Critique of Economic Reason

André Gorz's earlier books--from Ecology as Politics to Farewell to the Working Class and Paths to Paradise--have informed and inspired the most radical currents in Green movements in Europe and America over the last two decades. In Critique of Economic Reason, he offers his fullest account to date of the terminal crisis of a system where every activity and aspiration has been subjected to the rule of the market. By carefully delineating the existential and cultural limits of economic rationality, he emphasizes the urgent need to create a society which rejects the work ethic in favor of an emancipatory ethic of free time.

At the heart of his alternative is an advocacy not of "full employment," but of an equal distribution of the diminishing amount of necessary paid work. He presents a practical strategy for reducing the working week, and develops a radical version of a guaranteed wage for all. Above all, he argues that a utopian vision is now the only realistic proposal, and that "economic reason must be returned to its true--that is subordinate--place."

“Gorz’s greatest work, and a crucial book for our time.”—Le Monde.

Gorz’s diagnosis and critique of the increasing potency of an economic mode of rationality and its distortion of thought.

“Verso’s beautifully designed Radical Thinkers series, which brings together seminal works by leading left-wing intellectuals, is a sophisticated blend of theory and thought.”—Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman

This shrinkwrapped set contains twelve Verso Radical Thinkers volumes at a discounted price:

• Machiavelli and Usby Louis Althusser
• Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identitiesby Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein
• Passwordsby Jean Baudrillard
• The Panopticon Writingsby Jeremy Bentham
• Comments on the Society of the Spectacleby Guy Debord
• Design and Crime (And Other Diatribes)by Hal Foster
• Critique of Economic Reason by Andre Gorz
• Brecht and Methodby Fredric Jameson
• The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Gardeby Peter Osborne
• Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theoryby Edward W. Soja
• Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticismby Sebastiano Timpanaro
• Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Leftby Slavoj Zizek, Ernesto Laclau, and Judith Butler

This shrinkwrapped set contains twelve Verso Radical Thinkers volumes at a discounted price:

• Machiavelli and Usby Louis Althusser
• Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identitiesby Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein
• Passwordsby Jean Baudrillard
• The Panopticon Writingsby Jeremy Bentham
• Comments on the Society of the Spectacleby Guy Debord
• Design and Crime (And Other Diatribes)by Hal Foster
• Critique of Economic Reason by Andre Gorz
• Brecht and Methodby Fredric Jameson
• The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Gardeby Peter Osborne
• Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theoryby Edward W. Soja
• Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticismby Sebastiano Timpanaro
• Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Leftby Slavoj Zizek, Ernesto Laclau, and Judith Butler

Louis Althusserwas born in Algeria in 1918 and died in France in 1990. He taught philosophy for many years at the Ecole Normale Superieur in Paris, and was a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party. His books include For Marx; Reading Capital(with Etienne Balibar); Essays in Ideology; Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx; Machiavelli and Us; and The Spectre of Hegel.tienne Balibaris a French Marxist philosopher and the most celebrated student of Louis Althusser. He is also one of the leading exponents of French Marxist philosophy and the author of Spinoza and Politics, The Philosophy of Marxand co-author of Race, Nation and Classand Reading Capital.Jean Baudrillard(1929-2007) began teaching sociology at the Université de Paris-X in 1966. He retired from academia in 1987 to write books and travel until his death in 2007. His many works include Simulations and Simulacra, America, The Perfect Crime, The System of Objects, Passwords, The Transparency of Evil, The Spirit of Terrorism, and Fragments, among others.Jeremy Bentham(1748-1832) was the founder of the doctrine of utilitarianism, outlined in "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation" (1789). His work on the Panopticon began in 1785. His concern with legal reform and codification continued throughout his life, and he was a campaigner for universal suffrage, the secret ballot and the abolition of capital and corporal punishment.Judith Butleris Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Psychic Life of Power, Excitable Speech, Bodies that Matter, Gender Trouble, Frames of War, and with Slavoj Zizek and Ernesto Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality.Guy Debordwas born in Paris in 1931 and committed suicide in 1994. A Marxist theorist, French writer, poet, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Letterist International and Situationist International, Debord is best known as the leading theoretician of the situationist movement. His works translated into English include The Society of the Spectacle, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, and Panegyric.Hal Fosteris Townsend Martin Professor of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University. A co-editor of Octobermagazine and books, he is the editor of The Anti-Aesthetic, and the author of Design and Crime, Recording, The Return of the Real, and Compulsive Beauty.Andre Gorzwas born in Austria in 1924, and moved to Paris in 1948, going on to become an editor of Les Temps Modernes. He was one of the founders of Le Nouvel Observateurand wrote for it under the pseudonym of Michel Bosquet for some twenty years. His books Critique of Economic Reasonand The Traitorare published by Verso.Fredric Jamesonis Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture's relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory,Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variationsand Representing Capital.Ernesto Laclauis Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Government, University of Essex, and Distinguished Professor for Humanities and Rhetorical Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of, amongst other works, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy(with Chantal Mouffe), New Reflections of the Revolution of Our Time, The Populist Reason, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality(with Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek), and Emancipation(s).Peter Osborneis professor of modern European philosophy at Middlesex University, London, and an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy. His books include The Politics of Time, Philosophy in Cultural Theory, and Conceptual Art. He is the editor of the three-volume Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory.Edward W. Sojateaches Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books on African development and on the economic and spatial restructuring of the Los Angeles region.Sebastiano Timpanarowas born in Parma in 1923 and died in 2000. He studied classical philology at the University of Florence. His works include On Materialismand Freudian Slip, as well as major studies of Leopardi and Edmondo De Amicis.Immanuel Wallersteinis director of the Fernand Braudel Center at the State University of New York. His books include a three-volume study, The Modern World-System, and Historical Capitalism.Slavoj iekis a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include First as Tragedy, Then as Farce; Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle; In Defense of Lost Causes; Living in the End Times; and many more.