Lilley - Capital and its discontents: conversations with radical thinkers in a time of tumult

Enveloped by a crisis that seems to have no end, heirs to ideas that seem unable to carry us through the presentthe combination is disorienting. For that, it is right to scour the intellectual malcontents to gain from their recovery of ideas from the past and their sense of how to understand the present. Ideas are the soul of social activism. Without them action dissipates into futility; the ideas help us focus our energy toward building the kind of alternative world that our hopes encourage. Sasha Lilleys Capital and Its Discontents is a superb introduction to some of the best traditions, given to us through some of the sharpest thinkers of the Global North.

Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A Peoples History of the Third World.

Few journalists can match Sasha Lilleys knowledge of political economy, nor her keen instinct for the important questions. Read these interviewswith some of the lefts most clearheaded thinkersfor a far deeper understanding of contemporary capitalism and its problems, and, perhaps more surprisingly, a bracing and contagious optimism.

Liza Featherstone, author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers Rights at Wal-Mart

These conversations illuminate the current world situation in ways that are very useful for those hoping to orient themselves and find a way forward to effective individual and collective action. Highly recommended.

Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of the Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt

In this fine set of interviews, an A-list of radical thinkers demonstrate why their skills are indispensable to understanding todays multiple economic and ecological crises.

Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved

This finely tuned assemblage of radical voices, both familiar and fresh, will be an indispensible vade mecum for opponents of capital and empire in the new century. Lucid analysis, a penetrating but sympathetic interlocutor, and signposts pointing beyond the horizon of the neoliberal orderaltogether a superb addition to PMs Spectre series.

Iain Boal, coauthor of Retorts Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War

Sasha Lilley, one of KPFAs all-time finest broadcasters, turns to print, producing a splendid volume of interviews on a wide range of economic and political subjects. In Capital and Its Discontents, Lilley glides past worn-out stereotypes and exhausted explanations to get right to the heart of todays most pressing issues. She does this with a light touch but a sure hand and brings out the best from each contributoreconomists, sociologists, political activistsproducing a compelling collection.

Cal Winslow, coeditor of Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s

Capital and Its Discontents presents the thought of many of the most astute analysts of contemporary political, economic and cultural developments in accessible interview form. Sasha Lilleys wide-ranging and probing questions prompt her interviewees to address the intersecting crises of our time and to outline frameworks for understanding and responding to them. This collection of interviews introduces the reader to much of the best thinking about social issues on the U.S. left today.

Barbara Epstein, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz

At a time of economic crisis but great political opportunity, Capital and Its Discontents provides a much-needed roadmap for turning radical ideas into action. The hegemony of neoliberal ideology can be paralyzing at times, even on the left. The contributors to this book do a rousing job of reminding us that another world is possibleif we all pitch in and make it happen. Steve Early, author of Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home

Reading this wonderful book feels like having a face-to-face discussion with each author. These brilliant radical thinkers from many parts of the world generously and lucidly share their knowledge and insights on capitalism, empire, and resistance.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian and author of Red Dirt and Outlaw Woman

Sasha Lilley is the very best interviewer I have ever encountered. I dont think that I have heard as good a set of questions as she poses in these stellar interviews, and the depth of the answers she elicits will help develop the confidence to get these ideas out even more widely. Taken together, these interviews allow the left to think collectively, and thats the real starting point for building an effective alternative politics, the kind of vision one has for a different kind of society and intermediate steps to get there.

Leo Panitch, editor, The Socialist Register

This is an extremely important book. It is the most detailed, comprehensive, and best study yet published on the most recent capitalist crisis and its discontents. Sasha Lilley sets each interview in its context, writing with style, scholarship, and wit about ideas and philosophies.

Andrej Grubai, radical sociologist and social critic, coauthor of Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History

Editor: Sasha Lilley

Spectre is a series of indispensable works of, and about, radical political economy. Spectre lays bare the dark underbelly of politics and economics, publishing outstanding and contrarian perspectives on the maelstrom of capitaland emancipatory alternativesin crisis. The companion Spectre Classics imprint unearths essential works of radical history, political economy, theory and practice, to illuminate the present with brilliant, yet unjustly neglected, ideas from the past.

Spectre

Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch, In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives

David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance

Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult

Spectre Classics

E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary

Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult Sasha Lilley
PM Press 2011
Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult Sasha Lilley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-60486-334-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927769

Cover by John Yates/Stealworks
Interior design by briandesign

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PM Press
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Oakland, CA 94623
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Printed in the USA on recycled paper.

Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing
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and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3G 0X3
www.fernwoodpublishing.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Lilley, Sasha, 1970
Capital and its discontents: conversations with radical thinkers in a time of tumult / Sasha Lilley.