{"title":"Michael A Lebowitz","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"socialist-alternative-book-michael-a-lebowitz-9781583672143","title":"The Socialist Alternative","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"A good society,\" Michael Lebowitz tells us, \"is one that permits the full development of human potential.\" In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a conflict between profits and human development, profits take precedence. Just ask the unemployed, those toiling at dead-end jobs, the sick and infirm, the poor, and the imprisoned.\u003cbr\u003e But if not capitalism, what? Lebowitz is also critical of those societies that have proclaimed their socialism, such as the former Soviet Union and China. While their systems were not capitalist and were capable of achieving some of what is necessary for the \"development of human potential,\" they were not \"good societies.\"\u003cbr\u003e A good society as Lebowitz defines it must be marked by three characteristics: social ownership of the means of production, social production controlled by workers, and satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Lebowitz shows how these characteristics interact with and reinforce one another, and asks how they can be developed to the point where they occur more or less automatically--that is, become both a society's premises and outcomes. He also offers fascinating insights into matters such as the nature of wealth, the illegitimacy of profits, the inadequacies of worker-controlled enterprises, the division of labor, and much more.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49592675008785,"sku":"GOR011776026","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50662964592913,"sku":"GOR013125540","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50764497420561,"sku":"CIN1583672141G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53036760400145,"sku":"NIN9781583672143","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1583672141.jpg?v=1751119084"},{"product_id":"socialist-imperative-book-michael-a-lebowitz-9781583675465","title":"The Socialist Imperative","description":"In a little more than a decade, economist Michael A. Lebowitz has written several major works about the transition from socialism to capitalism: Beyond Capital (winner of the Deutscher Prize), Build It Now, The Socialist Alternative, and The Contradictions of \"Real Socialism.\" Here, he develops and deepens the analysis contained in those pathbreaking works by tracing major issues in socialist thought from the nineteenth century through the twenty‐first.  Lebowitz explores the obvious but almost universally ignored fact that as human beings work together to produce society's goods and services, we also \"produce\" something else: namely, ourselves. Human beings are shaped by circumstances, and any vision of socialism that ignores this fact is bound to fail, or, at best, reproduce the alienation of labor that is endemic to capitalism. But how can people transform their circumstances in a way that allows them to re‐organize  roduction and, at the same time, fulfil their human potential? Lebowitz sets out to answer this question first by examining Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, and from there investigates the experiences of the Soviet Union and more recent efforts to build socialism in Venezuela. He argues that socialism in the twenty‐first century must be animated by a central vision, in three parts: social ownership of the means of production, social production organized by workers, and the satisfaction of communal needs and communal purposes. These essays repay careful reading and reflection, and prove Lebowitz to be one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of this era.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49731992453393,"sku":"NGR9781583675465","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50823328530705,"sku":"CIN1583675469G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037749936401,"sku":"NIN9781583675465","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51817476555025,"sku":"CIN1583675469VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52692824719633,"sku":"GOR014579825","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1583675469.jpg?v=1750762570"},{"product_id":"between-capitalism-and-community-book-michael-a-lebowitz-9781583678862","title":"Between Capitalism and Community","description":"In this book, Michael Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his award-winning, Beyond Capital. Karl Marx, in Capital, focused on capital and the capitalist class that is its embodiment. It is the endless accumulation of capital, its causes and consequences that are central to Marx's analysis. In taking this approach, Marx tended to obscure","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49743680536849,"sku":"NGR9781583678862","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037624402193,"sku":"NIN9781583678862","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52403351716113,"sku":"NLS9781583678862","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52946908578065,"sku":"CIN1583678867LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53192162476305,"sku":"CIN1583678867G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1583678867.jpg?v=1751213263"},{"product_id":"build-it-now-book-michael-a-lebowitz-9781583671450","title":"Build it Now","description":"Puts forward a clear and innovative vision of a socialist future, and at the same time shows how concrete steps can be taken to make that vision a reality. This book shows how the understanding of capitalism can itself become a political act - a defense of the real needs of human beings against the ongoing advance of capitalist profit.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49774449328401,"sku":"CIN1583671455G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51038144987409,"sku":"NIN9781583671450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51699252691217,"sku":"CIN1583671455VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52980904067345,"sku":"GOR004807625","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1583671455.jpg?v=1750991860"},{"product_id":"contradictions-of-real-socialism-book-michael-a-lebowitz-9781583672563","title":"The Contradictions of Real Socialism","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat was \"real socialism\"--the term which originated in twentieth-century socialist societies for the purpose of distinguishing them from abstract, theoretical socialism? In this volume, Michael A. Lebowitz considers the nature, tendencies, and contradictions of those societies. Beginning with the constant presence of shortages within \"real socialism,\" Lebowitz searches for the inner relations which generate these patterns. He finds these, in particular, in what he calls \"vanguard relations of production,\" a relation which takes the apparent form of a social contract where workers obtain benefits not available to their counterparts in capitalism but lack the power to decide within the workplace and society.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e While these societies were able to claim major achievements in areas from health care to education to popular culture, the separation of thinking and doing prevented workers from developing their capacities as fully developed human beings. The relationship within \"real socialism\" between the vanguard as conductor and a conducted working class, however, did not only lead to the deformation of workers and those elements necessary for the building of socialism; it also created the conditions in which enterprise managers emerged as an incipient capitalist class, which was an immediate source of the crises of \"real socialism.\" As he argued in The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development,\u003cbr\u003e Lebowitz stresses the necessity to go beyond the hierarchy inherent in the relation of conductor and conducted (and beyond the \"vanguard Marxism\" which supports this) to create the conditions in which people can transform themselves through their conscious cooperation and practice--i.e., a society of free and associated producers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50383048179985,"sku":"CIN1583672567G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037702127889,"sku":"NIN9781583672563","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1583672567.jpg?v=1750959243"},{"product_id":"beyond-capital-book-michael-a-lebowitz-9780333520505","title":"Beyond Capital","description":"Marxism has long been accused of economic determinism, reductionism and a silence on human experience. Beyond Capital argues that these problems can be traced back to Marx's failure to write his planned book on Wage-Labour. Added to this the subsequent ignorance of Marx's method, the result has been an inaccurate presentation of Marxian. Rather than rejecting Marx, Beyond Capital argues that his 'political economy of the working class' and the process of struggle are central for going beyond capitalism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52134649364753,"sku":"NLS9780333520505","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780333520505.jpg?v=1757544272"},{"product_id":"between-capitalism-and-community-book-michael-a-lebowitz-9781583678879","title":"Between Capitalism and Community","description":"In this book, Michael Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his award-winning, Beyond Capital. 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