Economics

Spokesman Books | Economics

Economics

Books on economy by writers such as Stuart Holland, K. William Kapp, Ken Coates, Michael Barratt Brown and Dexter Whitfield can be found in this section of our website.

You can also find several titles from our European Labour Forum series.

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Social Costs of Neoliberalism</span> The Social Costs of Neoliberalism
Essays on the Economics of K. William Kapp
By Sebastian Berger

K. William Kapp was an environmental pioneer. Decades ago, he challenged economic theories that disregarded the waste and environmental damage caused by production, recognising that environmental pollution threatens sustainable development.

The Social Costs of Neoliberalism addresses rising levels of social demage in an era of climate change. It does so by reconstructing Kapp's theory of social costs that explains why corporations have a built-in tendency to increase profits by socializing costs, that is, by shifting costs on to society. His focus is on the tremendous scope and irreversibility of this damage, pointing to its systematic character.

Kapp convincingly counters neoliberal and neoclassical arguments on externalities and market failure, that do not fully account for fatal flaws in the market's calculus. His proposed alterntive is a robust framework of social-democratic controls of the economy to prevent effectively such social costs and the damage they cause to our environment.

Price: £15.00

254 Pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 864 6


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Europe in Question: - ePUB</span>Europe in Question: - ePUB
and what to do about it
By Stuart Holland

'Stuart Holland on Europe is akin to Thomas Paine on the French Revolution combined with John Maynard Keynes on the Economic Consequences of the Peace. At a preciously young age, he persuaded Charles De Gaulle to agree to Britain's second application to join the European Economic Community. As an advisor to Jacques Delors he designed solutions to Europe's current problems decades before they even surfaced. Now, with Europe in Question - and what to do about it he offers a new generation of readers unique insights on how Europe can be fixed - as well as warnings that it may not be.'
Yanis Varoufakis
Professor in Economics University of Athens and Visiting Professor LBJ School of Government University of Austin Texas.

Yanis Varoufakis is co-author with James K. Galbraith and Stuart Holland of The Modest Proposal 4.0 of which former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard has commented:

"It neither is modest by ambition nor in intelligence. Its aim is to resolve the Eurozone crisis without directly confronting the sovereignty of any major state, and notably not that of Germany. It combines awareness of room for manoeuvre displaced by monetary authorities for decades and affirms that there can be solutions within existing institutional frameworks."

Europe in Question elaborates this case in The Modest Proposal by an author who was the architect in the 70s of Labour's economic programmes, then a Labour member of parliament, and has been an adviser since the 1960s to European heads of state and government as well as to the ETUC, the European Parliament and the EU Social Partners Economic and Social Committee.

Review
Nirupam Sen - Feb 2016

Nuno Martins on 20 July 2015, Amazon


Price: £9.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 835 6
ePUB format


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Out of Crisis</span>Out of Crisis
A Project for European Recovery
Edited by Stuart Holland

The world today is gripped in a slump syndrome. So-called recession has developed into major economic and social crisis. This report promotes an international strategy to transform the crisis.

Backing declarations by Left heads of Governments and Party leaders and developing the seminal debate in New Socialist by Stuart Holland, Francis Cripps and other, the report combines the arguments of politival economists, politicians and trade unionists from over a dozen countries, and challenges monetarism with a new model of development for the West European economies. Focusing on strategic aims - to reflate, restructure, and redistribute resources - it also shows the convergence between policies of the main parties of the European Left on public spending, planning and economic democracy.

First published in 1983.


Price: £6.95

200 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 354 2


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The European Imperative</span>The European Imperative
by Stuart Holland

1992 was supposed to be the greatest year in the history of the European Community since the signature of the Rome Treaty in 1957. In fact, the result of the first Danish referendum, the strains on the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS, and deepening recession threw it into the biggest crisis since President de Gaulle pulled France out of the Council of Ministers in 1965.

In this report to the EC Commission, Stuart Holland argues that reinforcing the European project is imperative for economic and social progress in its member states. National sovereignty has been eroded by mulitnational capital, finance and trade. Member states need to act jointly through the Community to achieve objectives such as full employment, rights at work and welfare.


Price: £14.95

266 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 557 7


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Towards a New Bretton Woods</span>Towards a New Bretton Woods
Alternatives for the Global Economy
By Stuart Holland

Castigating the IMF and the World Bank for their structural adjustment policies, Stuart Holland also critizes the limits of the GATT paradigm of international trade in an era which both investment and trade are determined by mulitnational companies. He argues the evidence shows that trade liberalisation of itself does not maximise global welfare or employment, and claims that the unemployment trend for main regions of the world economy is potentially catastrophic.


