Ellen Meiksins Wood

Contains extensive new material, especially on imperialism, anti Eurocentric history, capitalism and the nation-state, and the differences betwee ncapitalism and non-capitalist commerce. Traces the links between the origin of capitalism and globalization, ecological degradation and the current agricultural crisis.

A Longer View

The Origin of Capitalism

A reformulation of Marxism which explains why it still provides the most effective way of looking critically at capitalism.

Renewing Historical Materialism

Democracy Against Capitalism

In this classic study, which won the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize, Ellen Wood provides a survey of influential trends in contemporary Marxist theory. Identifying a common trend to dissociate political analysis from class interest, she pursues her own conception of the complex but undeniable relations between class, politics and ideology. In a new introduction, Wood discusses the relevance of The Retreat From Class in a post-Soviet world. She locates post-Marxism as a predecessor to current academic trends such as postmodernism, and argues that a re-examination of class politics by academia is one way out of the current, cynical acceptance of capitalism.

A New "true" Socialism

The Retreat from Class

Empire of Capital

From Machiavelli, Luther and Calvin to Spinoza, the Levellers and Rousseau, the author takes readers through the formation of the modern state all the way to the Age of Enlightenment, revealing the ideas of liberty, equality, human rights and revolution that emerged from those turbulent times. Original.

Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from the Renaissance to Enlightenment

The controversial thesis at the center of this study is that, despite the importance of slavery in Athenian society, the most distinctive characteristic of Athenian democracy was the unprecedented prominence it gave to free labor. Wood argues that the emergence of the peasant as citizen, juridically and politically independent, accounts for much that is remarkable in Athenian political institutions and culture. From a survey of historical writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the focus of which distorted later debates, Wood goes on to take issue with influential arguments, such as those of G.E.M. de Ste Croix, about the importance of slavery in agricultural production. The social, political and cultural influence of the peasant-citizen is explored in a way which questions some of the most cherished conventions of Marxist and non-Marxist historiography.

The Foundations of Athenian Democracy

Peasant-Citizen and Slave

John Bellamy Foster

Robert Waterman McChesney

Harry Magdoff

An Independent Socialist Magazine

Monthly Review

Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that, with the collapse of Communism, the theoretical project of Marxism and its critique of capitalism are more timely and important than ever. Current intellectual fashions of the left which emphasize 'post-modern' fragmentati

Democracy Against Capitalism; Renewing Historical Materialism

Capitalism makes possible a new form of domination by purely economic means, argues Ellen Meiksins Wood. So, surely, even the most seasoned White House hawk would prefer to exercise global hegemony in this way, without costly colonial entanglements. Yet, as Wood powerfully demonstrates, the economic empire of capital has also created a new unlimited militarism. By contrasting the new imperialism to historical forms such as the Roman and Spanish empire, and by tracing the development of capitalist imperialism back to the English domination of Ireland and on the British Empire in America and India, Wood shows how today's capitalist empire, a global economy administered by local states, has come tom spawn a new military doctrine of war without end, in purpose or time.

Oya Köymen

2000’li yıllar boyunca yeni emperyalizm hakkında çok söylendi ve yazıldı; konunun bu yoğunlukta tartışılmasının nedeni ABD’dir. ABD, Irak’a karşı yürüttüğü saldırıyı, “terörizme karşı savaş” ve “önleyici savunma politikası” gibi “makul” gerekçelere dayandırmıştı. Ama sömürgeci fetihler ve doğrudan emperyal yönetim olmadığı zaman emperyalizmin anlamı ne olabilir ki? Ellen Meiksins Wood, bu kitapta, yeni emperyalizmi, arka plana Eski Roma’yı, Ortaçağ Avrupa’sını, Müslüman Arap dünyasını, İspanyol fetihlerini ve Hollanda ticari imparatorluğunu alarak, eski biçimlerle karşılaştırıyor. Kapitalist emperyalizmin başlangıcını İrlanda’nın İngiliz egemenliğine dayandıran Wood, bunun yayılmasını Amerika ve Hindistan’daki Britanya imparatorluğunun egemenliğini inceleyerek ortaya koyuyor. Çoklu yerel devletler tarafından idare edilen küresel bir ekonomi biçimi olan bugünün kapitalist imparatorluğunun, sonu, amacı ve zamanı olmayan yeni, militarist bir savaş öğretisini nasıl doğurduğunu ortaya seriyor. “Muhteşem bir kitap.” Eric Hobsbawm “Emperyalizmin bugünkü aşamasının en tatmin edici anlatımı.” Robert Brenner

Sermaye İmparatorluğu

What is postmodernism? What are the reasons for its attractiveness? In Defense of History is a compelling challenge to postmodern fashion, written by new intellectuals on the left who are reviving historical materialism as an alternative.

Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda

In Defense of History

geniş bir bakış

Kapitalizmin kökeni

Capitalism was born in England, yet the dominant Western conceptions of modernity have come from elsewhere, notably from France, the historical model of “bourgeois” society. In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a “modern” state and political culture in Continental Europe, signalled the persistence of precapitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a “modern” state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe. Weaving together economic and political history with the history of ideas, Wood ranges across a broad spectrum of current debates, from the “Nairn–Anderson theses” to the contribution of J.C.D. Clark and Alan Macfarlane, and over a wide variety of topics: the development of British capitalism and French absolutism; the state, the nation and their symbolic representations; revolution and tradition; the cultural patterns of English speech, urbanism, ruralism and the landscape garden; ideas of sovereignty, democracy, property and progress. This book will be as interesting and provocative to observers of contemporary capitalism as to historians of early modern Europe or Western political thought.

A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States

The Pristine Culture of Capitalism

Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages

Larry Patriquin

This Reader includes selections from Ellen Meiksins Wood’s groundbreaking scholarship, providing an overview of her original interpretations of capitalism, precapitalist societies, the state, political theory, democracy, citizenship, liberalism, civil society, the Enlightenment, globalization, imperialism, and socialism.

The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader

El Imperio Del Capital

A Hard-Hitting Critique... Brings Together Fine Essays That Speak Directly To The Underlying Assumptions Of Postmodernism And Offer A Stunning Critique Of Its Usefulness In Both Understanding And Critiquing The Current Historical Epoch. Contemporary Sociology

In Defense of History; Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda

What does imperialism mean in the absence of colonial conquest and imperial rule?

Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of "postmodern" fragmentation, "difference," and con-tingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject it to critique. In this book she sets out to renew the critical program of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democracy in both the ancient and modern world, examining its relation to capitalism, and raising questions about how democracy might go beyond the limits imposed on it.

Ellen Meiksins Wood

Books

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