How Karl Marx can save American capitalism / Ronald W. Dworkin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dworkin, Ronald William, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capitalism--United States--History.

Capitalism.

United States.

History.

Economic security--United States.

Economic security.

Political corruption--United States.

Political corruption.

United States--Economic policy.

Economic policy.

Physical Description:

vii, 171 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham ; Boulder ; New York ; London : Lexington Books, [2015]

Summary:

When the Cold War ended, some people called it the "end of history." Capitalism and liberal democracy had prevailed. Later, when the West clashed with radical Islam, Americans realized history hadn't ended after all-at least not abroad. Now, in How Marx Can Save American Capitalism, Ronald W. Dworkin shows us that even the home front is in play and capitalism and liberal democracy are threatened. Dworkin uses Karl Marx to tip the balance in favor of capitalism and liberal democracy-a paradox, as Marx was the sworn enemy of capitalism and liberal democracy, but also logical, as Marx knew the weak spots in capitalism and democracy better than anyone. In the past, capitalism's weak spots were obvious: sweatshops, workhouses, and hunger. The twentieth-century welfare state saved capitalism by fixing them. Today's weak spots are less obvious; they don't even seem related-mass loneliness, a declining birth rate, young people postponing adulthood, and workers using sleep aids to function on the job. Yet they pose the same risk to capitalism that child labor and horrid factory conditions once did. Marx's ideas applied to contemporary America show how they are all of apiece. Saving capitalism demands a third way-not rigid Republican conservatism or blind Democratic state interventionism, but a new politics in which the state focuses laser-like, on advanced capitalism's unique threats to private life, while leaving much of the free market intact. Book jacket.

Contents:

Our French Revolution

The new alienation

A society of Hobos

The tin man

A fetish for commodities

When Christianity becomes ideology

Marx for America

Bibliography

About the author

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781498509725

149850972X

OCLC:

894625681