Price: £14.95

274 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 555 3


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Market Economy</span>The Market Economy
From Micro to Mesoeconomics
By Stuart Holland

In The Market Economy Stuart Holland exposes the unreal foundations of conventional microeconomic theory and looks at the way in which a few dozen firms command the output and trade of the world's leading economies. Extending oligopoly power, these firms impose unequal conditions of competition in the market. In contrast with the traditional theory of the firm and industry, big business is now multiproduct, multisectoral, multiregional and multinational. It dominates both the microeconomy of small firms and national macroeconomics policies and performance. New principles and policies, the author argues, are required to explain and counteract such concentrated market power.


Price: £12.95

363 pages - indexed | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 564 5


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Market Economy</span>The Market Economy
From Micro to Mesoeconomics
By Stuart Holland

Price: £25.00

363 pages - indexed | Hardback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 624 6


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Global Economy</span>The Global Economy
From Meso to Macroeconomics
By Stuart Holland

The Global Market Economy considers the macroeconomic implications of mesoeconomic power. The global reach of multinational companies has transformed Ricardo's model of international trade, Multinationals comprise Keynesian demand-management policies, erode export competitiveness in the US and UK, diminish tax revenues through transfer pricing, and reduce the effectiveness of monetary policy.

The author shows how public spending sustains rather than drains the private sector, and demonstrates that structural crisis in the global economy has been aggravated by multinational money markets and deflationary monetarist policies.


Price: £15.99

443 pages - indexed | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 563 8


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Global Economy</span>The Global Economy
From Meso to Macroeconomics
By Stuart Holland

Price: £25.00

443 pages - indexed | Hardback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 623 9


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Beyond Capitalist Planning</span>Beyond Capitalist Planning
Edited by Stuart Holland

This work is the first to engage international contributors from four key Western European countries on the questions of economic planning. It demonstrates that planning can at best only modify the composition and rate of development when this is dependent on private profit expectations and on private criteria for the production of goods and services. It argues that capitalism cannot be planned in a welfare state context, and that a new model of development is needed, based on fundamental change in the mode and relations of production.


Price: £6.95

222 pages - indexed | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 81524 454 9


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Uncommon Market</span>The Uncommon Market
By Stuart Holland

In Uncommon Market, Stuart Holland provides a devastating expose of the yawning gap between the theory and practice, aims and achievements of the European Community. The elected Assembly is but a fig leaf on the centralisation of power in the hands of big business and the bureaucracy.

Contrasting the supranational aims of European federalists with this reality, Stuart Holland argues that only radical changes can make possible the kind of autonomous outward-looking internationalism advocated by supporters of a Community of Europe.

Price: £8.99

184 pages - indexed | Paperback
Isbn; 978 0 85124 373 3


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Uncommon Market</span>The Uncommon Market
By Stuart Holland

Price: £15.00

184 pages - indexed | Hardback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 378 8


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European Labour Forum



<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Social Charter and the</span>The Social Charter and the
Single European Market
By John Hughes

The debate about the Social Charter and Action Programme embodies two interlinked dimensions of social and political concern following from developments and changes being set in motion in the course of constructing a single market for the European Community.

In this luminous text, John Hughes shows how the need of equity require a rapid evolution of new norms of social and political practice.


Price: £6.99

78 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 524 9
ELF Books 1


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Europe: an Ever Closer Union</span>Europe: an Ever Closer Union
By David Martin

The desire that the European Community develop into a European Union was expressed at the Community's foundation in 1952. Writing with the authority of the European Parliament's main rapporteur on political union, David Martin explains the Parliament's strategy for achieving such a Union, whilst offering crucial insights into the work of the intergovernmental conferences on Economics and Monetary Union and on Political Union.


Price: £8.99

102 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 538 6
ELF Books 5


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Europe <em>Can </em>Afford to Work</span>Europe Can Afford to Work
By Francis Cripps & Terry Ward

The European Community in the 1990s faced severe problems of low growth, inadequate employment creation, and high and rising unemployment, without the policy means of addressing these problems effectively.

It must be emphasised that sustaining adequate rates growth and job creation, improving environmental infrastructure, and achieving social goals are primary objectives of policy, rather than residual aims only to be tackled once financial stability and low inflation have been secured.

Price: £5.99

64 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 550 8
ELF Books 6


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>A European Recovery Programme</span>A European Recovery Programme
Edited by Ken Coates & Michael Barratt Brown

Contributors include: Francis Cripps, Jacques Delors, Wynne Godley, Stuart Holland, John Hughes, Allan Larsson, Sir Donald MacDougall, Andrew Marvell, Regan Scott, Peter Townsend and Terry Ward

This book proposes a detailed framework for a recovery programme and seeks to prove that mass unemployment is not at all inevitable and can be overcome.

