Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis
    Unavailable
    Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis
    Unavailable
    Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis
    Ebook173 pages3 hours

    Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis

    By Benjamin Kunkel

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    After the financial crash and the Great Recession, the media rediscovered Karl Marx, socialist theory, and the very idea that capitalism can be questioned.

    But in spite of the publicity, the main paths of contemporary critical thought have gone unexplored outside of the academy. Benjamin Kunkel's Utopia or Bust leads readers-whether politically committed or simply curious-through the most important critical theory today. Written with the wit and verve of Kunkel's best-selling novel, Indecision, this introduction to contemporary Leftist thinkers engages with the revolutionary philosophy of Slavoj Zizek, the economic analyses of David Graeber and David Harvey, and the cultural diagnoses of Fredric Jameson. Discussing the ongoing crisis of capitalism in light of ideas of full employment, debt forgiveness, and "fictitious capital," Utopia or Bust is a tour through the world of Marxist thought and an examination of the basis of Western society today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerso US
    Release dateMar 11, 2014
    ISBN9781781686379
    Unavailable
    Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis
    Author

    Benjamin Kunkel

    BENJAMIN KUNKEL is the author of the best-selling novel Indecision and a founding editor of n+1 magazine. He has written for The New Yorker, Dissent, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.

    Related to Utopia or Bust

    Related ebooks

    History & Theory For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Image and Appropriation: On Lynne Tillman’s ‘Men and Apparitions’

      Mar 23, 2018

      How many times have I checked my Instagram feed since I attempted to start writing this review? I have lurked on the Internet and seen sulking selfies and sultry men posing with plants and a green glow framed in darkness; I have witnessed cats playin

      9 min read

    • Article

      In Praise Of Idleness

      Apr 30, 2018

      In Praise Of Idleness
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ismail Muhammad

      Dec 10, 2017

      For me, 2017 was the year that journalism nearly supplanted fiction as my reading life’s dominant genre. I started the year in a state of alarm at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after he took office, I resolved to be a good, engaged citizen aft

      5 min read

    • Article

      Natural Orders: On Hilary Leichter’s ‘Temporary’

      Mar 5, 2021

      To be a temp, in other words, is to be an interim human being. It means having almost no rights and begging for scraps to survive. It means hearing, from comfortable superiors, that the world is reasonable and fair, that all you have to do to earn yo

      11 min read

    • Article

      Capitalism Is a Very Successful Cancer: The Millions Interviews Eugene Lim

      Jun 26, 2017

      I’d like to describe the chaotic matrix in which we’re living through some other narrative device, some new way that supersedes our dependence on character as empathy avatar. The post Capitalism Is a Very Successful Cancer: The Millions Interviews Eu

      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Are Famous Writers Attending the World’s Most Important Security Conference?

      Feb 17, 2017

      From February 17 to 19, the world’s powerful will gather in the south of Germany for the Munich Security Conference (MSC), a key event on the global political agenda. Over 100 ministers, 30 heads of state, and key decision makers including Mike Pence

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘We’re Gripped By Graphomania’: Why Writing Became An Online Contagion And How We Can Contain It

      Aug 12, 2023

      Perhaps it was once possible to think of writing as something beautiful and wondrous, an amazing conduit of silent communication between soul and soul. For a monk in the 13th century, maybe all writing was worthy of illumination. We are now, quite ob

      5 min read

    • Article

      Left Behind

      Apr 18, 2022

      There exists a strand of social thought, stretching from Georg Hegel in the 19th century through to Max Weber in the early 20th and Jürgen Habermas in the postwar era, that insists a hallmark of modernity is the differentiation of forms of human know

      7 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 1, 2018

      by RO Kwon (Virago, ISBN 978-0-3490-1187-5) virago.co.uk Will is a born-again atheist who, having tried and failed to resurrect his belief in a god to whom he had dedicated his life, is on a mission to save his American-Korean girlfriend, Phoebe, fro

      4 min read

    • Article

      'Can Democracy Work?' Considers The Perils And Pitfalls Of The Institution Across Time

      Oct 5, 2018

      Author and academic James Miller examines the idea of democracy in five distinct moments throughout human history, and chronicles how vastly different each iteration has been.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Much Ado About Nothing

      Aug 17, 2020

      Much Ado About Nothing
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Utopia or Bust

    3.5/5

    24 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Six essays towards understanding the Great Recession, and what comes next, from a Marxist perspective. I thought the chapters on Brenner and Graeber stood out.
    • 5/5
      Best way into some current Marxist thinkers I've read. It kinda shows that the pieces originated as book reviews, but when Kunkel likes the author's work, he does an amazing job of explicating what makes them great. But when the authors aren't that great, Kunkel's reviews kinda meander. Still, readable Marxism is to kill for, and Kunkel rocks.
    • 3/5
      The essay on Jameson is the best. Two essays are expositions of obsolete Marxist economics. The short section on further readings is good. The long introduction is mostly about himself. No index.