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"While it is widely agreed that neoliberalism arose in the wake of the global economic crisis of the 1970s, there remains much debate about how to understand its significance and even how to define it. Is it best seen as an ideology of free market fundamentalism, a series of policy decisions gutting the public sector and breaking unions, or as an era of capitalist development with its own logic. Bringing his considerable intellectual breadth and characteristic generosity to bear on this question, Neil Davidson shows that to truly appreciate what is unique about neoliberalism, and what marks it out as a continuation of capitalism more generally, it is necessary to examine its social dimensions. What Was Neoliberalism? holds fast to Davidson's conviction that thoroughly understanding the past means being better prepared for the struggles of the future"--

"While it is widely agreed that neoliberalism arose in the wake of the global economic crisis of the 1970s, there remains much debate about how to understand its significance and even how to define it. Is it best seen as an ideology of free market fundamentalism, a series of policy decisions gutting the public sector and breaking unions, or as an era of capitalist development with its own logic. Bringing his considerable intellectual breadth and characteristic generosity to bear on this question, Neil Davidson shows that to truly appreciate what is unique about neoliberalism, and what marks it out as a continuation of capitalism more generally, it is necessary to examine its social dimensions. What Was Neoliberalism? holds fast to Davidson's conviction that thoroughly understanding the past means being better prepared for the struggles of the future."

In his latest collection of essays, Neil Davidson brings his formidable analytical powers to bear on the concept of the capitalist nation-state. Through probing inquiry, Davidson draws out how nationalist ideology and consciousness is used to bind the subordinate classes to "the nation," while simultaneously using "the state" as a means of conducting geopolitical competition for capital

Abstract
This article is a response to some of the criticisms made of How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions? by Gerstenberger, Post and Riley. In particular, it focuses on two issues of definition – that of capitalism and the capitalist nation-state – which arise from the book's 'consequentialist' claim that bourgeois revolutions are defined by a particular outcome: the establishment of nation-states dedicated to the accumulation of capital.

Costas Lapavitsas's The Left Case Against the EU (Polity, 2019) is recognized as the leading work advocating Lexit, the left-wing case for Brexit, and for nations leaving the European Union more generally. In light of current Conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's commitment to exit the European Union by October 31, even if it means a no-deal Brexit, the role of the left takes on growing importance. Moreover, this raises issues of the European Union generally, including the dominance of neoliberalism within it and the question of German hegemony. Here, Neil Davidson offers an assessment of Lapavitsas's book.

The article begins by reconstructing the theory of uneven and combined development from Trotsky's own writings in relation to Russia. It then looks more closely at the notion of the "modern" which in Trotsky's account combines with the "archaic" or "backward," before arguing that role of modernity suggests that uneven and combined development has been a far more widespread process than solely in the Third World/Global South. Drawing attention first to the English exception, the article then surveys examples from both West and East before concluding with an assessment of the relative durability of both permanent revolution and uneven development in the twenty-first century.

AbstractAlexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancıoğlu'sHow the West Came to Ruleis an important intervention within Marxist historical debates which seeks to use the theory of uneven and combined development (UCD) to explain the origin and rise to dominance of capitalism. The argument is shaped by a critique of Political Marxist 'internalist' explanations of the process, to which the authors counterpose an account which emphasises its inescapably 'inter-societal' nature. While recognising the many contributions that the book makes to our historical understanding, this article argues that these insights do not depend onUCD, and could have been arrived at without reference to it. In particular, it will try to show thatUCDis inapplicable in periods before the consolidation of capitalism, but might be more usefully extended spatially rather than chronologically.

Since the 1990s there has been an upsurge of academic interest in Trotsky's concept of uneven and combined development, but relatively little attention has been paid to its intellectual antecedents. This first of two articles will reconstruct the sources and components of uneven and combined development, in particular the strategy of permanent revolution, the conditions for which it was intended as an explanation, and the theory of uneven development, which Trotsky had to extend in order to provide that explanation. The article moves between the concepts of permanent revolution and uneven development, tracing their historical development from emergence in the eighteenth century until the era of the first Russian Revolution. By this point a relationship between the two had begun to be established by Marxists on the centre and left of the Second International, and in turn made possible the formulation of the "law" of uneven and combined development, which will be discussed in the second article.