Price: £9.99

138 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 549 2
ELF Books 7


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Evolution of a European</span>The Evolution of a European
Socialism, Science and Europe
By Glyn Ford

The Evolution of a European reflects the development of Glyn Ford's ideas, highlighting the common themes that have run through his work. Crucial questions are addressed in this book, which will appeal not only to those interested in politics, but also to those who identify the close relationship between science and technology, investment, and successful, modern industrial society.

The author develops his arguments by using examples that reflect his vision, knowledge, and experience in the ares about which he writes.

Price: £12.99

268 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 561 4
ELF Books 8


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Right to Work</span>The Right to Work
The Loss of our First Freedom
Edited by Ken Coates
with chapters by: Michael Barratt Brown,
John Hughes and John Wells

A whole generation has been born, completed its schooling, and entered an increasingly hostile labour market, without ever knowing any relief from mass unemployment. In Britain, calamitous levels of unemployment amongst young people are shadowed by poverty, rising crime, and growing fear of crime.

In this book John Wells has shown how far the British unemployment statistics are polluted, and his testimony has not been effectively challenged. His evidence is reinforced by that of John Hughes, who has shown a similar level of pollution of the employment statistics.

Price: £6.99

122 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 578 2
ELF Books 9


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Full Employment <em>for </em>Europe</span>Full Employment for Europe
By Ken Coates & Stuart Holland

Full employment is off the agenda, out of fashion, and out of sight - except in some of the institutions of Europe. Why?

For one thing, the national economies of Keynes' time now co-exist with the companies which are multinational. Currencies are subject to ferocious foreign exchange speculation, and all govenrments have come to sacrifice full employment on the altar of current stability.

Price: £9.99

188 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 580 5
ELF Books 10


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Dear Commissioner</span>Dear Commissioner
An Exchange of Letters
between Ken Coates
with Stuart Holland and Michael Barratt Brown

and President Jacques Santer and Commissioners Yves-Thibault de Silguy and Martin Bangemann

Eighteen million people remain officially unemployed in the European Union. At least fifty million live in poverty. The real numbers out of work are higher than this, and are increasing. As this correspondence reveals, the European Commission has been aware of these problems.

Price: £9.99

144 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 591 1
ELF Books 11


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Other titles

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Unmasking Austerity - ePUB</span>Unmasking Austerity - ePUB
Opposition and Alternatives in Europe and North America
By Dexter Whitfield

Unmasking Austerity: Opposition and Alternatives in Europe and North America exposes how austerity policies have fuelled the fire of recession rather than stimulating growth. It identifies key lessons from organising and action against such policies, and urges a rethink of trade union, community and social movement strategies to overcome austerity. Unmasking Austerity examines the deeper causes of the financial crisis, and exposes the manufactured crises which are being used to dismantle hard-earned labour rights and the welfare state.

A radical alternative strategy includes economic stimulus, reconstruction of public services, faster fundamental reform of banks and financial markets, the elimination of corporate welfare that enriches big business, and strategies to increase labour's share of national income.

Reviews
Sebastian Schipper, Bauhaus-University Weimar - IJURR, Vol.39 Number 3 May 2015

Edward Dingwall - Red Pepper, September 2015

Public Services International - June 2014

Dave Putson - Independent Socialist Networks
May 2014


Price: £9.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 8325
ePUB format


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Unmasking Austerity</span>Unmasking Austerity
Opposition and Alternatives in Europe and North America
By Dexter Whitfield

Paperback edition.

Reviews
Sebastian Schipper, Bauhaus-University Weimar - IJURR, Vol.39 Number 3 May 2015

Edward Dingwall - Red Pepper, September 2015

Public Services International - June 2014

Dave Putson - Independent Socialist Networks
May 2014


Price: £15.00

ISBN: 978 0 85124 8417
Paperback


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Multinational Companies and Nation States</span>Multinational Companies and Nation States
Two essays by Robin Murray

1. The Internationalisation of Capital
and the British Economy


2. The Internationalisation of Capital
and the Nation State



Price: £6.99

108 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 139 5


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Social Costs of Business Enterprise</span>The Social Costs of Business Enterprise
By K W Kapp
Edited by Michael Barratt Brown

Social Costs is an environmental classic. The main purpose of this book is to present a detailed study of how private enterprise, under conditions of unregulated competition, tends to impose social costs which are not accounted for in entrepreneurial outlays. Instead these costs are shifted to and borne by third persons and the community as a whole. Thus, this book deals at the same time with a specific technical economic question and with broad issues of social philosophy and economic knowledge.

Further information on K. William Kapp.

