In a series of freewheeling reflections and summaries of historical scholarship, this book reinterprets history and culture along anarchist lines. From a rationalistic and Marxian point of view it illuminates capitalism, economics, U.S. history, popular culture, gender relations, and human psychology, even the nature of the fascinating concepts "genius" and "greatness." Its agenda is that of the seventeenth-century Levellers: deflate the pomposities of elite authority, a...

Our civilization is approaching the end. We’re peering over the precipice, and chaos boils below. The time has come to sum it all up, to take account of where we are and what we’ve done, and to pass judgment. We, the generations now living, have been lucky or unlucky enough to be present as history nears its climax; we have an abundance of human experience to survey and draw conclusions from, conclusions to pass on to posterity as it surveys the even more breathtaking ru...

In a decadent late-capitalist society, humanism is under attack from all directions. It's time we fought back and reclaimed what it means to be human, embracing the best of what history and thought have bequeathed us.

The world has changed since 2007, when I wrote the preface to the first edition of this book. That was still the age of capitalist triumphalism, of glacial politics in the U.S. and the Despair of the Activist. Cultural ennui—personal ennui for me. Aimlessness. Since 2008, though, and especially since 2011, life has taken on a new coloring. Horizons have opened; the world is in tumult, even more than it was, and nothing seems permanent anymore. Things have continued to ge...

Social democracy is dead and can't be revived. The solidarity economy is the hope for the world's future, and Marxism provides the intellectual tools to interpret and predict its growth.

The capitalist mode of production does not permit a socially efficient allocation of resources. Resource allocation is determined by the twin structural imperatives of having purchasing power (on the demand side) and of chasing profit (on the supply side). If one has a need but lacks the money to back up that need, as for example the billion children worldwide living in poverty do, one’s need will not be met by the market. Conversely, investors will pursue only those pro...