First published in 1981, this book brings together different types of work by numerous fragmented groups in the field of Marxist history and puts them in dialogue with each other. It takes stock of then recent work, explores the main new lines, and looks at the political and ideological circumstances shaping the direction of historical work, past and present. The scope of the book is international with contributions on African history, fascism and anti-fascism, French labour history, and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It also incorporates feminist history and gives attention to some of the leading questions raised for social history by the women’s movement.

First published between 1975 and 1991, this set reissues 13 volumes that originally appeared as part of the History Workshop Series. This series of books, which grew out of the journal of the same name, advocated ‘history from below’ and examined numerous, often social, issues from the perspectives of ordinary people. In the words of founder Raphael Samuel, the aim was to turn historical research and writing into ‘a collaborative enterprise’, via public gatherings outside of a traditional academic setting, that could be used to support activism and social justice as well as informing politics. Some of the topics examined in the set include: mineral workers, rural radicalism, and the lives and occupations of villagers in the nineteenth century; working class association; the development of left-wing workers theatre and the changing attitudes to mass culture across the twentieth century; the changing fortunes of the East End at the turn of the century; the position of women from the nineteenth century to the present; the miners’ strike of 1984-5; the social and political images of late-twentieth century London; and a three volume analysis of the myriad facets of English patriotism. This set will be of interest to students of history, sociology, gender and politics.

First published in 1982, this book is inspired the ideas generated by Eric Hobsbawm, and has taken shape around a unifying preoccupation with the symbolic order and its relationship to political and religious belief. It explores some of the oldest question in Marxist historiography, for example the relationship of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, art and social life, and also some of the newest and most problematic questions, such as the relationship of dreams and fantasy to political action, or of past and present — historical consciousness — to the making of ideology. The essays, which range widely over period and place, are intended to break new ground and take on difficult questions.

Fin de Siècle Socialism, originally published in 1988, demonstrates the lively potential for cultural criticism in intellectual history. Martin Jay discusses such controversies as the Habermas-Gadamer debate and the deconstructionist challenge to synoptic analysis. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of modern European history, political and social theory.

First published in 1992, this Routledge Revival sees the reissue of a truly original exploration of the nature of urbanization and capitalism. Linda Clarke’s vital work argues that: Urbanization is a product of the social human labour engaged in building as well as a concentration of the labour force. The quality of the labour process determines the development of production. Changes to the built environment reflect changes in the production process and, in particular, the development of wage labour. To support these arguments, the author identifies a qualitatively new historical stage of capitalist building production involving a significant expansion of wage labour, and hence capital, and the transition from artisan to industrial production. Linda Clarke draws from a wide range of original material relating to the development of London from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century to provide a complete description of the development process: materials extraction, roadbuilding, housebuilding, paving, cleansing, etc; profiles of builders and contractors involved, and a picture of the new working class communities, as in Somers Town – their living conditions, population, working environment, and politics.

A pioneering book that takes us beyond economic debate to show how inequality is returning us to a past dominated by empires, dynastic elites, and ethnic divisions. The economic facts of inequality are clear. The rich have been pulling away from the rest of us for years, and the super-rich have been pulling away from the rich. More and more assets are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Mainstream economists say we need not worry; what matters is growth, not distribution. In The Return of Inequality, acclaimed sociologist Mike Savage pushes back, explaining inequalityÕs profound deleterious effects on the shape of societies. Savage shows how economic inequality aggravates cultural, social, and political conflicts, challenging the coherence of liberal democratic nation-states. Put simply, severe inequality returns us to the past. By fracturing social bonds and harnessing the democratic process to the strategies of a resurgent aristocracy of the wealthy, inequality revives political conditions we thought we had moved beyond: empires and dynastic elites, explosive ethnic division, and metropolitan dominance that consigns all but a few cities to irrelevance. Inequality, in short, threatens to return us to the very history we have been trying to escape since the Age of Revolution. Westerners have been slow to appreciate that inequality undermines the very foundations of liberal democracy: faith in progress and trust in the political communityÕs concern for all its members. Savage guides us through the ideas of leading theorists of inequality, including Marx, Bourdieu, and Piketty, revealing how inequality reimposes the burdens of the past. At once analytically rigorous and passionately argued, The Return of Inequality is a vital addition to one of our most important public debates.