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Unplanned, exponential economic growth has been the liberal standard for evaluating economies, societies and effectiveness of political leaders and for addressing problems of all sorts. In the later twentieth century, the American conservative movement revived market liberalism to restore growth after the long post-World War II boom ended. The neoliberal policy regime stressed the growth imperative to the exclusion of other social ends, which were alleged to undermine innovation and growth. Neoliberalism conflates growth with development, precludes sustainable growth, and trends toward plutocratic dedemocratization. This immoderate policy regime denies the reality of the commons and disregards the interdependence of nature and culture and individual and society. This paper addresses crisis tendencies, which have been exacerbated by neoliberal policies, and concludes with a departure point for an alternative. John Dewey's naturalism stressed the need to secure the commons, biotic and social, and to balance individualism with community, efficiency with social justice, and markets with planning to cultivate uncoerced cooperation and preserve democracy, in the face of crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of speaking the truth is an infinite labor: to respect it in its complexity is an obligation that no power can afford to shortchange, unless it would impose the silence of slavery (Foucault 1989, p. 308). the attainment of truth is the outcome of the development of complex and elaborate methods of searching, methods that &hellips; in many respects go against the human grain, so they are adopted only after long discipline in a school of hard knocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the contributions of Max Weber is his distinction between formal and substantive rationality. When viewed in relation to his theory of bureaucracy this distinction provides a context for clarifying the domination aspects from the productive activities of organization. The case study of Roman bureaucracy is used to illustrate how the contradictions between two coexisting forms of rationality--one reflecting the control of persons and resources and the other the production (and distribution) of goods and services--contributed to the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critically appraises the book , "Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukåcs to Habermas," by Martin Jay. "Marxism and Totality" is a dispassionate description of how the major exponents of Western Marxism addressed its idée-force. The work gives coherence to an intellectual tradition characterized by divergences, oppositions, and seemingly idiosyncratic posturing, and is for this reason an important contribution. However, Jay's highly detailed and scholarly account is not easily digestible. An analytic introduction, presenting ideal types of the forms of totality, would have sharpened the comparisons of individual theorists and increased the work's clarity. Jay employs at least fifteen terms for totality, some of which are mentioned merely in passing. Even the frequently repeated forms are not defined in detail and their meaning must be gleaned partly from the context. The weighty metatheoretical matters would have been less difficult if Jay's own organizing concepts were discussed more systematically.