GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS: The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms

Roger Burbach is Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas. He has written extensively on Latin America, US politics, and on post-communist societies and is the author, with Octavio Nunez and Boris Kagarlitsky, of Globalization and its Discontents: The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms (Pluto Press, 1996). Orlando Nunez was a leading strategist in the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in the 1980s and was a member of the Sandinista's Assembly until their defeat. He now he heads CIPRES, a centre promoting sustainable agriculture. Boris Kagarlitsky is a senior research fellow in the Institute for Comparative Political Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was a political prisoner under Brezhnev and latterly has been an adviser to the Chair of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia. He is the author of New Realism, New Barbarism (1999), The Twilight of Globalisation (2000), The Return of Radicalism (2000) and Russia under Yeltsin and Putin (2002), all published by Pluto Press.

The decisive event of the late twentieth century has been the collapse of communism and the perceived triumph of capitalism. Written by authors from the First, former Second, and Third Worlds, this book reveals the characteristics and flaws of the late capitalist order. The authors explore the societal polarisation produced by globalization, the crisis of Western ideology, and the soft financial underbelly of globalization that could well bring us to an economic collapse. The perspective of this provocative book goes beyond those of the traditional left and the relativist, anti-historical school of postmodernism to offer an entirely fresh view of the world order.

Preface 1. Back to the future 2. The New World Disorder 3. The Crisis of Western Ideology 4. Globalisation's Economic Shock 5. The trauma of the Third World 6. Decomposition in the United States 7. The Post Communist World: From Crisis to Catastrophe 8. Visions Old and new 9. The Long Transition to Postmodern Socialism Notes Index