The challenge and burden of historical time : socialism in the Twenty-First Century / István Mészáros ; foreword by John Bellamy Foster

Includes bibliographical references (p. [439]-467) and index.

Introduction -- The tyranny of capital's time imperative -- The time of the individuals and the time of humanity -- Human beings reduced to "time's carcase" -- The loss of historical time consciousness -- Free time and emancipation -- The uncontrollability and destructiveness of globalizing capital -- The extraction of surplus-labor in capital's "organic system" -- Unreformability, uncontrollability and destructiveness -- The system's threefold internal fracture -- Capital's failure to create its global state formation -- Chronic insufficiency of "extraneous help" by the state -- Marxism, the capital system and social revolution -- The global view of capital -- Historical limits of the labour theory of value -- Ongoing proletarianization and its wishful denials -- The necessary renewal of Marxian conceptions -- The objective possibility of socialism? -- Political and social revolution -- Downward equalization of the differential rate of exploitation -- Socialism or barbarism: from the "American century" to the crossroads -- Foreword -- Capital : the living contradiction -- The potentially deadliest phase of imperialism -- Historical challenges facing the socialist movement -- Conclusion -- Postscript: militarism and the coming wars -- Unemployment and "flexible casualization" -- The globalization of unemployment -- The myth of "flexibility" and the reality of precarization -- From the tyranny of "necessary labor-time to emancipation through "disposable time" -- Economic theory and politics-beyond capital -- Alternative economic approaches -- The need for comprehensive planning -- Capital's hierarchical command structure -- From predictions based on "economic laws working behind the backs of the individuals" to anticipations of a controllable future -- Objective preconditions for the creation of non-deterministic economic theory -- Socialist accountancy and emancipatory politics --
The challenge of sustainable development and the culture of substantive equality -- Farewell to "liberty-fraternity-equality" -- The failure of "modernization and development" -- Structural domination and the culture of substantive inequality -- Education-beyond capital -- Capital's incorrigible logic and its impact on education -- Remedies cannot be just formal; they must be essential -- "Learning is our very life, from youth to old age" -- Education as the "positive transcendence of labor's self-alienation" -- Socialism in the twenty-first century -- Irreversibility: the imperative of a sustainable alternative order -- Participation: the progressive transfer of decision making to the associated producers -- Substantive equality: the absolute condition of sustainability -- Planning: the necessity to overcome capital's abuse of time -- Qualitative growth in utilization: The only viable economy -- The national and the international: Their dialectical complementarity in our time -- Alternative to parliamentarism: unifying the material reproductive and the political sphere -- Education: the ongoing development of socialist consciousness -- Why socialism? Historical time and the actuality of radical change -- Conflicting determinations of time -- Why capitalist globalization cannot work? -- The structural crisis of politics -- New challenges on our horizon and the urgency of time -- Notes -- Index.
Introduction -- The tyranny of capital's time imperative -- The time of the individuals and the time of humanity -- Human beings reduced to "time's carcase" -- The loss of historical time consciousness -- Free time and emancipation -- The uncontrollability and destructiveness of globalizing capital -- The extraction of surplus-labor in capital's "organic system" -- Unreformability, uncontrollability and destructiveness -- The system's threefold internal fracture -- Capital's failure to create its global state formation -- Chronic insufficiency of "extraneous help" by the state -- Marxism, the capital system and social revolution -- The global view of capital -- Historical limits of the labour theory of value -- Ongoing proletarianization and its wishful denials -- The necessary renewal of Marxian conceptions -- The objective possibility of socialism? -- Political and social revolution -- Downward equalization of the differential rate of exploitation --
Socialism or barbarism: from the "American century" to the crossroads -- Foreword -- Capital : the living contradiction -- The potentially deadliest phase of imperialism -- Historical challenges facing the socialist movement -- Conclusion -- Postscript: militarism and the coming wars -- Unemployment and "flexible casualization" -- The globalization of unemployment -- The myth of "flexibility" and the reality of precarization -- From the tyranny of "necessary labor-time to emancipation through "disposable time" -- Economic theory and politics-beyond capital -- Alternative economic approaches -- The need for comprehensive planning -- Capital's hierarchical command structure -- From predictions based on "economic laws working behind the backs of the individuals" to anticipations of a controllable future -- Objective preconditions for the creation of non-deterministic economic theory -- Socialist accountancy and emancipatory politics --
The challenge of sustainable development and the culture of substantive equality -- Farewell to "liberty-fraternity-equality" -- The failure of "modernization and development" -- Structural domination and the culture of substantive inequality -- Education-beyond capital -- Capital's incorrigible logic and its impact on education -- Remedies cannot be just formal; they must be essential -- "Learning is our very life, from youth to old age" -- Education as the "positive transcendence of labor's self-alienation" -- Socialism in the twenty-first century -- Irreversibility: the imperative of a sustainable alternative order -- Participation: the progressive transfer of decision making to the associated producers -- Substantive equality: the absolute condition of sustainability -- Planning: the necessity to overcome capital's abuse of time -- Qualitative growth in utilization: The only viable economy -- The national and the international: Their dialectical complementarity in our time --
Alternative to parliamentarism: unifying the material reproductive and the political sphere -- Education: the ongoing development of socialist consciousness -- Why socialism? Historical time and the actuality of radical change -- Conflicting determinations of time -- Why capitalist globalization cannot work? -- The structural crisis of politics -- New challenges on our horizon and the urgency of time -- Notes -- Index.

A companion to "Beyond Capital", this work focuses on the "decapitation of historical time" in capitalism and the necessity of a new "socialist time accountancy" as a revolutionary response to the debilitating present. It defines the challenges and burdens facing all those who are committed to a more rational, more egalitarian future.