Las revoluciones de Europa del Este en 1989 y la caída de los regímenes estalinistas fueron abordadas por muchos analistas como una señal del fin de una forma contemporánea de revolución social. La derrota del "comunismo" removió aparentemente cualquier posibilidad de una alternativa sistémica al capitalismo, que emergió como el telos de la historia. De aquí en adelante las únicas revoluciones posibles fueron las de tipo político a nivel del régimen, lo que pudo verse en el trasfondo de las revoluciones de colores y de la primavera árabe. Esta interpretación está, sin embargo, basada en una incomprensión de la naturaleza de los regímenes estalinistas y las revoluciones que las generaron. Siguiendo el análisis de las categorías de revolución política y social, y las variantes posteriores, el artículo argumentará que el estalinismo tuvo que ver por un lado, con una contrarrevolución (en Rusia) y, por otro lado, con las revoluciones burguesas contemporáneas (en todos lados), conduciendo en ambos casos a formas de capitalismo de Estado. Desde esta perspectiva, los efectos negativos de los regímenes estalinistas en la formación de una conciencia revolucionaria no tuvieron que ver con su caída, sino más bien con la propia existencia de dichos regímenes que perpetuaron una idea distorsionada del socialismo. El artículo concluye que aunque existen reales obstáculos para que la revolución socialista vuelva a ser un objetivo de lucha, estos están más relacionados con las derrotas que el neoliberalismo le infligió al movimiento obrero internacional que a los eventos de 1989.Palabras clave: Primavera Árabe, Estalinismo, Revolución, Socialismo, Neoliberalismo.Is Social Revolution Still Possible in the Twenty-First Century?The eastern European revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Stalinist regimes were treated by many analysts and commentators as signalling the end of the contemporary form of social revolution. The defeat of "communism" had apparently removed the possibility of any systemic alternative to capitalism, which now emerges as the telos of history. Henceforth, the only conceivable revolutions were regime-changing political revolutions, a claim that appeared to be supported by the subsequent Colour Revolutions and the Arab Spring. This interpretation is, however, based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the Stalinist regimes and the revolutions which created them. Following an analysis of the categories of political and social revolution, and the different varieties of the latter, the article will argue that Stalinism has to be seen, on the one hand, as the counter-revolution (in Russia) and, on the other, as contemporary bourgeois revolutions (everywhere else), leading to forms of state capitalism in both cases. From this perspective, the negative effect of the Stalinist regimes on the formation of revolutionary consciousness was not their downfall, but their existence and the distorted idea of socialism which they perpetuated. The article concludes by arguing that, while there are indeed obstacles to the resumption of socialist revolution as a goal, these are more to do with the defeats inflicted on the international worker's movement by neoliberalism than by the events of 1989.Keywords: Arab Spring, Stalinism, revolution, socialism, neoliberalism.

Las revoluciones de Europa del Este en 1989 y la caída de los regímenes estalinistas fueron abordadas por muchos analistas como una señal del fin de una forma contemporánea de revolución social. La derrota del "comunismo" removió aparentemente cualquier posibilidad de una alternativa sistémica al capitalismo, que emergió como el telos de la historia. De aquí en adelante las únicas revoluciones posibles fueron las de tipo político a nivel del régimen, lo que pudo verse en el trasfondo de las revoluciones de colores y de la primavera árabe. Esta interpretación está, sin embargo, basada en una incomprensión de la naturaleza de los regímenes estalinistas y las revoluciones que las generaron. Siguiendo el análisis de las categorías de revolución política y social, y las variantes posteriores, el artículo argumentará que el estalinismo tuvo que ver por un lado, con una contrarrevolución (en Rusia) y, por otro lado, con las revoluciones burguesas contemporáneas (en todos lados), conduciendo en ambos casos a formas de capitalismo de Estado. Desde esta perspectiva, los efectos negativos de los regímenes estalinistas en la formación de una conciencia revolucionaria no tuvieron que ver con su caída, sino más bien con la propia existencia de dichos regímenes que perpetuaron una idea distorsionada del socialismo. El artículo concluye que aunque existen reales obstáculos para que la revolución socialista vuelva a ser un objetivo de lucha, estos están más relacionados con las derrotas que el neoliberalismo le infligió al movimiento obrero internacional que a los eventos de 1989.Palabras clave: Primavera Árabe, Estalinismo, Revolución, Socialismo, Neoliberalismo.Is Social Revolution Still Possible in the Twenty-First Century?The eastern European revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Stalinist regimes were treated by many analysts and commentators as signalling the end of the contemporary form of social revolution. The defeat of "communism" had apparently removed the possibility of any systemic alternative to capitalism, which now emerges as the telos of history. Henceforth, the only conceivable revolutions were regime-changing political revolutions, a claim that appeared to be supported by the subsequent Colour Revolutions and the Arab Spring. This interpretation is, however, based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the Stalinist regimes and the revolutions which created them. Following an analysis of the categories of political and social revolution, and the different varieties of the latter, the article will argue that Stalinism has to be seen, on the one hand, as the counter-revolution (in Russia) and, on the other, as contemporary bourgeois revolutions (everywhere else), leading to forms of state capitalism in both cases. From this perspective, the negative effect of the Stalinist regimes on the formation of revolutionary consciousness was not their downfall, but their existence and the distorted idea of socialism which they perpetuated. The article concludes by arguing that, while there are indeed obstacles to the resumption of socialist revolution as a goal, these are more to do with the defeats inflicted on the international worker's movement by neoliberalism than by the events of 1989.Keywords: Arab Spring, Stalinism, revolution, socialism, neoliberalism.

Since the world system emerged in the mid-19th century, the stages of capitalist development have all been initiated by economic crises. But unlike the crises of 1873, 1929 or 1973, that of 2007 did not signal the end of the neoliberal stage, but rather its continuation in more extreme forms. This break in the previous pattern requires us to periodize neoliberalism itself and understand how the cumulative effect of the policies implemented during the 'vanguard' and 'social' periods prepared the way for the current 'crisis' period, by restricting the options available to political and state managerial representatives of capital. By reorganizing political economy in such a way that states respond to short-term demands by key sectors of capital rather than the needs of the system as a whole, neoliberalism has inadvertently undermined the accumulation process, producing permanent 'states of exception' as the only means of containing the resulting social crisis.