Murray E.g. Smith

Thinking Systematics (TSS) is conceived as a “toolkit for the mind” — designed to improve how we think about the world, analyze information and pursue our goals. Smith and Hayslip make a compelling argument that individual thinking and collective decision making are being systematically constrained within limits imposed by outmoded forms of cognition and the determination of privileged elites to perpetuate an unsustainable status quo. The dialectical reasoning advocated in this wide-ranging book aims to overcome those limits and to allow a much more profound understanding of the human condition in the 21st century. Mainstream problem-solving focuses almost exclusively on scientific/technological fixes on one side and moral/cultural remedies on the other. But to comprehend our world adequately far more serious attention must be given to the specifically social, economic and political arrangements shaping our lives. Once embraced by growing numbers of people, TSS strategies, methods and habits of thought can contribute significantly to a “new common sense” — one adequate to meeting the immense challenges facing humanity in our era.

Twenty-first-century capitalism has little more to offer than a menu of despair: pandemics, deepening inequality, worsening depression, runaway climate change, intensifying authoritarianism and escalating militarism. Twilight Capitalism offers a wide-ranging analysis of the origins, implications and scope of the "combined" social crisis of 2020 and beyond. A compelling case is made that Karl Marx's critical analysis of capitalism, along with his program of class-struggle socialism, is essential to understanding and addressing the most important social, economic and ecological problems of our time.

In this updated and expanded edition of Invisible Leviathan, Murray E.G. Smith critically explores and makes significant contributions to the debate surrounding Karl Marx's 'capitalist law of value' and its corollary, the law of the falling rate of profit. A powerful case is presented that capitalism has exhausted its potential to contribute to human progress. Humanity confronts a fateful choice: to allow this obsolescent system—which necessarily measures 'wealth' in terms of 'abstract social labour' and money profit—to destroy human civilisation; or to make the leap toward a global, egalitarian-socialist society in which the satisfaction of human need is the starting-point and the all-round development of each and every human individual the goal of the socio-economic life process. First published in 1994 as Invisible Leviathan: The Marxist Critique of Market Despotism Beyond Postmodernism by University of Toronto Press. This second and revised edition includes a new Foreword by Michael Roberts, and a Preface to the Second Edition.

Providing a Marxian analysis of the origins, implications, and scope of the current economic downturn, this critique of global capitalism argues that the ongoing crisis is not merely a result of overproduction and problems with credit and finance, but rather a deep-seated systemic failure of capitalism itself. The discussion clearly roots the present economic slump in the history of capitalism and contends that, in order to find a more permanent solution, the crisis needs to be understood structurally, as the result of a failed theory, rather than as an aberration.

Contesting the putative "even-handedness" of many introductory social science texts, this innovative book presents strong and provocative arguments on contemporary social issues that will stimulate readers to think critically. The principal theme of the book is that social science is at its best, and most exciting, when it confronts and refutes "cultures of prejudice"-intricate systems of beliefs and attitudes that sustain many forms of social oppression and that are, themselves, sustained by ignorance and fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar. Such a critical social science, it is argued, can make an important contribution to promoting human freedom and extending human capacities. Discussions range from the personal to the political, the national to the global, encompassing social policy analysis (law, health, and welfare), the status of women, and animal liberation, as well as nationalism, racism, political ideology, the global economy, and terrorism. This passionately argued book is an excellent supplementary text for undergraduate social science students, as well as a stimulating read for all those open to hard-hitting confrontations with conventional wisdom. Beginning each chapter with an aphorism, anecdote, or quotation that reflects, illustrates, or challenges particular prejudices, the authors offer concise critical discussions of the issues, informed by some of the best research and thought in the social scientific literature.

As we experience yet another deep economic recession, people throughout the world are feeling the symptoms of capitalist crisis, from unemployment to bankruptcy to deficits to cutbacks and so on. With this timely book, Murray E.G. Smith invites readers to a reconsideration of the themes pertinent to an understanding of capitalist economic crises and to discussion of the ways to overcome them. The text is broad-ranging, integrating eleven studies that consider the theory of labour-value from historical, philosophical, and economic perspectives. Smith incorporates a thorough review of the controversy that has raged around Marx’s theory of labour-value, reporting the key arguments of orthodox Marxists, neo-Ricardians, neo-orthodox Marxists, and fundamentalists Marxists. He concludes that the Marxian theory of labour-value remains a logically coherent and theoretically sound basis for understanding capitalism’s historical-structural crises. Also included is a reconsideration of Marx’s law of the falling tendency of the rate of profit along with a statistical analysis of long-term trends in the Canadian economy had lend support to Marx’s views. This original and important contribution to Marxist debates will appeal to an international community of political economists and Marx scholars. Its comprehensive reporting and analysis will also attract a broader audience of historians and philosopher.