Capitalism, Democracy, Socialism : Critical Debates

This book critically analyzes the current historical conjuncture of neoliberal capitalism with an eye to its emergent alternatives. Can democracy and capitalism thrive together? Is socialism a viable and a desirable alternative? What are the forms of emancipatory action and critical thought that can effectively chart a way forward?

Focusing on nine “critical debates” it provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of the tensions, contradictions, and latent emancipatory potential of contemporary global capitalism. The specific debates are as follows: capitalism’s relationship with democracy; privatization and governance of the commons; the financialization of capitalism; technology and the future of work; varieties of neoliberal capitalism; cosmopolitanism, international development, and human rights; feminist theory and social solidarity; sustainability and climate change; and theories of capitalist crisis.

Dr Albena Azmanova is a political scientist whose work centres on political epistemology and critical political economy. Her last book Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia (2020) has received awards by APSA, ISA and BISA. Her earlier work (The Scandal of Reason, 2012) elaborates a model of critical political judgement. She is most recently working on rule of law violations in liberal democracies (Binding the Guardian, report for the European Parliament, 2021). She was educated in Bulgaria (Sofia University) and the United States (the New School of Social Research, New York). She is currently Reader in Critical Theory at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies.

Dr. James Chamberlain is Associate Professor of Political Science at Mississippi State University, where he specializes in political theory. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Washington. His first book, Undoing Work, Rethinking Community explores the political significance of paid work in contemporary capitalist societies, and was published in 2018 by Cornell University Press. He has also published on borders, migration and cosmopolitanism in journals including Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, Constellations, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Theory & Event, and Journal of International Political Theory. He is currently nearing completion of his second book manuscript, entitled Life and Death in Capitalism.

In 2021 Chamberlain and Azmanova founded and now edit the open- access journal Emancipations (www.emancipations.org), which publishes cutting-edge research on capitalism from around the globe.