In an age of uncertainty, those who can anticipate revolution, the outbreak of wars, or which states might default are much in demand. The marketplace of ideas about the future is huge, and includes 'wonks", scholars and pundits who produce scenarios, predictions and ratings. The more opaque the future seems to be, so the relation between knowledge and power intensifies, above all the nexus between those who sell their expertise and those who consume it. In his investigation of the paradoxes of forecasting, Ariel Colonomos interrogates today's knowledge factories to reveal how our futures are shaped by social scientists, think tanks and rating agencies. He explains why conservative and linear predictions prevail, and why the future, especially when linked to national interest, reflects a systematic search for stability. The notion of a globalized world whose main characteristic is speed, and where predictions have accelerating, self-fulfilling effects, is obsolete. Those who are supposed to know, reassure those who are supposed to act. Their preferences converge, and thus the industry of the future has a decelerating effect on world politics. These 'lords of knowledge' reinforce pre-existing beliefs, create expectations about the future, while obstructing its vision when -- inevitably -- it diverges from its orderly path.

Selling the Future: The Perils of Predicting Global Politics (Series in Comparative Politics and International Studies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Elliott, Gregory

Colonomos, Ariel

Politics & Government

Oxford University Press

Following the disappearance of the Soviet Union, scholars across the political spectrum tackled the world-historical significance of the end of communism. This book addresses the balance-sheets of modern political history offered by three writers---Francis Fukuyama, Eric Hobsbawm and Perry Anderson---comparing them with the future projected by Marx in The Communist Manifesto.Gregory Elliott argues that Marx is central to all three accounts and that, along with the Manifesto, they form a quartet of analyses of the results and prospects of capitalism and socialism, which are of enduring significance for the Left.Senses of an Ending provides a readable survey of key historical and political thinkers that will appeal to anyone interested in modern political thought.

Ends in Sight: Marx/Fukuyama/Hobsbawm/Anderson

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Pluto Press

Philosophy

Hobsbawm: History and Politics

Historian Eric Hobsbawm is possibly the foremost chronicler of the modern age. His panoramic studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, stretching from the French Revolution to the fall of Soviet communism, have informed the historical consciousness of scholars and general readers alike. At the same time, his writings on labour movements and socialist politics have occupied a central place in left-wing debates. Despite this, no extended study of Hobsbawm's work has yet been attempted Gregory Elliott fills this gap in exemplary fashion. Elliott analyses both the scholarly record of Hobsbawm and the intellectual and political journey that his life represents. In doing so, he seeks to situate Hobsbawm's thought within the context of a generalised crisis of confidence on the Left after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rich in content and written in Elliott's authoritative and highly readable style, this book is a must for anyone with an interest in Hobsbawm and the crisis of the Left.

Hobsbawm: History and Politics: History and Politics

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Historian Eric Hobsbawm is possibly the foremost chronicler of the modern age. His panoramic studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, stretching from the French Revolution to the fall of Soviet communism, have informed the historical consciousness of scholars and general readers alike. At the same time, his writings on labour movements and socialist politics have occupied a central place in left-wing debates. Despite this, no extended study of Hobsbawm's work has yet been attempted Gregory Elliott fills this gap in exemplary fashion.Elliott analyses both the scholarly record of Hobsbawm and the intellectual and political journey that his life represents. In doing so, he seeks to situate Hobsbawm's thought within the context of a generalised crisis of confidence on the Left after the fall of the Berlin Wall.Rich in content and written in Elliott's authoritative and highly readable style, this book is a must for anyone with an interest in Hobsbawm and the crisis of the Left.

Perry Anderson: The Merciless Laboratory Of History (Volume 15) (Studies in Classical Philology)

Univ. of Minnesota Press

 First published in 1987, Althusser, The Detour of Theory was widely received as the fullest account of its subject to date. Drawing on a wide range of hitherto untranslated material, it examined the political and intellectual contexts of Althusser’s ‘return to Marx’ in the mid-1960s; analysed the novel character of the Marxism developed in his major works; charted their author’s subsequent evolution, from his self-criticism to the proclamation of a ‘crisis of Marxism’; and concluded with a balance-sheet of Althusser’s contribution to historical materialism. ?For this second edition, Gregory Elliott has added a substantial postscript in which he surveys the posthumous edition of the French philosopher’s work published in the 1990s, from the early writings of the 1940s through to the late texts of the 1980s, relating the unknown Althusser revealed by them to the familiar figure of For Marx and Reading Capital, together with a comprehensive bibliography of Althusser’s oeuvre.Gregory Elliott was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he completed his D.Phil. on Louis Althusser in 1985. An independent translator and writer, his books include Perry Anderson: The Merciless Laboratory of History (1998). His most recent translation is Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s The New Spirit of Capitalism(2006).. 

Althusser: The Detour of Theory

Verso Books

Combining analysis and advocacy, this book argues that the cause of Labour's past electoral failures and present predicament is political not sociological. In place of adaptation to the post-Thatcher settlement recommended by many political pundits, "Labourism and the English Genius" argues an alternative strategy - democratization of the English Constitution and the emergent European order - as a precondition to a resumed struggle for socialism. Gregory Elliott is a member of the editorial collective of "Radical Philosophy" and author of "Althusser - the Detour of Theory".

Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Death of Labour England?

If a sanitized Labour Party could not win in the depths of a Tory-manufactured recession, when, if ever, could it? Labour, by common agreement, was doomed to eternal opposition unless it undertook drastic remedial action: the pursuit of the ‘modernizing’ agenda to the point where it ceased to be a social-democratic party of any kind. Combining a synoptic history with contemporary advocacy, Labourism and the English Genius contests the verdicts of Labour’s Right and Left alike. Elliot argues that the true cause of the party’s past failures and present predicament is to be found, not in the presence or absence of ‘traditional socialism’, but in Labourism itself. For integral to Labour’s electoralism and parliamentarism has been a fantasy projection of ‘England’: the sovereign, imperial United Kingdom as the basis of a radiant future, attainable by subservience to the British Constitution. This was a chimera, the pursuit of which, amid interminable decline, has delivered the nation to its Conservative masters and reduced Labour to the decorative function of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. In place of the foredoomed adaptation to the post-Thatcher settlement urged by so many pundits, Labourism and the English Genius advances an alternative strategy for the democratization of the English ancient regime and the emergent European order to which there is now no alternative for Britain. If Labour does not renounce its own great power illusions and contribute to that project—a precondition for any future socialism—it is fated to remain in opposition or to enjoy office without power.

Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Decay of Labour England?

Verso

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elliott, Gregory. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Elliott, Gregory

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elliott, Gregory. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Selling the Future: The Perils of Predicting Global Politics (Series in Comparative Politics and International Studies)

Ends in Sight: Marx/Fukuyama/Hobsbawm/Anderson

Ends in Sight: Marx/Fukuyama/Hobsbawm/Anderson

Hobsbawm: History and Politics: History and Politics

Hobsbawm: History and Politics

Perry Anderson: The Merciless Laboratory Of History (Volume 15) (Studies in Classical Philology)

Althusser: The Detour of Theory

Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Death of Labour England?

Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Decay of Labour England?

Althusser: The Detour of Theory