Synopses & Reviews
For well over a century now, American capitalism has moved from crisis to crisis—from the ruthless competition that drove worker unrest in the Gilded Age through the horrors of the Great Depression to the present, when the deadly twins of globalization and financialization have brought frightening instability to nearly everyone on the planet.
United States of Emergency traces that crisis-laden history to reveal the key structural and political vulnerabilities of capitalism. Alan Nasser brings a lifetime of study to the subject, arguing that the current instability should be seen as only the most recent movement in an ongoing dialectic of crisis and response; by understanding the history of the system and its vulnerabilities, he shows, we can begin to see our way to a potential post-capitalist future.
Rooted in research, but not afraid to be polemical, United States of Emergency is a landmark work, a powerful reckoning with capitalism’s checkered history and uncertain present.
About the Author
Sam Gindin is the former Research Director of the Canadian Autoworkers Union and Packer visiting Chair in Social Justice at York University. Among his many publications, he is the author (with Greg Albo and Leo Panitch) of
In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives.
Leo Panitch is Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University. Editor of The Socialist Register for twenty-five years, his many books include Working Class Politics in Crisis; A Different Kind of State; The End of Parliamentary Socialism; and American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance.