Another City is Possible with Participatory Budgeting (May 2017)

Though participatory budgeting was only born in 1989, it has since been manifested over 2000 times in over 45 countries around the world - groundbreaking success for a process that is one of the rare authentic democratic innovations in the past 30 years. Participatory budgeting gives citizens a powerful role in the decision-making and destiny of their cities. It also reaffirms the central place of collective deliberation for direct democracy and participatory democracy, whilst contributing to the transformation of the city into urban commons.

In this book, Yves Cabannes and Cecilia Delgado, seasoned experts in the field, lead us across five continents to the front lines of participatory budgeting, unpacking the successes and challenges of thirteen case studies. As much a Best-Of Guide as a How-To Manual for democratising municipal finances, this book charts the unique trajectory of participatory budgeting, asserting its rich potential for realising radical democratic goals and deepening democracy. Animated throughout with stunning full colour images, it includes an extensive bibliography with up-to-date resources across multiple languages, including films and websites.

Political Ecology: The Climate Crisis and a New Social Agenda (May 2017)

The new and greatly expanded edition of the 1991 classic, Political Ecology: the Climate Crisis and a New Social Agenda explains the history of environmental politics and its prospects for the future. Ecological activists, Dimitri Roussopoulos argues, aim for more than protecting the environment; they call for new communities, new lifestyles, and a new way of doing politics.

Political Ecology opens by presenting the history of the state management of the environment, then moves to an overview of the great variety of popular responses to the ecological crisis, before finally discussing the main political tendencies offered by the ecology movement. The concluding sections explore prospects for channelling environmentalist aspirations into political alternatives, demonstrating a set of social ecology-inspired successes and insisting on the central role of cities to developing social and ecological alternatives. Finally, a new afterword updates the work for a post-COP21 era by critiquing the limitations of the Paris Accord. This book is being translated into Spanish, Turkish, Greek, French, Italian and Portugese.

Green Politics, Green Economics is a Manifesto for an Ecological Society (April 2017)

With Nature everywhere in retreat, Green Politics, Green Economics analyses the role that the dominant model of economic growth has in current ecological and social crises. It demonstrates the two economic reasons for such a situation: the changing world economy and the limits of capitalist production and growth. Noting the responses of governments and corporations to the weaknesses of the system, M. Athena Palaeologu's original critique raises fundamental economic questions like the reorganisation of work, the future of professional relations, the reform of the welfare state, the development of free time, the democratisation of urban society, and changes in international power relations.

Green politics is a political approach which places major importance on ecological and environmental goals, and on achieving these through broad-based, participatory citizen involvement. This brilliant work probes the many facets of capitalism's ecological contradictions and dares to question whether sustainable development is in fact possible under market capitalism.

The Rise of Cities: the Urban Crisis in the Modern World (June 2017)

Although the city is the foundation of democracy and citizenship, it is widely misunderstood as a geopolitical space. Yet, it is playing a growing role in shaping the 21st century whilst at the same time being beset by serious social and ecological crises. The Rise of Cities explores how cities coalesce, develop and thrive and how they remake themselves for better or worse. This sweeping analysis deals with fundamental issues such as cities’ parasitic relationship with Nature, webs of trade and immigration, and processes of food, water and waste disposal. Also analysed is the spatial structure of the metropolis, metropolitan governance, urban redevelopment policies, housing problems, grassroots activism, the fiscal log jam of cities and urban planning.

This book contains lengthy overviews on Canada’s three major cities by the well known authors Shawn Katz, Bill Freeman and Patrick J. Smith as well as a major introduction by the editor: political economist and veteran urban activist Dimitri Roussopoulos. This book will stand alongside other comparable major studies for many years to come.

Karl Polanyi in Dialogue: A Socialist Thinker for our Times (June 2017)

Although the contemporary Left fights its political battles with versatility on various fronts, it appears to be in worldwide retreat whilst an aggressive new ‘Alt-Right’ is taking to the internet and the streets. Amidst this vertiginous tension, Michael Brie argues for an urgent theoretical and practical reorganisation of the Left. Developing the work of philosopher and social theorist Karl Polanyi, Brie advocates an alliance of socialist liberals and libertarian ‘commonists’ that unites contemporary campaigns for recognition, difference and human dignity with more traditional struggles for social welfare and economic democracy.

Brie powerfully reinterprets Polanyi’s thought for present times, developing concrete proposals for a Polanyian political response to present economic, political and ecological crises. Also included are contributions by feminist Nancy Fraser, political economist Kari Polanyi-Levitt and two articles by Polanyi translated into English for the first time.

Pioneers of Ecological Humanism: Mumford, Dubos and Bookchin (June 2017)

In our world of ecological catastrophe and social crisis, some roundly condemn modern civilisation as the source of our Promethean predicament. What can follow is a rejection of humanism, science and the City and a turn to either nostalgic primitivism or esoteric spirituality. But do we really need to flee the city for the woods in order to build a free society? 

In this triple intellectual biography, Brian Morris lucidly discusses three intellectual giants who made an enormous, though often overlooked, contribution to modern ecology: Lewis Mumford, René Dubos, and Murray Bookchin. Morris argues that they have forged a third way beyond both industrialism and anti-modernism: ecological humanism (also known as social ecology), a tradition that embraces both ecological realities and the ethical and cultural wealth of humanism. In examining their thought, Professor Morris paves the way for fresh debate on ecology, charting an optimistic vision for the profound reharmonisation of nature and culture as well as the ecological, egalitarian and democratic transformation of our cities and society.

The prophetic Friendly Fascism is being reprinted for a Trump era

After years of the creeping ascent of far Right parties making inroads in Europe, the world is reeling with the ascent of Donald Trump onto the US political scene and his shock victory in the November presidential election. Such a descent into the darkness of fascism was in many ways predicted by Bertram Gross in 'Friendly Fascism' (Black Rose Books, 1980), his provocative and original critique of the signs of a growing yet subtle totalitarianism in the USA.

The author shows how the chronic problems faced by the U.S. in the late twentieth century require increasing collusions between Big Business and Big Government in order to 'manage' society in the interests of the rich and powerful. This “friendly fascism”, Gross argues, will probably lack the dictatorships, public spectacles and overt brutality of the classic varieties of Germany, Italy and Japan, but has at its root the same denial of individual freedoms and democratic rights. No one who cares about the future of democracy can afford to ignore the frightening possibilities of Friendly Fascism. Due to a surge of renewed popular demand, Black Rose Books is putting 'Friendly Fascism' back into print to guide us through ever darker times.

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