'Kapp's influence is growing in ecological economics. Social Costs is one of the greatest economics books of the 20th century.'

Julien-François Gerber
Department of Economics
Harvard University

Price: £25.00

348 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 637 6


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Socialist Enterprise</span>Socialist Enterprise
Reclaiming the Economy
By Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring,
Henry Neuburger & Adam Sharples

This book plots a bold alternative course for the economy, building on the experiences of the trade union and labour movements. Escape from economic catastrophe, the authors argue, will require more than just changes in the way the economy is managed from the top. There must also be a fundamental redistribution of economic power in our society.

Price: £6.95

232 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 470 9


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Anti-Capitalism</span>Anti-Capitalism
The Social Economy Alternative
by Chris Hill

Though about economics, this book demands no in-depth knowledge of the subject. It is aimed at students and activists who know there must be a better way of orgainsing the world, but are not sure what it is.


Price: £15.00

328 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 6581


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The May Day Manifesto</span>The May Day Manifesto
Defending the Welfare State
By Michael Barratt Brown

This book concerns the maintenance of the welfare state and the social wage. It dismantles the arguments of those who seek to over turn the post-war settlement. The reason we began at this point was simple: it was here that many of the most vulnerable people in society were coming under attack. So, this Manifesto seeks not only to enrich our understanding, but to bring practical help to those in need.

Price: £6.99

128 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 615 4


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Young Person's guide to the Global Crisis</span>Young Person's guide to the Global Crisis
and the Alternative
By Michael Barratt Brown

This book is aimed at young people - in sixth forms, at universities and colleges, in their first jobs, or still looking for a job.

It's about crisis in the global economy which seems pretty much of a turn-off, but it has become important, because getting jobs and keeping jobs depends on what is happening to it; and a whole generation could be blighted by it, like the generation that came to the job market in the 1930s.

Price: £9.00

112 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 620 8


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Privatisation?</span>Privatisation?
Edited by Sue Hastings and Hugo Levie

The aim of this important study is to give a blow-by-blow account of the Tories' extensive programme of privatisation and the responses that so far seem most successful.. This volume will be of particular interest to public sector trade unionists who are faced with privatisation, because it helps to set some key special cases in the wider context of the Conservative attack in all public services and utilites.

Price: £9.99

208 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 360 3


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>New Labour's Attack on Public Services</span>New Labour's Attack on Public Services
Modernisation by Marketisation? How the commissioning, choice, competition and
contestability agenda threatens public services
and the welfare state.

By Dexter Whitfield

New Labour is creating markets in public services on an unprecedented scale. Privatisation inevitably follows marketisation, eroding democratic accountability and embedding business interests. Alternative policies and strategies must build on the support for democratic governance, social justice and the welfare state. As this timely book makes clear, action by alliances of trade unions, community organisations and civil society organisations is urgently required.

Read reviews by:
Mike Tolochko
Patrick Ainley
Labour Research
Keith Popple
Paul Walker

Price: £11.99

176 pages | ISBN: 978 0 85124 7151
5th Series Number 3


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Towards a New Socialism</span>Towards a New Socialism
By W. Paul Cockshott & Allin Cottrell

These two authors, an economist and a computer scientist, seek to rescue socialism from its detractors. Socialist planning, they believe, can be made to work democratically by creating a political constitution that encourages mass participation, and by using computerised labour time in place of money as the social unit of account.

Price: £13.95

236 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 5454


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Too Many Grannies?</span>Too Many Grannies?
Private Pensions, Corporate Welfare and Growing Insecurity
By Richard Minns with Sarah Sexton

This pamphlet was first published in 2006, by Corner House. It is possible to update the figures but the arguments remain and have become even more important as pensions have collapsed in the Anglo-American heartland. The advocates of privatisation express no remorse. The pamphlet tries to explain why this situation arose and what are the real interests involved.

"The main problem, we are told, is how to pay the pensions of so many older people. The World Bank has warned of state budget crises if countries have to pay an extra 9-16 per cent GDP to meet their old-age benefit promises - an "unprecedented economic burden on working age people".

One proposed solution is to raise the pension age, another to raise the retirement age or to abandon it entirely. A third - and the topic of this briefing - is to persuade people, even compel, people to save for their old age so that they rely less on the state. The savings in question would not be stuffed under the mattress or hoarded in a bank vault. Instead, people would be encouraged to put them in pension funds run by private financial institutions, which would invest the money, primarily in stock markets … But more than a decade since this idea was endorsed by the World Bank in its influential 1994 report, Averting the Old Age Crisis, the evidence that it will work remains unconvincing."

From the Introduction


Price: £9.00

40 pages | Pamphlet
ISBN: 978 0 85124 7717


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