Books published by Verso Books

Originally published in 2012 to wide acclaim, this updated edition, Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, includes coverage of the most recent events in the wave of revolt and revolution sweeping the planetriots in Athens, student occupations in the UK, Quebec and Moscow, the emergence of the Occupy Movement and the tumult of the Arab Spring. Economic crisis, social networking and a new political consciousness have come together to ignite a new generation of radicals.BBC journalist and author Paul Mason combines the anecdotes gleaned through first-hand reportage with political, economic and historical analysis to tell the story of today's networked revolution. Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere not only addresses contemporary struggles, it provides insights into the future of global revolt.

In Marxism and Philosophy Korsch argues for a reexamination of the relationship between Marxist theory and bourgeois philosophy, and insists on the centrality of the Hegelian dialectic and a commitment to revolutionary praxis. Although widely attacked in its time, Marxism and Philosophy has attained a place among the most important works of twentieth-century Marxist theory, and continues to merit critical reappraisal from scholars and activists today.

This book is the result of a research project begun by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two questions:First, what is the rationality of the economic systems that appear and disappear throughout historyin other words, what is their hidden logic and the underlying necessity for them to exist, or to have existed?Second, what are the conditions for a rational understanding of these systemsin other words, for a fully developed comparative economic science?The field of investigation opened up by these two questions is vast, touching on the foundations of social reality and on how to understand them. The author, being a Marxist, sought the answers, as he writes, ';not in philosophy or by philosophical means, but in and through examining the knowledge accumulated by the sciences.' The stages of his journey from philosophy to economics and then to anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book.Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle the question of rationality or irrationality of economic science and of economic realities from the angle of an a priori idea, a speculative definition of what is rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and disappearance of social and economic systems in history as being governed by a necessity ';wholly internal to the concrete structures of social life.

This volume contains the first complete translations of Wilhelm Reich's writings from his Marxist period. Reich, who died in 1957, had a career with a single goal: to find ways of relieving human suffering. And the same curiosity and courage that led him from medical school to join the early pioneers of Freudian psychoanalysis, and then to some of the most controversial work of this centuryhis development of the theory of the orgoneled him also, at one period of his life, to become a radical socialist.The renewed interest in Reich's Marxist writings, and particularly in his notions about sexual and political liberation, follows the radical critiques of Herbert Marcuse, Frantz Fanon and Paul Goodman, the political protest movements toward personal liberation in the present decade.

Feuerbach's departure from the traditional philosophy of Hegel opened the door for generations of radical philosophical thought. His philosophy has long been acknowledged as the influence for much of Marx's early writings.Indeed, a great amount of the young Marx must remain unintelligible without reference to certain basic Feuerbachian texts. These selections, most of them previously untranslated, establish the thought of Feuerbach in an independent role. They explain his fundamental criticisms of the ';old philosophy' of Hegel, and advance his own humanistic thought, which finds its bases in life and sensuality. Feuerbach's contemporaneity as an existentialist, humanist, and atheist is clearly presented, and the reader can readily grasp the liberating influence of this too-long neglected philosopher.Professor Zawar Hanfi has written an excellent introduction establishing Feuerbach's environment, importance, and relevance and his translations surpass most previous Feuerbach translators.

Combining the energy of the early seventies feminist movement with the perceptive analyses of the trained theorist, Woman's Estate is one of the most influential socialist feminist statements of its time. Scrutinizing the political background of the movement, its sources and its common ground with other radical manifestations of the sixties, Woman's Estate describes the organization of women's liberation in Western Europe and America. In this foundational text, Mitchell locates the areas of women's oppression in four key areas: work, reproduction, sexuality and the socialization of children. Through a close study of the modern family and a re-evaluation of Freud's work in this field, Mitchell paints a detailed picture of patriarchy in action.

Despite much talk of its decline, the nuclear family persists as a structure central to contemporary society, a fact to be lamented, according to the ideas of Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh. The Anti-social Family dissects the network of household, kinship and sexual relations that constitute the family form in advanced capitalist societies to show how they reinforce conditions of inequality. This classic work explores the personal and social needs that the family promises to meet but more often denies, and proposes moral and political practices for more egalitarian caring alternatives.

A groundbreaking contribution to debates on women's oppression and consciousness, and the connections between socialism and feminism, this foundational text shows how the roles women adopt within the capitalist economy have shaped ideas about family and sexuality. Examining feminist consciousness from various vantage points social, sexual, cultural and economic Sheila Rowbotham identifies the conditions under which it developed, and how the formation of a new ';way of seeing' for women can lead to collective solidarity.

A vital analysis of world literature through history

First systematic presentation and assessment of the groundbreaking journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse.

First systematic presentation and assessment of the groundbreaking journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse.

The first no-holds-barred expose of the exploitative and divisive world of internships.