Fugitive Politics The Struggle for Ecological Sanity

Fugitive Politics explores the intersection between politics and ecology, between the requirements for radical change and the unprecedented challenges posed by the global crisis, a dialectic has rarely been addressed in academia.

Across eight chapters, Carl Boggs explores how systemic change may be achieved within the current system, while detailing attempts at achieving change within nation-states. Boggs states that any notion of revolution seems fanciful in the current climate, contending that controlling elites have concentrated their hold on corporate power along three self-serving fronts: technology (Big Tech) and the surveillance order, militarism and the warfare state, and intensification of globalized power. Combined with this Boggs cites the fundamental absence of revolutionary counter-forces, arguing that after decades of subservice relevant, allied to the rise of identity politics and social movements, the Marxist theoretical legacy is now exhausted and will not provide an exit from the crisis. Boggs concludes that the only possibility for fundamental change will come from an open style of politics, in the Jacobin tradition, operating within the overall structures of the current democratic state.

Written for both an academic and a general readership, in the U.S. and beyond, Fugitive Politics will be of vital importance to those studying political theory, political philosophy, political history, Marxism and Marxist theory, authoritarian politics, ecology, environmental politics, and climate politics.

Introduction 1. Marxism and Early Capitalism 2. Capitalism: From Marx to Weber 3. From Lenin to Gramsci 4. Authoritarian State, Mass Society 5. Mills: Beyond Marx and Weber 6. Capitalism, Technology, Power 7. The Military Behemoth 8. The Road to Ecosocialism? Postscript - Sheldon Wolin: A Tribute

Carl Boggs has been professor of social science at National University in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. He has written 25 books in the areas of critical social theory, European politics, American politics, U.S. foreign and military policy, and film studies. For the past 25 years he has been a regular contributor to the online magazine CounterPunch. He is a member of the editorial boards of New Political Science, Theory and Society,and the Global Studies Association. He is recipient of the Charles McCoy Award for career achievement from the American Political Science Association.