David Ridley

We are living in an age of permanent crisis. Pandemics, war and climate change are just some of the unexpected yet predictable events shaping the world today. In this timely book, David Ridley examines how we collectively respond to these events, whether we face them bravely and intelligently or turn to nostalgia or utopianism. While politicians, corporations and intellectuals all fall prey to what Ridley calls «consolation», drawing on the work of John Dewey, a new generation is rising up to the challenge. Standing alongside teachers, posties, train drivers, refuse workers - young activists are part of an emerging, global movement saying «enough is enough» «This fiery, startling yet engaging polemic is an injunction to think and act together. Eschewing glib or easy answers, Ridley builds on his experiences as a political activist to think about how we got here, while visioning ahead to a near future of reaction, struggle and opportunity. Read this and be prepared to think it all again, upside down, inside-out – together. Rip it up and start again.» (Dan Taylor, Lecturer in Social and Political Thought, Open University and author of the Orwell Prize shortlisted book Island Story: Journeys Through Unfamiliar Britain) «An essential resource for the resistance now growing.» (Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper co-founder and author of Arguments for A New Left: Answering the Free Market Right)

In this book, David Ridley argues that John Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence provides a unique critical social theory that speaks directly to the present moment. Escaping some of the dead ends of Frankfurt School critical theory, whilst also representing a continuity of the Marxist ‘philosophy of praxis’ tradition, the book reconstructs Dewey’s ‘method of democracy’ to reveal a forgotten alternative to both left-wing pessimism and neoliberal populism. Since the 2007-8 Financial Crisis, neoliberal governments, for example in the UK, have turned to higher education to kick-start a stagnating economy. Marketisation has turned English universities into multi-national corporations and students into consumers. Academics now have no choice, Ridley insists, but to join with the public in the political struggle against ‘third wave neoliberalism’. In the final part of the book, Ridley applies Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence to the reconstruction of UK higher education, concluding with a vision of radical democracy supported by ‘socially useful’ universities and a democratic academic and sociological profession.