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The Socialist Register 2022

The Socialist Register 2022

New Polarizations, Old Contradictions: The Crisis of Centrism

edited by Greg Albo, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys

The word “polarization” is on the lips of every commentator today, from mainstream journalists to the left, but the significance of this widely recognized phenomenon needs far more scrutiny than it has had.

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About the book

The 58th annual volume of the Socialist Register takes up the challenge of exploring how the new polarizations relate to the contradictions that underlie them and how far ‘centrist’ politics can continue to contain them. Original essays examine the multiplication of antagonistic national, racial, generational, and other identities in the context of growing economic inequality, democratic decline, and the shifting parameters of great power rivalry.

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Authors

Greg Albo

Greg Albo teaches political economy at the Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto. He is currently co-editor of the Socialist Register. He is also on the editorial boards of Studies in Political Economy, Relay, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Canadian Dimension, The Bullet and Historical Materialism (England). Co-editor of A Different Kind of State: Popular Power and Democratic Administration and author of numerous articles in journals such as Studies in Political Economy, Socialist Register, Canadian Dimension, and Monthly Review.

Leo Panitch

Leo Panitch was a Distinguished Research Professor, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register. He received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and a M.Sc.(Hons.) and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1968 and 1974, respectively. He was a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Carleton University between 1972 and 1984. He was a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He was also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He was an ardent supporter of the Socialist Project.

Colin Leys

Before coming to Queen’s in 1975 Colin Leys taught at Balliol College, Oxford; Kivukoni College in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and the Universities of Sussex, Nairobi, and Sheffield. His work has primarily been on the theory and politics of development, with particular reference to Africa and the UK. His publications include European Politics in Southern Rhodesia; Underdevelopment in Kenya;The Political Economy of Neocolonialism; Politics in Britain; Namibia’s Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Sword (with John S. Saul and others); The Rise and Fall of Development Theory; The End of Parliamentary Socialism (with Leo Panitch); and Market Driven-Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest.

A contemporary portrait of neoliberalism: The rise of the one per cent (Simon Mohun)
At the summit of global capitalism: The US and China (Walden Bello)
Market polarization means political polarization: Liberal democracy’s eroding centre (Ingar Solty)
Trump and the danger of right-wing populism in the US (Bill Fletcher Jr.)
What is wrong with social media? An anti-capitalist critique (Marcus Gilroy-Ware)
The evolution of ‘race’ and racial justice under neoliberalism (Adolph Reed Jr. and Touré F. Reed)
The crisis of US labour, past and present (Samir Sonti)
American workers and the left after Trump: Polarized options (Sam Gindin)
Pandemic polarizations and the contradictions of Indian capitalism (Jayati Ghosh)
Epidemiological neoliberalism in South Africa (Vishwas Satgar)
Loft offices and factory towns: Social sources of political polarization in Russia (Ilya Matveev, Oleg Zhuravlev)
The far right, corporate power, and social struggles in Brazil (Ana Garcia, Virginia Fontes, Rejane Hoeveler)
Identity crisis: The politics of false concreteness (Samir Gandesha)
The double consciousness of capital (David Harvey)
Finding a way forward: Lessons from the Corbyn project in the UK (James Schneider Interviewed by Hilary Wainwright)