We Make Our Own History

Marxism and Social

Movements in the Twilight
of Neoliberalism
Laurence Cox
and Alf Gunvald Nilsen
PB 9780745334813
18.99 | $34
September 2014
248pp


W
e live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the
ruling classes can no longer rule as before,
and ordinary people are no longer willing to be
ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites
since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defned by
dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. Te
refusal to continue to be ruled like this - ya basta!
- appears in an arc of resistance stretching from
rural India to the cities of the global North.
From this network of movements, new visions
are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. We
make our own History responds to these visions by
reclaiming Marxism as a theory born from activist
experience and practice.
Tis book marks a break both with established
social movement theory, and with those forms
of Marxism which treat the practice of social
movement organising as an unproblematic process.
It shows how movements can develop from local
conficts to global struggles; how neoliberalism
operates as a social movement from above, and how
popular struggles can create new worlds from below.
Laurence Cox directs the MA in Community
Education, Equality and Social Activism at the National
University of Ireland Maynooth and co-edits the social
movements journal Interface. He is active in a wide
range of movements and has published Marxism and
Social Movements (2013) and Understanding European
Movements (2013).
Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Associate Professor at the
Department of Sociology, University of Bergen. His
research focuses on social movements in the global
South. He is the author of Dispossession and Resistance
in India (2012) and co-editor of Social Movements in the
Global South (2011) and Marxism and Social Movements
PlutoPress
www.plutobooks.com