SOCIAL OPULENCE AND PRIVATE RESTRAINT by Noel Thompson ( 9780199646012 )

Item Details

Title:

SOCIAL OPULENCE AND PRIVATE RESTRAINT
THE CONSUMER IN BRITISH SOCIALIST THOUGHT SINCE 1800

By:

Noel Thompson

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£94.00

Our price:

£82.25

Discount:

12.5% off

You save:

£11.75

ISBN 10:

0199646015

ISBN 13:

9780199646012

Availability:

Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.

Delivery rates

Stock:

Currently 0 available

Publisher:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

20 August, 2015

Pages:

256

Description:

A study of the place of the consumer and consumption in the political economy of British socialism, from its early-nineteenth-century origins to the modern Left, illustrating the multifaceted ideological challenge presented by the accommodation of the consumer within socialist political economy.

Synopsis:

Social Opulence and Private Restraint is a study of the place of the consumer and consumption in the political economy of British socialism, from its early-nineteenth-century origins, through 'New Times' Marxism, to the consumer-focused New Labourism and political economies critical of consumerism that can be found in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century Left. Noel Thompson identifies and explicates recurrent themes which cross the boundaries of the conventional periodisation of the history of British socialist thought; themes which illustrate the sustained nature of the multifaceted ideological challenge presented by the accommodation of the consumer within socialist political economy. This challenge necessitates an engagement with the character and priorities of a future socialist society.As such it touches on some of the key issues which socialists have confronted in pursuit of their vision of a good society: issues with a strong contemporary relevance such as the desirability of private as against social opulence; the relationship between consumption and happiness; the need to educate and/or to liberate desire; and, in particular, the environmental and social consequences of rising levels of consumer expectation and consumption. The study also throws light on how the disparate ways in which these issues were addressed reflected and shaped the socialist political economies that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while also engendering tensions between them.

Publication:

Imprint:

Oxford University Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION, 1870, AND CHARLES DARWIN AND ALFRED WALLACE , 'ON THE TENDENCY OF SPECIES TO FORM VARIETIES' (PAPERS PRESENTED TO THE LINNEAN SOCIETY 30TH JUNE 1858)