Results by title

151 books match the query 'Radicalism' and 6 start with g

cover of Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger's Life and Legacy

Gerrard Winstanley

The Digger's Life and Legacy

John Gurney

Pluto Press, 2012

'The power of property was brought into creation by the sword', so wrote Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676) – Christian Communist, leader of the Diggers movement and bête noire of the landed aristocracy. Despite being one of the great English radicals, Winstanley remains unmentioned in today's lists of 'great Britons'.

John Gurney reveals the hidden history of Winstanley and his movement. As part of the radical ferment which swept England at the time of the civil war, Winstanley led the Diggers in taking over land and running it as 'a common treasury for all' – provoking violent opposition from landowners. Gurney also guides us through Winstanley's writings, which are among the most remarkable prose writings of his age.

Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger's Life and Legacy is a must read for students of English history and all those seeking to re-claim the commons today.
[more]
cover of Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements

Gramsci is Dead

Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements

Richard J. F. Day

Pluto Press, 2005

Gramsci and the concept of hegemony cast a long shadow over radical political theory. Yet how far has this theory got us? Is it still central to feminism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anarchism, and other radical social movements today?



Unlike previous revolutionary movements, Day argues, most contemporary radical social movements do not strive to take control of the state. Instead, they attempt to develop new forms of self-organisation that can run in parallel with---or as alternatives to---existing forms of social, political, and economic organization. This is to say that they follow a logic of affinity rather than one of hegemony.



This book draws together a variety of different strands in political theory to weave together an innovative new approach to politics today. Rigorous and wide-ranging, Day introduces and interrogates key concepts. From Hegel's concept of recognition, through theories of hegemony and affinity to Hardt and Negri's reflections on Empire, Day maps academia's theoretical and philosophical concerns onto today's politics of the street.



Ideal for all students of political theory, Day's fresh approach combines Marxist, Anarchist and Post-structuralist theory to shed new light on the politics and practice of contemporary social movements.

[more]
cover of Grand Army of Labor: Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War

Grand Army of Labor

Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War

Matthew E. Stanley

University of Illinois Press, 2021

Enlisting memory in a new fight for freedom

From the Gilded Age through the Progressive era, labor movements reinterpreted Abraham Lincoln as a liberator of working people while workers equated activism with their own service fighting for freedom during the war. Matthew E. Stanley explores the wide-ranging meanings and diverse imagery used by Civil War veterans within the sprawling radical politics of the time. As he shows, a rich world of rituals, songs, speeches, and newspapers emerged among the many strains of working class cultural politics within the labor movement. Yet tensions arose even among allies. Some people rooted Civil War commemoration in nationalism and reform, and in time, these conservative currents marginalized radical workers who tied their remembering to revolution, internationalism, and socialism.

An original consideration of meaning and memory, Grand Army of Labor reveals the complex ways workers drew on themes of emancipation and equality in the long battle for workers’ rights.

[more]
cover of Gray is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center

Gray is Beautiful

Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center

Jeffrey Goldfarb

Central European University Press, 2026

With “the age of democracy” apparently coming to an end, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb offers hope against hopelessness, turning away from the canned political perspectives of the left, right, and center to recognize the beauty of the less than perfect and to emphasize the centrality of free public life. In Gray is Beautiful, he reflects on a lifetime of political engagement and scholarship, drawing upon experiences as a radical New Leftist, participant observer of the democratic opposition “behind the iron curtain,” teacher in Afghanistan, and publisher of online public forums. Offering original insights, this book considers the promise rather than the problems of political uncertainty, uses Tocqueville’s mistakes to understand the present state of democracy in America, and considers the ironies of collaboration. Goldfarb helps readers confront today’s central challenges in fresh ways, demonstrating that the political gray is indeed beautiful and how this sensibility provides a way to confront the global retreat of democracy.
[more]
cover of Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism

Green Delusions

An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism

Martin W. Lewis

Duke University Press, 1994

Scholars, politicians, and activists worldwide are finally recognizing the severity of the global environmental crisis, yet serious threats to the environmental movement remain. Anti-environmentalists dismiss the very idea of a "crisis" as a mirage. Much less obvious, however, is the more subtle threat masquerading under the mantle of environmentalism itself. It is this threat that Green Delusions addresses. Writing from the standpoint of a committed environmentalist, Martin W. Lewis contends that many of the most devoted and strident "greens," those who propose a radical environmentalism, unwittingly espouse an ill-conceived doctrine that has devastating implications for the global ecosystem. In this book he distinguishes the main variants of eco-extremism, exposes the fallacies upon which such views ultimately flounder, and demonstrates that the policies advocated by their proponents would, if enacted, result in unequivocal ecological disaster. At once polemic and prescriptive, Green Delusions is an impassioned attempt to defend the environmental movement against extremist ideas that would lead to self-defeating political strategies.
[more]
cover of Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota

Grocery Activism

The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota

Craig B. Upright

University of Minnesota Press, 2020

A key period in the history of food cooperatives that continues to influence how we purchase organic food today

Our notions of food co-ops generally don’t include images of baseball bat–wielding activists in the aisles. But in May 1975, this was the scene as a Marxist group known as the Co-op Organization took over the People’s Warehouse, a distribution center for more than a dozen small cooperative grocery stores in the Minneapolis area. The activist group’s goal: to curtail the sale of organic food. The People’s Warehouse quickly became one of the principal fronts in the political and social battle that Craig Upright explores in Grocery Activism. The story of the fraught relationship of new-wave cooperative grocery stores to the organic food industry, this book is an instructive case study in the history of activists intervening in capitalist markets to promote social change.

Focusing on Minnesota, a state with both a long history of cooperative enterprise and the largest number of surviving independent cooperative stores, Grocery Activism looks back to the 1970s, when the mission of these organizations shifted from political activism to the promotion of natural and organic foods. Why, Upright asks, did two movements—promoting cooperative enterprise and sustainable agriculture—come together at this juncture? He analyzes the nexus of social movements and economic sociology, examining how new-wave cooperatives have pursued social change by imbuing products they sell with social values. Rather than trying to explain the success or failure of any individual cooperative, his work shows how members of this fraternity of organizations supported one another in their mutual quest to maintain fiscal solvency, promote better food-purchasing habits, support sustainable agricultural practices, and extol the virtues of cooperative organizing. A foundational chapter in the history of organic food, Grocery Activism clarifies the critical importance of this period in transforming the politics and economics of the grocery store in America.

[more]