The British left and the defence economy

The British left and the defence economy
Author: Keith Mc Loughlin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526144034

Forty years before COVID-19, socialists in Britain campaigned for workers to have the right to make ‘socially useful’ products, from hospital equipment to sustain the NHS to affordable heating systems for the impoverished elderly. This movement held one thing responsible above all else for the nation’s problems: the burden of defence spending. In the middle of the Cold War, the left put a direct challenge to the defence industry, the Labour government and trade unions. The response it received revealed much about a military-industrial state that prioritised the making and exporting of arms for political favour and profit. Looking at peace activism from the early 1970s to Labour’s landslide defeat in the 1983 general election, this book examines the conflict over the cost of Britain’s commitment to the Cold War and asserts that the wider left presented a comprehensive and implementable alternative to the stark choice between making weapons and joining the dole queue.

The British Left and the Defence Economy

The British Left and the Defence Economy
Author: Keith Mc Loughlin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2022-03-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781526144010

This book charts the dispute over defence spending between the left and business, government and the trade unions between 1970 and 1983. Whereas the left blamed Britain's postwar economic decline on its burdensome military commitments, successive governments used defence was a form of economic stimulus to promote jobs and sell weapons abroad.

Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security ?

Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security ?
Author: National Defense University (U S )
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2011-12-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

On August 24-25, 2010, the National Defense University held a conference titled “Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security?” to explore the economic element of national power. This special collection of selected papers from the conference represents the view of several keynote speakers and participants in six panel discussions. It explores the complexity surrounding this subject and examines the major elements that, interacting as a system, define the economic component of national security.

East Wind

East Wind
Author: Tom Buchanan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2012-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199570337

East Wind offers the first complete, archive-based account of the relationship between China and the British Left, from the rise of modern Chinese nationalism to the death of Mao Tse tung. Beginning with the "Hands Off China" movement of the mid-1920s, Tom Buchanan charts the mobilisation of British opinion in defence of China against Japanese aggression, 1931-1945, and the role of the British left in relations with the People's Republic of China after 1949. He shows how this relationship was placed under stress by the growing unpredictability of Communist China, above all by the Sino-Soviet dispute and the Cultural Revolution, which meant that by the 1960s China was actively supported only by a dwindling group of enthusiasts. The impact of the suppression of the student protests in Tiananmen Square (June 1989) is addressed as an epilogue. East Wind argues that the significance of the left's relationship with China has been unjustly overlooked. There were many occasions, such as the mid-1920s, the late 1930s and the early 1950s, when China demanded the full attention of the British left. It also argues that there is nothing new in the current fascination with China's emergence as an economic power. Throughout these decades the British left was aware of the immense, unrealised potential of the Chinese economy, and of how China's economic growth could transform the world. In addition to analysing the role of the political parties and pressure groups of the left, Buchanan sheds new light on the activities of many well-known figures in support of China, including intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, R H Tawney and Joseph Needham. Many other interesting stories emerge, concerning less well-known figures, which show the complexity of personal links between Britain and China during the twentieth century.

The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy

The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy
Author: Baris Tufekci
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2019-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030349985

This book provides the first book-length study of the political and economic ideas of the British left’s Alternative Economic Strategy in the 1970s and early 1980s. Discussing the AES’s approaches to capitalism, the nation state and the working class, it argues that existing academic accounts have significantly overstated the radicalism of the strategy. Perhaps more notable, especially in the light of its stated ‘revolutionary’ aims, was the extent of its moderation – its continuities with post-war Labour revisionism, its marked reluctance to look beyond the market economy, the degree of its preoccupation with Britain’s global-economic status, and its inability to break with Labourist politics of class co-operation in the national interest. While the book argues that the AES was the last ‘class politics’ socialist initiative in mainstream British politics, it also explores the ways in which its ideas perhaps prepared the way for New Labour in the 1990s, and its relationship with 'Corbynism' since 2015.

The Left Case for Brexit

The Left Case for Brexit
Author: Richard Tuck
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2020-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1509542299

Liberal left orthodoxy holds that Brexit is a disastrous coup, orchestrated by the hard right and fuelled by xenophobia, which will break up the Union and turn what’s left of Britain into a neoliberal dystopia. Richard Tuck’s ongoing commentary on the Brexit crisis demolishes this narrative. He argues that by opposing Brexit and throwing its lot in with a liberal constitutional order tailor-made for the interests of global capitalists, the Left has made a major error. It has tied itself into a framework designed to frustrate its own radical policies. Brexit therefore actually represents a golden opportunity for socialists to implement the kind of economic agenda they have long since advocated. Sadly, however, many of them have lost faith in the kind of popular revolution that the majoritarian British constitution is peculiarly well-placed to deliver and have succumbed instead to defeatism and the cultural politics of virtue-signalling. Another approach is, however, still possible. Combining brilliant contemporary political insights with a profound grasp of the ironies of modern history, this book is essential for anyone who wants a clear-sighted assessment of the momentous underlying issues brought to the surface by Brexit.

Advanced Macroeconomics

Advanced Macroeconomics
Author: Filipe R. Campante
Publisher: LSE Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2021-10-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1909890707

Macroeconomic policy is one of the most important policy domains, and the tools of macroeconomics are among the most valuable for policy makers. Yet there has been, up to now, a wide gulf between the level at which macroeconomics is taught at the undergraduate level and the level at which it is practiced. At the same time, doctoral-level textbooks are usually not targeted at a policy audience, making advanced macroeconomics less accessible to current and aspiring practitioners. This book, born out of the Masters course the authors taught for many years at the Harvard Kennedy School, fills this gap. It introduces the tools of dynamic optimization in the context of economic growth, and then applies them to a wide range of policy questions – ranging from pensions, consumption, investment and finance, to the most recent developments in fiscal and monetary policy. It does so with the requisite rigor, but also with a light touch, and an unyielding focus on their application to policy-making, as befits the authors’ own practical experience. Advanced Macroeconomics: An Easy Guide is bound to become a great resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and practitioners alike.

COVID-19 in Southeast Asia

COVID-19 in Southeast Asia
Author: Hyun Bang Shin
Publisher: LSE Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2022-01-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1909890774

COVID-19 has presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact has been highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. The crisis revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in society, compelling us to question what it means to return to “normal” and what insights can be gleaned from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world. In this regard, this edited volume collects the informed views of an ensemble of social scientists – area studies, development studies, and legal scholars; anthropologists, architects, economists, geographers, planners, sociologists, and urbanists; representing academic institutions, activist and charitable organisations, policy and research institutes, and areas of professional practice – who recognise the necessity of critical commentary and engaged scholarship. These contributions represent a wide-ranging set of views, collectively producing a compilation of reflections on the following three themes in particular: (1) Urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) Migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) Collective action, communities, and mutual action. Overall, this edited volume first aims to speak from a situated position in relevant debates to challenge knowledge about the pandemic that has assigned selective and inequitable visibility to issues, people, or places, or which through its inferential or interpretive capacity has worked to set social expectations or assign validity to certain interventions with a bearing on the pandemic’s course and the future it has foretold. Second, it aims to advance or renew understandings of social challenges, risks, or inequities that were already in place, and which, without further or better action, are to be features of our “post-pandemic world” as well. This volume also contributes to the ongoing efforts to de-centre and decolonise knowledge production. It endeavours to help secure a place within these debates for a region that was among the first outside of East Asia to be forced to contend with COVID-19 in a substantial way and which has evinced a marked and instructive diversity and dynamism in its fortunes.

The Third Way

The Third Way
Author: Anthony Giddens
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2013-05-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745666604

The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.