Marx and Engels’ concept of the “lumpenproletariat,” or underclass (an anglicized, politically neutral term), appears in The Communist Manifesto and other writings. It refers to “the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society,” whose lowly status made its residents potential tools of the capitalists against the working class. Surprisingly, no one has made a substantial study of the lumpenproletariat in Marxist thought until now. Clyde Barrow argues that recent discussions about the downward spiral of the American white working class (“its main problem is that it is not working”) have reactivated the concept of the lumpenproletariat, despite long held belief that it is a term so ill-defined as not to be theoretical. Using techniques from etymology, lexicology, and translation, Barrow brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent component of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the historical origins of capitalism. However, a proletariat that is destined to decay into an underclass may pose insurmountable obstacles to a theory of revolutionary agency in post-industrial capitalism. Barrow thus updates historical discussions of the lumpenproletariat in the context of contemporary American politics and suggests that all post-industrial capitalist societies now confront the choice between communism and dystopia.
 

The adjustment problems of public finance in countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are often misunderstood and misinterpreted by western scholars. This book contributes to the bridging of the gap between what is being thought by external observers and what the actual public finance reality is, as described by competent local scholars. Popular political economy research has remained biased towards advanced countries and has neglected developing and transition economies. Publications on CEE countries' public finances seem to be reluctant to apply the conceptual framework of standard political economy to these countries because of the assumption that CEE economies are different from their Western peers. But is this really the case? Are CEE economies so much different that none of the well-known "Western" political economy concepts or models can be applied to the analysis of fiscal performance in the region? Benczes demonstrates that they can be safely applied in the context of CEE economies as well. He sees no need to develop a separate or unique theory designed for the study and understanding of (one-time) transition economies.

An urgent critique of the market-fundamentalist ideals undermining democratic politics, pointing the way to principled reforms.

Democracy has been hollowed out by capitalism. A narrow view of markets and their aims—prioritizing efficiency, profit, and growth—now dominates thinking about democracy itself. Citizens are ignorant of the deep principles of self-governance, having long since adopted a facile equation between democracy and voting as a consumer choice. Lisa Herzog argues that democracy is still possible, but only if democratic values get embedded in everyday experience—including economic experience. That requires new ways of thinking about markets and their goals.

The Democratic Marketplace theorizes the foundational structures of a democratic economy, in which markets are not just tools for maximizing profit via exploitation and extraction. To this end, employees are empowered to participate in corporate governance. Economic disparities are curbed so that citizens can negotiate their inevitable differences on a truly equal footing. And while a democratic economy need not eschew growth, it does renounce today’s growth-at-all-costs expectations, instead balancing growth with goals like ecological sustainability and the preservation of time outside of work. Democratic economics also entails implementing reforms in ways that take seriously the perspectives, experiences, and skills of the whole population.

These are not utopian dreams, Herzog contends. The proposals that follow from the theory of democratic economics are already being tested around the world. And the shift in social norms that they necessitate is already under way.

As state economic policies promote integration under a single logic of modernist development, many impoverished groups remain on the margins. Development in Spirit explores the practices employed by communities on the fringes of such nation-building projects. Using an everyday political economy lens, Seb Rumsby demonstrates how seemingly powerless actors actively engage with larger forces, shaping their experience of development in ways that are underexamined but have far-reaching consequences. 

Following state-led market reforms in the 1980s, Vietnam experienced stunning economic transformation. But for the Hmong communities of the country’s north and central highlands, the benefits proved elusive. Instead, the Hmong people have pursued their own alternative paths to development. Rumsby shows how mass conversion to Christianity led to a case of “unplanned development” that put the Hmong on a trajectory of simultaneous integration into the market economy and resistance to state authority. 

Many of the strategies community members employ are tied to the Christianization of everyday life. Religious actors play complex and often contradictory roles in facilitating networks of exchange, challenging or enforcing gender norms, promoting communalism and enforcing discipline, and shaping local ideas about progress. They are influenced by national and transnational religious networks, especially US-produced radio broadcasts by Hmong American Christians and local converts.

This compelling account provides fresh theoretical and empirical insights into the interplay of religion, neoliberal development, and marketization across the world. 

An investigation into the politics of consumerism in East Germany during the years between the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49 and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Dictatorship and Demand shows how the issue of consumption constituted a crucial battleground in the larger Cold War struggle.

Based on research in recently opened East German state and party archives, this book depicts a regime caught between competing pressures. While East Germany's leaders followed a Soviet model, which fetishized productivity in heavy industry and prioritized the production of capital goods over consumer goods, they nevertheless had to contend with the growing allure of consumer abundance in West Germany. The usual difficulties associated with satisfying consumer demand in a socialist economy acquired a uniquely heightened political urgency, as millions of East Germans fled across the open border.

A new vision of the East-West conflict emerges, one fought as much with washing machines, televisions, and high fashion as with political propaganda, espionage, and nuclear weapons. Dictatorship and Demand deepens our understanding of the Cold War.

Despite dramatic increases in poverty, unemployment, and social inequalities, the Central and Eastern European transitions from communism to market democracy in the 1990s have been remarkably peaceful. This book proposes a new explanation for this unexpected political quiescence. It shows how reforming governments in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have been able to prevent massive waves of strikes and protests by the strategic use of welfare state programs such as pensions and unemployment benefits.

Divide and Pacify explains how social policies were used to prevent massive job losses with softening labor market policies, or to split up highly aggrieved groups of workers in precarious jobs by sending some of them onto unemployment benefits and many others onto early retirement and disability pensions. From a narrow economic viewpoint, these policies often appeared to be immensely costly or irresponsibly populist. Yet a more inclusive social-scientific perspective can shed new light on these seemingly irrational policies by pointing to deeper political motives and wider sociological consequences.

This conceptually synthetic and empirically rich book demonstrates the vulnerability of democratic settings to authoritarianism and populism. Six scholars from various professional fields explore here the metamorphosis of a political party into a centralized authoritarian system. Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party needed less than ten years to accomplish this transformation in Hungary. In 2010, after winning a majority that could make changes in the constitution – two-thirds of the parliamentary seats, they evolved and stabilized the system, which produced again the two-thirds majority in 2014 and 2018.

The authors reveal how a democratic setting can be used as a device for political capture. They show how a political entity managed to penetrate almost all sub-fields of the economy to arrive at institutionalized corruption, and how the centralized power structure reproduces itself. With the help of a powerful empirical apparatus—among others analyses of more than 220,000 public tenders, redistributions of state subsidies, and the interconnectedness of those privileged with the political elite — the authors detail the functioning of a crony system and the network aspects of political connections in the rapid enrichment of politically-linked businesses. Their studies demonstrate the role of political capture in this redistribution and how this capture leads to a new social stratification.