In Social Decay and Transformation social and political critic Samuel Farber presents an analysis of social decline that has been missing from the contemporary scene: a view from the Left, one which draws from the ideas and traditions of the Enlightenment's left wing. Using a comparative approach to situate his theoretical conclusions in historical circumstances, Farber looks at the working class and temperance movements, civil rights rebellions and the Black Panthers, and the cultural revolutions of 1920s Russia and the Bolsheviks. Providing carefully reasoned interrogations of contemporary thinkers such as James C. Scott and Robin D. G. Kelley, Farber clarifies the discussions on social decay currently taking place, adding an important voice of the Left to the current debate.

Excerpt from Social Decay and Regeneration Some fifteen years ago a brilliant young American, Gerald Stanley Lee, wrote as a sort of "Introduction to the Twentieth Century" a book called "The Voice of the Machines." It was one long paean of joy, infused with much genuine poetic feeling. Man is a machine and the creator of machines. He is turning all life into machinery; modern religion is a machine; education is a machine; government is a machine; trade is a machine; society, literature, journalism, art-all are machines. There is nothing in our modern world that we can do or have or hope to have which is not bound up with machinery. It is in machinery that we must seek for poetry and for beauty and for the infinite. Those persons who still fail to see this are blind, even already dead; they do not belong to our time. Mr. Lee's book is still worth reading. It contained a genuine element of truth which had too often been overlooked. Yet it was not the whole truth, and where true it was not impossible to view the matter from an altogether different angle. Ever since the Industrial Revolution began, more than a century ago, there has been an obscure and smouldering resentment against the mechanization of work and life. Among the workers, indeed, whose sound instincts may have felt more than they were able to express, the introduction of machinery, we know, led at first to open revolt and disorder. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

Examining the decline and renewal of society, Freeman's work offers a unique perspective on how social change can occur. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, Freeman argues that societal decay is not inevitable, but rather a result of a complex array of factors. He offers a compelling vision for how society can be restored and revitalized, offering practical solutions for individuals and communities alike. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This early work by Richard Austin Freeman was originally published in the early 20th century and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Social Decay and Regeneration' is a non-fiction work on the subject of society. The first story featuring his well-known protagonist Dr. Thorndyke - a medico-legal forensic investigator - was published in 1907, and although Freeman's early works were seen as simple homages to his contemporary, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he quickly developed his own style: The 'inverted detective story', in which the identity of the criminal is shown from the beginning, and the story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery.

There is a pervasive sense in our society that we are in a bad place and things are getting worse. This study by Leonard Joy, a veteran of international economic and social development work, is aimed directly at the kind of societal transformation required to stop this slide into catastrophe and begin to advance the growth of security and well-being for human communities and the whole commonwealth of life. His insights are both necessary and timely. With increasing recognition and implementation, they might also be sufficient. -- Publisher's description.

Combining a thorough introduction to the work of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Italian social theo-rist Vilfredo Pareto with a highly read-able English translation of Pareto's last monograph, "Generalizations," origi-nally published in 1920, this work illus-trates precisely how and why demo-cratic forms of government undergo decay and are eventually re-invigo-rated. More than any other social scien-tist of his generation, Pareto offers a well-developed, articulate, and com-pelling theory of change based on a Newtonian vision of science and an en-gineering model of social equilibrium. In his introduction, Powers focusses on Pareto's intellectual maturation and on his overall theory of society. Powers describes the various stages of Pareto's development as engineer, economist, political scientist, and finally as sociol-ogist. He explains how Pareto consid-ered himself the Einstein of social sci-ence and how he introduced the con-cept of relativity into the social sci-ences. Even if such self-claims were rarely widely shared, the sense of Pareto's originality is doubted by few, if any, contemporary scholars. This last, and in many ways most penetrat-ing, of Pareto's briefer works, warns of the dangers which can befall demo-cratic order. It is important because, as his final attempt to clarify his ideas, it places his earlier works in perspective. Pareto generates a comprehensive the-ory of complex social phenomena.

This carefully structured reader provides a focus for thinking about education in the context of a society that now--in the final years of this millennium--is faced with a range of critical, sometimes catastrophic, issues and problems. These include: poverty and growing social injustice, racism and sexism, and other forms of exclusion; the depersonalization of social and political life; the moral and spiritual decay of the culture; and the ecological deterioration of the planet. Although this volume focuses on American society, there is also concern with the larger global community. The book is intended to work on two levels. First, it helps readers develop an awareness of how education is connected to the wider social structures of social, cultural, political, and economic life. Second, it encourages not only a critical examination of our present social reality but also a serious discussion of alternatives--of what a transformed society and educational process might look like. The editors' goal in this text is to deliberately engage readers in connecting the work of teachers to an ethically-committed, politically-charged pedagogy.