Search results

'Ground-breaking and ambitious' - Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism Whoever controls the platforms, controls the future. Platform Socialism sets out an alternative vision and concrete proposals for a digital economy that expands our freedom. Powerful tech companies now own the digital infrastructure of twenty-first century social life. Masquerading as global community builders, these companies have developed sophisticated new techniques for extracting wealth from their users. James Muldoon shows how grassroots communities and transnational social movements can take back control from Big Tech. He reframes the technology debate and proposes a host of new ideas, from the local to the international, for how we can reclaim the emancipatory possibilities of digital platforms. Drawing on sources from forgotten histories to contemporary prototypes, he proposes an alternative system and charts a roadmap for how we can get there

The German council movements brought down the German monarchy, founded several short-lived council republics and dramatically transformed European politics. This book reconstructs how participants in the German council movements struggled for a democratic socialist society.

Juan de Solorzano Pereira (1575-1654) was a lawyer who spent eighteen years as a judge in Peru before returning to Spain to serve on the Councils of Castile and of the Indies. Considered one of the finest lawyers in Spain, his work, De Indiarum Jure, was the most sophisticated defense of the Spanish conquest of the Americas ever written, and he was widely cited in Europe and the Americas until the early nineteenth century. In this work he not only drew on traditional legal and the logical materials used to defend the conquest, but also employed anthropology and history to compare the social and political development of the New World with that of the Old. His work, with that of the Spanish School of international law theorists generally, is often seen as leading to Hugo Grotius and modern international law. However, as James Muldoon shows, the De Indiarum Jure represents the fullest development of a medieval Catholic theory of international order that provided an alternative to the Grotian theory. The Americas in the Spanish World Order offers a sophisticated evaluation of the significance of the legal and theological debates that attended the Spanish conquest of the New World. It will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval and early modern Spanish and legal history

In response to the republican revival of the ideal of freedom as non-domination, a number of 'radical', 'labour' and 'workplace' republicans have criticised the limitations of Philip Pettit's account of freedom and government. This article proposes that the missing link in these debates is the relationship between republicanism and socialism. Seeking to bring this connection back into view in historical and theoretical terms, the article draws from contemporary radical republicans and the writings of Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg to propose a socialist republican theory of freedom and government. This consists of a conception of freedom as collective autonomy and a participatory democratic vision of a decentralised state with parliamentary institutions, the rule of law, worker-controlled workplaces, community-directed investment and a political culture of solidarity and public-spiritedness. This theory of socialist republicanism seeks to overcome the weaknesses and limitations of each respective independent theory and should appeal to republicans and socialists alike.

This article addresses the crucial role political principles play in Hannah Arendt's account of political action and judgment. It proposes a new interpretive framework for understanding their political logic and the varied contexts within which they appear in Arendt's work. Principles can be understood according to three distinct perspectives from which they inspire, guide and organise political action. Reading Montesquieu alongside Kant, Arendt claims that principles operate according to a logic of exemplarity. Political action carries within itself and exemplifies a more general principle, which nevertheless cannot be determined as a rule. It does not establish a universal law according to which future action could be determined, but it does attempt to embody and exemplify a more general standard against which future action could be judged. Arendt argues that attending to the importance of principles in politics offers new possibilities for returning to the past and transforming contemporary practices.

This thesis examines Hannah Arendt's argument for a council democracy and its relevance for contemporary democratic practices. References to the councils in Arendt's work are often ignored or dismissed by her interpreters as a utopian commitment. Against the tendency to neglect this aspect of her thought, I argue that the councils play a crucial role in her work as the institutional embodiment of her principle of political freedom. Tracing the development of the council concept in Arendt's thought, I offer a significant reinterpretation of her political theory as situated within the radical democratic tradition of Rosa Luxemburg. I contend that Arendt's key contribution to democratic theory is her championing of a federal system of participatory and empowered councils as the central political institutions of a council republic. Arendt's argument for a council democracy draws from historical examples of councils from the French Revolution to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. However, Arendt mischaracterises the nature of the councils and the intentions of council delegates. She inserts them in the framework of her own political categories and disregards the delegates' socialist ideology and socio-economic concerns. Arendt's distortion of the councils gives rise to the need for a historical re-examination of their political practices. I return to the political struggles of the post-First World War council movements in Germany and Russia in order to place the councils in historical perspective and challenge the biases of Arendt's account. My analysis reveals that the councils were concerned with both political and economic affairs. I revise Arendt's depiction in arguing that the councils were transformative organs of democratisation that sought to introduce democratic conditions into all spheres of social organisation. Situating the councils in relation to contemporary democratic practices, my principal argument is that they offer a critical perspective on the limits of current liberal democratic regimes. Although the councils do not present a model that could be replicated today, council delegates engaged in significant political practices that are instructive for current attempts at political transformation. In particular, they reveal the insufficiencies of electoral institutions for enabling widespread political participation and holding elites accountable. I argue that the historical significance of the councils is their exemplary role as institutions through which working-class forces organised to restrain elites, dismantle hierarchical systems and equalise power between citizens.