John Bellamy Foster, Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance

John Bellamy Foster, Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance

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During the Cold War years, mainstream commentators were quick to dismiss the idea that the United States was an imperialist power. Even when U.S. interventions led to the overthrow of popular governments, as in Iran, Guatemala, or the Congo, or wholesale war, as in Vietnam, this fiction remained intact. During the 1990s and especially since September 11, 2001, however, it has crumbled. Today, the need for American empire is openly proclaimed and defended by mainstream analysts and commentators.

John Bellamy Foster’s Naked Imperialism examines this important transformation in U.S. global policy and ideology, showing the political and economic roots of the new militarism and its consequences both in the global and local context. Foster shows how U.S.-led global capitalism is preparing the way for a new age of barbarism and demonstrates the necessity for resistance and solidarity on a global scale.

Ellen Meiksins Wood, Empire of Capital

Ellen Meiksins Wood, Empire of Capital

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What does imperialism mean in the absence of colonial conquest and imperial rule?

Capitalism makes possible a new form of domination by purely economic means, argues Ellen Meiksins Wood. So, surely, even the most seasoned White House hawk would prefer to exercise global hegemony in this way, without costly colonial entanglements. Yet, as Wood powerfully demonstrates, the economic empire of capital has also created a new unlimited militarism.

By contrasting the new imperialism to historical forms such as the Roman and Spanish empire, and by tracing the development of capitalist imperialism back to the English domination of Ireland and on the British Empire in America and India, Wood shows how today's capitalist empire, a global economy administered by local states, has come tom spawn a new military doctrine of war without end, in purpose or time.

Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic

Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic

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How to Read Donald Duck is a Marxist political analysis by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart on what they perceive is cultural imperialism in popular entertainment, published in Chile in 1972. Written in the form of essay (or, in the authors’ words, a “decolonization manual”), the book is an analysis of mass literature, specifically the Disney comics published for the Latin American market. It is one of the first social studies of entertainment and the leisure industry from a political-ideological angle, and the book deals extensively with the political role of children’s literature.

Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran

Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran

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In a reappraisal of Iran's modern history, Ervand Abrahamian traces its traumatic journey across the twentieth century, through the discovery of oil, imperial interventions, the rule of the Pahlavis and, in 1979, revolution and the birth of the Islamic Republic. In the intervening years, the country has experienced a bitter war with Iraq, the transformation of society under the clergy and, more recently, the expansion of the state and the struggle for power between the old elites, the intelligentsia and the commercial middle class. The author is a compassionate expositor. While he adroitly negotiates the twists and turns of the country's regional and international politics, at the heart of his book are the people of Iran. It is to them and their resilience that this book is dedicated, as Iran emerges at the beginning of the twenty-first century as one of the most powerful states in the Middle East.

Kevin B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies

Kevin B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies

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In Marx at the Margins, Kevin Anderson uncovers a variety of extensive but neglected texts by the well-known political economist which cast what we thought we knew about his work in a startlingly different light. Analyzing a variety of Marx’s writings, including journalistic work written for the New York Tribune, Anderson presents us with a Marx quite at odds with our conventional interpretations. Rather than providing us with an account of Marx as an exclusively class-based thinker, Anderson here offers a portrait of Marx for the twenty-first century: a global theorist whose social critique was sensitive to the varieties of human social and historical development, including not just class, but nationalism, race, and ethnicity, as well.   Marx at the Margins ultimately argues that alongside his overarching critique of capital, Marx created a theory of history that was multi-layered and not easily reduced to a single model of development or revolution. Through highly-informed readings on work ranging from Marx’s unpublished 1879–82 notebooks to his passionate writings about the antislavery cause in the United States, this volume delivers a groundbreaking and canon-changing vision of Karl Marx that is sure to provoke lively debate in Marxist scholarship and beyond.

