The British left and the defence economy

The British left and the defence economy PDF Author: Keith Mc Loughlin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526144034
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Forty years before COVID-19, socialists in Britain campaigned for workers to have the right to make ‘socially useful’ products, from hospital equipment to sustain the NHS to affordable heating systems for the impoverished elderly. This movement held one thing responsible above all else for the nation’s problems: the burden of defence spending. In the middle of the Cold War, the left put a direct challenge to the defence industry, the Labour government and trade unions. The response it received revealed much about a military-industrial state that prioritised the making and exporting of arms for political favour and profit. Looking at peace activism from the early 1970s to Labour’s landslide defeat in the 1983 general election, this book examines the conflict over the cost of Britain’s commitment to the Cold War and asserts that the wider left presented a comprehensive and implementable alternative to the stark choice between making weapons and joining the dole queue.

The British left and the defence economy

The British left and the defence economy PDF Author: Keith Mc Loughlin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526144034
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Get Book Here

Book Description
Forty years before COVID-19, socialists in Britain campaigned for workers to have the right to make ‘socially useful’ products, from hospital equipment to sustain the NHS to affordable heating systems for the impoverished elderly. This movement held one thing responsible above all else for the nation’s problems: the burden of defence spending. In the middle of the Cold War, the left put a direct challenge to the defence industry, the Labour government and trade unions. The response it received revealed much about a military-industrial state that prioritised the making and exporting of arms for political favour and profit. Looking at peace activism from the early 1970s to Labour’s landslide defeat in the 1983 general election, this book examines the conflict over the cost of Britain’s commitment to the Cold War and asserts that the wider left presented a comprehensive and implementable alternative to the stark choice between making weapons and joining the dole queue.

East Wind

East Wind PDF Author: Tom Buchanan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199570337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
East Wind offers the first complete, archive-based account of the relationship between China and the British Left, from the rise of modern Chinese nationalism to the death of Mao Tse tung. Beginning with the "Hands Off China" movement of the mid-1920s, Tom Buchanan charts the mobilisation of British opinion in defence of China against Japanese aggression, 1931-1945, and the role of the British left in relations with the People's Republic of China after 1949. He shows how this relationship was placed under stress by the growing unpredictability of Communist China, above all by the Sino-Soviet dispute and the Cultural Revolution, which meant that by the 1960s China was actively supported only by a dwindling group of enthusiasts. The impact of the suppression of the student protests in Tiananmen Square (June 1989) is addressed as an epilogue. East Wind argues that the significance of the left's relationship with China has been unjustly overlooked. There were many occasions, such as the mid-1920s, the late 1930s and the early 1950s, when China demanded the full attention of the British left. It also argues that there is nothing new in the current fascination with China's emergence as an economic power. Throughout these decades the British left was aware of the immense, unrealised potential of the Chinese economy, and of how China's economic growth could transform the world. In addition to analysing the role of the political parties and pressure groups of the left, Buchanan sheds new light on the activities of many well-known figures in support of China, including intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, R H Tawney and Joseph Needham. Many other interesting stories emerge, concerning less well-known figures, which show the complexity of personal links between Britain and China during the twentieth century.

The National System of Political Economy

The National System of Political Economy PDF Author: Friedrich List
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description


Advanced Macroeconomics

Advanced Macroeconomics PDF Author: Filipe R. Campante
Publisher: LSE Press
ISBN: 1909890707
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Macroeconomic policy is one of the most important policy domains, and the tools of macroeconomics are among the most valuable for policy makers. Yet there has been, up to now, a wide gulf between the level at which macroeconomics is taught at the undergraduate level and the level at which it is practiced. At the same time, doctoral-level textbooks are usually not targeted at a policy audience, making advanced macroeconomics less accessible to current and aspiring practitioners. This book, born out of the Masters course the authors taught for many years at the Harvard Kennedy School, fills this gap. It introduces the tools of dynamic optimization in the context of economic growth, and then applies them to a wide range of policy questions – ranging from pensions, consumption, investment and finance, to the most recent developments in fiscal and monetary policy. It does so with the requisite rigor, but also with a light touch, and an unyielding focus on their application to policy-making, as befits the authors’ own practical experience. Advanced Macroeconomics: An Easy Guide is bound to become a great resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and practitioners alike.

