle of events is skilfully analysed by Evans and Rowley in their frank and lively book. Drawing on a wide range of sources and first-hand research, this new edition has been thoroughly revised to chart the interaction between Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and the changing configuration of regional and great-power politics up to the present day.

Classic writings on the Panopticon from the renowned English philosopher

What is money, where does it come from, and who controls it?In this accessible, brilliantly argued book, leading political economist Ann Pettifor explains in straightforward terms history's most misunderstood invention: the money system. Pettifor argues that democracies can, and indeed must, reclaim control over money production and restrain the out-of-control finance sector so that it serves the interests of society, as well as the needs of the ecosystem.The Production of Money examines and assesses popular alternative debates on, and innovations in, money, such as ';green QE' and ';helicopter money.' She sets out the possibility of linking the money in our pockets (or on our smartphones) to the improvements we want to see in the world around us.

The stories behind the inequality crisis-a forty-year investigation by In These Times

Why should we have to ';Keep Calm and Carry On'? In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a ';make do and mend' aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition. The Ministry of Nostalgia explodes the creation of a false history: a rewriting of the austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the development of a welfare state while the nation crawled out of the devastations of war. This period has been recast to explain and offer consolation for the violence of neoliberalism, an ideology dedicated to the privatisation of our common wealth. In coruscating prosewith subjects ranging from Ken Loach's documentaries, Turner Prizeshortlisted video art, London vernacular architecture, and Jamie Oliver's cookingHatherley issues a passionate challenge to the injunction to keep calm and carry on.

The brilliant family memoir of the much-beloved poet and political campaigner

How Jeremy Corbyn, the radical left candidate for the Labour leadership, won twiceand won bigIn the 2017 general election, Jeremy Corbyn pulled off an historic upset, attracting the biggest increase in the Labour vote since 1945. It was another reversal of expectations for the mainstream media and his ';soft-left' detractors. Demolishing the Blairite opposition in 2015, Corbyn had already seen off an attempted coup. Now, he had shattered the government's authority, and even Corbyn's most vitriolic critics have been forced into stunned mea culpas. For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agendaand for the first time in Labour's history, it defines the leadership. Richard Seymour tells the story of how Corbyn's rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and by a deep crisis in British democracy. He shows how Corbyn began the task of rebuilding Labour as a grassroots party, with a coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, students and ';Old Labour' pugilists, who then became the biggest campaigning army in British politics. Utilizing social media, activists turned the media's Project Fear on its head and broke the ideological monopoly of the tabloids. After the election, with all the artillery still ranged against Corbyn, and with all the weaknesses of the Left's revival, Seymour asks what Corbyn can do with his newfound success.