Gilbert Achcar, Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror

Gilbert Achcar, Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror

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The route to any coherent understanding of our time runs through the issues addressed in this collection of essays: the political meaning of Islam, the relation of the West to the Islamic world, the new form of imperialism signaled by the Soviet and U.S. occupations of Afghanistan, the intractable conflict over Palestine. In confronting these inescapable issues, global power is being reshaped and the ends for which it will be used are being decided. This volume brings together Gilbert Achcar's major writings on these issues over the past decades. The essays collected in Eastern Cauldron describe and explain the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, the fate of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and its aftermath, and above all the Palestinian conflict—in which the regional stakes are so dramatically embodied and contested. Achcar analyzes the social bases, strategies and tactics of PLO, Hezbollah, Israel and the United States from the establishment of the state of Israel to the second Intifada. He pinpoints the contradictions of the Israeli state—seeking at the same time to be Jewish and yet democratic—and the impact of these contradictions on all parties to the conflict. Eastern Cauldron is primarily aimed at producing a better understanding of the conflicts of the region. Achcar's work is informed by strong moral and political commitments but is never limited to polemic. His work demonstrates the immense capacities of Marxism to illuminate economic, political, and ideological developments without losing sight of their concrete singularity and their complex interconnection. His analyses are supple and inventive, and consistently informed by reflection on rival traditions of political thought and a deep knowledge of the region.

Michael Parenti, Against Empire

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Richly informed and written in an engaging style, Michael Parenti’s Against Empire exposes the ruthless agenda and hidden costs of the U.S. empire. Documenting the pretexts and the lies used to justify violent intervention and maldevelopment abroad, he demonstrates how the conversion to a global economy is a victory of finance capital over democracy.

As much of the world suffers unspeakable misery, and as the Third-Worldization of the Unites States accelerates, civil society is impoverished by policies that benefit the rich and powerful transnational corporations and the national security state. The empire feeds off the resources of the republic, and the hard-won gains made by ordinary people are swept away.

The history of imperialism is also, however, a history of resistance, struggle, and achievement;Against Empire offers compelling alternatives for progressive change.

Contents

• Imperialism 101
  An introduction to the process by which political and economic domination is achieved.

• Imperial Domination (Updated)Poverty and maldevelopment: the products of present day U.S. imperialism.

• Intervention: Whose Gain? Whose Pain? 
  The winners and losers of empire building.

• Strong Empire, Weak Republic
  Ways that Americans pay the hidden costs of empire.

• A Dreadful Success
  How U.S. leaders adroitly prevent the public from seeing how their policies succeed in serving the favored few.

• Drugs, Lies and Video Wars
  More contrived justifications for violent U.S. intervention abroad.

• Worthy Causes
  A critical look at three pretexts for U.S. military intervention: launching humanitarian missions, establishing electoral democracies, and discouraging weapons proliferation.

• Democratic Governance vs The State
  How capitialist state interests undermine and defeat genuine democracy.

• Voodoo Economics: The Third-Worldization of America
  How the deceptions perpetuated by our leaders to advance the interests of empire abroad are duplicated at home.

• The Empire in Academia
  A close look at the discriminatory treatment anti-capitalist scholars receive at the university.

• Real Alternatives
  Precise, rational ways to transform public policy to build democratic institutions.

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Richard Seymour, Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens

Richard Seymour, Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens

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Blistering and timely interrogation of the politics and motives of an infamous ex-leftist.Irascible and forthright, Christopher Hitchens stood out as a man determined to do just that. In his younger years, a career-minded socialist, he emerged from the smoke of 9/11 a neoconservative “Marxist,” an advocate of America’s invasion of Iraq filled with passionate intensity. Throughout his life, he played the role of universal gadfly, whose commitment to the truth transcended the party line as well as received wisdom. But how much of this was imposture? In this highly critical study, Richard Seymour casts a cold eye over the career of the “Hitch” to uncover an intellectual trajectory determined by expediency and a fetish for power.As an orator and writer, Hitchens offered something unique and highly marketable. But for all his professed individualism, he remains a recognizable historical type—the apostate leftist. Unhitched presents a rewarding and entertaining case study, one that is also a cautionary tale for our times.

Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger

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A devastating indictment of a man whose ambition and ruthlessness have directly resulted in both individual murders and widespread, indiscriminate slaughter.Drawing on first-hand testimony, previously unpublished documentation and broad sweeps through material released under the Freedom of Information Act, Christopher Hitchens mounts a devastating indictment of a man whose ambition and ruthlessness have directly resulted in both individual murders and widespread, indiscriminate slaughter.

Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh, Adah Kay, Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian Children (2004)

Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh, Adah Kay, Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian Children (2004)

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Stolen Youth is the first book to explore Israel's incarceration of Palestinian children. Based on first-hand information from international human rights groups and NGO workers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it also features interviews with children who have been imprisoned. The result is a disturbing and often shocking account of the abuses that are being carried out by Israel, and that have been widely documented by human rights groups such as Amnesty, but yet have never been addressed by the international community.The book presents a critical analysis of the international legal framework and the UN system, arguing that a major failure of these instuitutions is their appeal to neutrality while ignoring the reality of power. The book attempts to address the inadequacy of these institutions by placing the issue of Palestinian child prisoners within the framework of Israeli strategy and the overall system of control.The book is divided into three main sections: the first chapters introduce the major issues, and propose a framework for understanding Israel's policy towards Palestinian detainees, particularly children. The second section examines the actual experience of children from the moment of arrest until their release from prison based on hundreds of affidavits collected from children released from prison. The final section of the book analyses in detail the reasons underlying Israel's incarceration of children and the impact on Palestinian society. It outlines Israel's system of institutionalized discrimination and state torture, challenges the legitimacy of Israel's 'security' argument, and argues that Israel's treatment of Palestinian detainees forms one pillar of a policy designed to quash resistance to the occupation.

Israel Shahak, Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel: New Introduction by Norton Mezvinsky (2004)

Israel Shahak, Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel: New Introduction by Norton Mezvinsky (2004)

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At the very heart of the modern world is the idea that all people are born equal. Yet the Jewish religion teaches that people of Jewish faith are special before God, and Jewish fundamentalism passionately defends this belief. This book considers the consequences of this belief in the light of the considerable political influence and power of Jewish fundamentalism. The authors make a clear distinction between the fundamentalist ideology of Israel's Ashkenazi Jews and that of the Sephardic Jews, examining the growing impact of these two movements on Israel's political processes and their effects at a grassroots level through the armed forces' relations with the Palestinian population. Shahak and Mezvinsky argue that Israeli Jewish fundamentalism is closely associated with a new form of national religious Messianism which has its origins in the settling of the conquered territories during the war of 1967 and which vehemently opposes the peace process. Focusing on the consequences for Israel of these ideologies, the authors examine in particular the activities of fundamentalist groups and individuals. Shahak and Mezvinsky conclude by analyzing the possible scenario of civil war in Israel between religious fundamentalists and secularists.

Naseer Aruri, Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return (2001)

Naseer Aruri, Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return (2001)

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With renewed conflict in the Middle East, the prospect of a peaceful resolution looks more unlikely than ever. The Palestinian right of return to their homes has been upheld in international law and through United Nations' resolutions for fifty years. Equally the right of return has been denied by Israel and deferred to a "final status" issue in the Oslo Accords. It is on this right of return that the Palestinians are united. And it is this issue which is so frequently ignored by the international media. With major contributions from a range of international experts, including Edward W. Said, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Alain Gresh and Norman Finkelstein, this volume examines the Palestinians’ right of return. Chapters cover the historical roots of the Palestinian refugee question; the rights of the refugees under international law; the special case of Lebanon; Israeli perceptions of the refugee question; the practical feasibility of the return; the role of the United States and the European Union and the Refugee Question; the value of the refugee property; the principles of compensation; and a programme for an Independent Rights Campaign.

Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel (2008)

Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel (2008)

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Jeff Halper is an Israeli who lives and works in Palestine. This book throws a critical light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an Israeli point of view. Israel's pioneers created a vibrant society, culture and economy. Yet the idea of an ethnically-pure "Jewish State" is no longer viable. Only 72 per cent of Israelis are Jewish, and this proportion is dwindling. To enforce its ethnic exclusivity, Israel adopts policies of occupation and discrimination against Palestinian citizens.Halper puts forward a passionate argument for a new Israel that finds its identity not through ethnicity, but through new ideological and legal frameworks that respect all human rights, and that fundamentally realign Israel's position within the Middle East. Halper explains why a two-state solution will never solve issues such as human rights, refugees, security, access to water and economic development. Instead he develops a positive vision for a new state where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side.

Baruch Kimmerling, Clash of Identities: Explorations in Israeli and Palestinian Societies (2008)

Baruch Kimmerling, Clash of Identities: Explorations in Israeli and Palestinian Societies (2008)

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By revisiting the past hundred years of shared Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli history, Baruch Kimmerling reveals surprising relations of influence between a stateless indigenous society and the settler-immigrants who would later form the state of Israel. Shattering our assumptions about these two seemingly irreconcilable cultures, Kimmerling composes a sophisticated portrait of one side's behavior and characteristics and the way in which they irrevocably shaped those of the other.Kimmerling focuses on the clashes, tensions, and complementarities that link Jewish, Palestinian, and Israeli identities. He explores the phenomena of reciprocal relationships between Jewish and Arab communities in mandatory Palestine, relations between state and society in Israel, patterns of militarism, the problems of jurisdiction in an immigrant-settler society, and the ongoing struggle of Israel to achieve legitimacy as both a Jewish and a democratic state. By merging Israeli and Jewish studies with a vast body of scholarship on Palestinians and the Middle East, Kimmerling introduces a unique conceptual framework for analyzing the cultural, political, and material overlap of both societies. A must read for those concerned with Israel and the relations between Jews and Arabs, Clash of Identities is a provocative exploration of the ever-evolving, always-contending identities available to Israelis and Palestinians and the fascinating contexts in which they take form.

Jonathan Cook, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (2006)

Jonathan Cook, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (2006)

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What does Israel hope to achieve with its recent withdrawal from Gaza and the building of a 700km wall around the West Bank? Jonathan Cook, who has reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Second Intifada, presents a lucid account of the Jewish state's motives. The heart of the issue, he argues, is demography. Israel fears the moment when the region’s Palestinians – Israel's own Palestinian citizens and those in the Occupied Territories – become a majority. Inevitable comparisons with apartheid in South Africa will be drawn. The book charts Israel’s increasingly desperate responses to its predicament: -- military repression of Palestinian dissent on both sides of the Green Line -- accusations that Israel's Palestinian citizens and the Palestinian Authority are secretly conspiring to subvert the Jewish state from within -- a ban on marriages between Israel’s Palestinian population and Palestinians living under occupation to prevent a right of return ‘through the back door’ -- the redrawing of the Green Line to create an expanded, fortress state where only Jewish blood and Jewish religion count Ultimately, concludes the author, these abuses will lead to a third, far deadlier intifada.

Baruch Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military (2001)

Baruch Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military (2001)

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This thought-provoking book, the first of its kind in the English language, reexamines the fifty-year-old nation of Israel in terms of its origins as a haven for a persecuted people and its evolution into a multi- cultural society. Arguing that the mono-cultural regime built during the 1950s is over, Baruch Kimmerling suggests that the Israeli state has divided into seven major cultures. These seven groups, he contends, have been challenging one other for control over resource distribution and the identity of the polity. Kimmerling, one of the most prominent social scientists and political analysts of Israel today, relies on a large body of sociological work on the state, civil society, and ethnicity to present an overview of the construction and deconstruction of the secular-Zionist national identity. He shows how Israeliness is becoming a prefix for other identities as well as a legal and political concept of citizen rights granted by the state, though not necessarily equally to different segments of society.