The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy

The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy PDF Author: Baris Tufekci
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030349985
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This book provides the first book-length study of the political and economic ideas of the British left’s Alternative Economic Strategy in the 1970s and early 1980s. Discussing the AES’s approaches to capitalism, the nation state and the working class, it argues that existing academic accounts have significantly overstated the radicalism of the strategy. Perhaps more notable, especially in the light of its stated ‘revolutionary’ aims, was the extent of its moderation – its continuities with post-war Labour revisionism, its marked reluctance to look beyond the market economy, the degree of its preoccupation with Britain’s global-economic status, and its inability to break with Labourist politics of class co-operation in the national interest. While the book argues that the AES was the last ‘class politics’ socialist initiative in mainstream British politics, it also explores the ways in which its ideas perhaps prepared the way for New Labour in the 1990s, and its relationship with 'Corbynism' since 2015.

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation PDF Author: David Edgerton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781846147753
Category : 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, a story of building a welfare state and coping with decline. But what if Britain's history was approached from a different angle? What if we wrote about it with as we might write the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union, as a story of power, and of transformation? David Edgerton's major new book breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to radical discontinuities. Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation. This was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers. From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways. Such a perspective produces new and refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nationgives us a grown-up, unsentimental history, one which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.

The Third Way

The Third Way PDF Author: Anthony Giddens
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745666604
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.

Dramas at Westminster

Dramas at Westminster PDF Author: Marc Geddes
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526136821
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Based on unprecedented access to the UK Parliament, this book challenges how we understand and think about accountability between government and Parliament. Drawing on three months of research in Westminster, and over forty-five interviews, this book focuses on the everyday practices of Members of Parliament and officials to reveal how parliamentarians perform their scrutiny roles. Some MPs become specialists while others act as lone wolves; some are there to try to defend their party while others want to learn about policy. Amongst these different styles, chairs of committees have to try to reconcile these interpretations and either act as committee-orientated catalysts or attempt to impose order as leadership-orientated chieftains. All of this pushes and pulls scrutiny in competing directions, and tells us that accountability depends on individual beliefs, everyday practices and the negotiation of dilemmas. In this way, MPs and officials create a drama or spectacle of accountability and use their performance on the parliamentary stage to hold government to account. Dramas at Westminster: Select committees and the quest for accountability offers the most up-to-date and detailed research on committee practices in the House of Commons, following a range of reforms since 2010.

Military Inc

Military Inc PDF Author: Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9781786800114
Category : Civil-military relations
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Pakistan is a strategic ally of the US in the 'war on terror'. It is the third largest recipient of US aid in the world. Yet Pakistan is a state run by its army and intelligence service. Operating in the shadows, Pakistan's military industrial complex owns and controls swathes of the economic and political landscape of the country. Military Inc. dares to illuminate the military as an oppressive holding company possessing not just security-related businesses, but also hotels, shopping malls, insurance companies, banks, farms and even an airline. The result is a deeply undemocratic society, where money is funnelled towards the military's economic enterprises, leaving those in need of it impoverished and effectively disenfranchised. With an empirical richness, and a view to Pakistan's recent history, Ayesha Siddiqa offers a detailed and powerful case study of a global phenomenon: corruption, hollow economic growth and elitism. This new edition includes a chapter on the recent developments of the military's foray into the media, and a new preface.

COVID-19 in Southeast Asia

COVID-19 in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Hyun Bang Shin
Publisher: LSE Press
ISBN: 1909890774
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
COVID-19 has presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact has been highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. The crisis revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in society, compelling us to question what it means to return to “normal” and what insights can be gleaned from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world. In this regard, this edited volume collects the informed views of an ensemble of social scientists – area studies, development studies, and legal scholars; anthropologists, architects, economists, geographers, planners, sociologists, and urbanists; representing academic institutions, activist and charitable organisations, policy and research institutes, and areas of professional practice – who recognise the necessity of critical commentary and engaged scholarship. These contributions represent a wide-ranging set of views, collectively producing a compilation of reflections on the following three themes in particular: (1) Urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) Migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) Collective action, communities, and mutual action. Overall, this edited volume first aims to speak from a situated position in relevant debates to challenge knowledge about the pandemic that has assigned selective and inequitable visibility to issues, people, or places, or which through its inferential or interpretive capacity has worked to set social expectations or assign validity to certain interventions with a bearing on the pandemic’s course and the future it has foretold. Second, it aims to advance or renew understandings of social challenges, risks, or inequities that were already in place, and which, without further or better action, are to be features of our “post-pandemic world” as well. This volume also contributes to the ongoing efforts to de-centre and decolonise knowledge production. It endeavours to help secure a place within these debates for a region that was among the first outside of East Asia to be forced to contend with COVID-19 in a substantial way and which has evinced a marked and instructive diversity and dynamism in its fortunes.