Jean Jaurès was a towering intellectual and political leader of the democratic Left at the turn of the twentieth century, but he is little remembered today outside of France, and his contributions to political thought are little studied anywhere. In Jean Jaurès: The Inner Life of Social Democracy, Geoffrey Kurtz introduces Jaurès to an American audience. The parliamentary and philosophical leader of French socialism from the 1890s until his assassination in 1914, Jaurès was the only major socialist leader of his generation who was educated as a political philosopher. As he championed the reformist method that would come to be called social democracy, he sought to understand the inner life of a political tradition that accepts its own imperfection. Jaurès's call to sustain the tension between the ideal and the real resonates today. In addition to recovering the questions asked by the first generation of social democrats, Kurtz’s aim in this book is to reconstruct Jaurès’s political thought in light of current theoretical and political debates. To achieve this, he gives readings of several of Jaurès’s major writings and speeches, spanning work from his early adulthood to the final years of his life, paying attention to not just what Jaurès is saying, but how he says it.

This edited volume promotes a comparative and transnational approach to the complex and ambiguous relationship between West European socialism and the contemporary state over the longue durée. It encourages a better understanding of socialism while also casting an original light on the history of the contemporary state in Europe. Socialists have been a prime political force since the late nineteenth century through to the present. Through their strength, their presence at the heart of societies, their dynamism, inventiveness, and influence, they have left their mark on the European physiognomy and helped to forge part of its identity. This is particularly true where the welfare state is concerned, and the role played by the state in constructing, embedding, and extending this social model. Surprisingly, there has been no research aiming to systematically analyse the relationship between socialism and the state. This volume fills a gap in knowledge by rejecting the media simplification and political polemic maintained by opponents of socialism – and sometimes by socialists themselves – which systematically links socialism with “statism”. It focuses on numerous case studies involving France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Austria, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, and highlights the diversity of organisations within European socialism. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the fate of this political culture depends on the socialist parties themselves but also on any new configurations that states may assume. Conversely, the future of states will also depend partly on the choices made by socialists, if they still exist and still have the means to shape decisions and make their voices heard.

Why socialism has failed to play a significant role in the United States - the most developed capitalist industrial society and hence, ostensibly, fertile ground for socialism - has been a critical question of American history and political development. This study surveys the various explanations for this phenomenon of American political exceptionalism.

A chronicle of recent events that have shaken the world, from the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century “What makes this manifesto noteworthy is that it comes from . . . an economist who gained his reputation as a researcher with vaguely left-of-center sensibilities but was far from a radical. Yet the times are such . . . that even honest moderates are driven to radical remedies.”—Robert Kuttner, New York Times As a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, world-renowned economist Thomas Piketty has documented the rise and fall of Trump, the drama of Brexit, Emmanuel Macron’s ascendance to the French presidency, the unfolding of a global pandemic, and much else besides, always from the perspective of his fight for a more equitable world. This collection brings together those articles and is prefaced by an extended introductory essay, in which Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hypercapitalism that defines our current economic ideology. These essays offer a first draft of history from one of the world’s leading economists and public figures, detailing the struggle against inequalities and tax evasion, in favor of a federalist Europe and a globalization more respectful of work and the environment.

In the burgeoning literature on welfare regimes and typologies, this comparative study offers a stimulating new perspective. Kaufmann, the doyen of the sociology of social policy in Germany, emphasizes norms, culture and history, in contrast to political economy approaches. Comparing Britain, Sweden, France and Germany, Kaufmann highlights the „idiosyncrasy” of each welfare state: countries are compared with regard to their state traditions and the relationship between state and civil society; their national “social questions”; their economic systems, including the unions and labour law; social security and redistribution; and their personal social services and education. The socio-cultural approach enables Kaufmann to show that not all modern states are welfare states. Some are just „capitalism“ (the USA), others are „socialism“ (the former Soviet Union). In this light, the (essentially North-West European) welfare state is portrayed as a third way between capitalism and socialism.

A pragmatic vision of how democratic socialism can overcome the economic, workplace, political, environmental, social, and international crises that we face today.

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a keen observer of political and economic problems and a passionate proponent of liberal economic theory. This book collects nineteen of Bastiat's articles, ranging from the theory of value and rent, public choice and collective action, government intervention and regulation, the balance of trade, education, and trade unions to price controls, capital and growth, and taxation. Throughout his articles, Bastiat demonstrates how the combination of careful logic, consistency of principle, and clarity of exposition is the instrument for solving most economic and social problems. In his famous essay "The Law" Bastiat explains that the law, far from being what it ought to be, "namely the instrument that enabled the state to protect individuals' rights and property", had become the means for what he termed "spoliation" (or plunder). From the article "The State" written at the height of the 1848 Revolution in June, comes perhaps his best-remembered quotation: "The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else". In this volume readers will find extensive introductory material, including notes on the translation and on the editions of the uvres completes, a chronology of Bastiat's life and works, two maps of France showing the cities associated with Bastiat, annotations to the articles, and a bibliography. A special section provides charming, little-known anecdotes about Bastiat and his contemporaries, including his editor Prosper Paillottet, who became Bastiat's firm friend and eventually his executor. This section also includes discussions of key concepts such as individualism, laissez-faire, industry, plunder, and the right to work. Three glossaries explain persons, places, and subjects and terms.