The Challenges of the New Social Democracy: Social Capital and Civic Association or Class Struggle?

by Raju J. Das, Aram Eisenschitz, Jamie Gough

Overview

In this important study, Raju J Das, Jamie Gough and Aram Eisenschitz provide a Marxist critique of new social democracy as the dominant contemporary strategy for local economic and social development.

In both the global North and South, new social democracy seeks to develop social capital, strengthen civil society, build not-for-profit enterprises, encourage self-help, and foster community ties. It seeks participatory forms of local politics to achieve a local class consensus. It promises to improve people's economic and social conditions in the face of neoliberal capitalism, and to empower them. The authors argue that this strategy is severely limited by, and internalizes, its capitalist environment. They show that social enterprise can be developed in socialist ways, and contribute to a local politics based in class struggle. But social capital cannot replace the struggle of the exploited and oppressed against capitalism and for a socialist society, a strategy which the authors outline for the local scale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798888902448
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Series:	Studies in Critical Social Sciences
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Raju J Das is Professor at York University, Toronto. His research interests include Marxist political economy and social theory. His recent books are Marxist Class Theory for a Skeptical World, and Marx's Capital, Capitalism, and Limits to the State.

Aram Eisenschitz teaches at the Business School, Middlesex University, UK. His research interests include spatial political economy, urban planning and tourism. He and Jamie Gough are the authors of The Politics of Local Economic Policy and Spaces of Social Exclusion.

Jamie Gough taught at Sheffield University. His research interests include spatial political economy, local and national societies, theories of economic crisis, dynamics of the labour process, social reproduction, and poverty. He is author of Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Figures and Tables

1 Introduction
  Raju J. Das, Jamie Gough and Aram Eisenschitz

2 Associationism: the New Social Democracy from Below
  Jamie Gough

3 Social Capital and Class: a Critical Theoretical Examination
  Raju J. Das

4 Social Capital in the Spaces of Civil Society
  Raju J. Das

5 Social Capital at the Zone of Interaction between the State and Civil Society
  Raju J. Das

6 The Social Economy and Socialist Strategy
  Aram Eisenschitz and Jamie Gough

7 Rooting Working Class Struggle in Locality, and Taking It beyond
  Jamie Gough and Aram Eisenschitz

Index