Ghada Karmi, Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine (2007)

Ghada Karmi, Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine (2007)

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Two rabbis,visiting Palestine in 1897,observed that the land was like a bride,''beautiful,but married to another man''. By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for Israel in Palestein,where would the people of Palestine go? This is a dilemma that Israel has never been able to resolve.В No conflict today is more dangerous than that between Israel and the Palestinians. The implications it has for regional and global security cannot be overstated. The peace process as we know it is dead and no solution is in sight. Nor, as this book argues, will that change until everyone involved in finding a solution accepts the real causes of conflict, and its consequences on the ground.В Leading writer Ghada Karmi explains in fascinating detail the difficulties Israel's existence created for the Arab world and why the search for a solution has been so elusive. Ultimately,she argues that the conflict will end only once the needs of both Arabs and Israelis are accommodated equally. Her startling conclusions overturn conventional thinking-but they are hard to refute.

Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (2007)

Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (2007)

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Groundbreaking expos? of Israel’s terrifying reconceptualization of geopolitics in the Occupied Territories and beyond.Hollow Land is a groundbreaking exploration of the political space created by Israel’s colonial occupation. In this journey from the deep subterranean spaces of the West Bank and Gaza to their militarized airspace, Eyal Weizman unravels Israel’s mechanisms of control and its transformation of the Occupied Territories into a theoretically constructed artifice, in which all natural and built features function as the weapons and ammunition with which the conflict is waged. Weizman traces the development of these ideas, from the influence of archaeology on urban planning, Ariel Sharon’s reconceptualization of military defense during the 1973 war, through the planning and architecture of the settlements, to contemporary Israeli discourse and practice of urban warfare and airborne targeted assassinations. In exploring Israel’s methods to transform the landscape and the built environment themselves into tools of domination and control, Hollow Land lays bare the political system at the heart of this complex and terrifying project of late-modern colonial occupation.

Norman G. Finkelstein, This Time We Went Too Far (2010)

Norman G. Finkelstein, This Time We Went Too Far (2010)

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For the Palestinians who live in the narrow coastal strip of Gaza, the December 2008 Israeli invasion was a nightmare of unimaginable proportions: in the 22-day-long action 1,400 Gazans were killed, several hundred on the first day alone. More than 6,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged. The cost of the destruction and disruption of economic life, in one of the world’s poorest areas, is estimated at more than $3 billion.

And yet, while nothing should diminish recognition of Palestinian suffering through these frightful days, it is possible something redemptive will emerge from the tragedy of Gaza. For, as Norman Finkelstein details, in a concise work that melds cold anger with cool analysis, the profound injustice of the Israeli assault has been widely recognized by organizations impossible to brand as partial or extremist.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN investigation headed by Richard Goldstone, in documenting Israel's use of indiscriminate and intentional force against the civilian population during the invasion (100 Palestinians died for every one Israeli), have had an impact on traditional support for Israel. Jews in both the United States and the United Kingdom, for instance, are beginning to voice dissent, and this trend is especially apparent among the young.

Such a shift, Finkelstein contends, can result in new pressure capable of moving the Middle East crisis towards a solution, one that embraces justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike. The seeds of hope were thus sown in the bitter anguish of Gaza. This Time We Went Too Far, written with Finkelstein’s customary acuity and precision, will surely advance the process it so eloquently describes.

Eugene L. Rogan, Avi Shlaim, The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2007)

Eugene L. Rogan, Avi Shlaim, The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2007)

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The 1948 war led to the creation of the state of Israel, the fragmentation of Palestine, and to a conflict which has raged across the intervening sixty years. The historical debate likewise continues and these debates are encapsulated in the second edition of The War for Palestine, updated to include chapters on Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. In a preface to the new edition, the editors survey the state of scholarship in this contested field. The impact of these debates goes well beyond academia. There is an important link between the state of Arab-Israeli relations and popular attitudes towards the past. A more complex and fair-minded understanding of that past is essential for preserving at least the prospect of reconciliation between Arabs and Israel in the future. The rewriting of the history of 1948 thus remains a practical as well as an academic imperative.