Value Wars
The Global Market Versus the Life Economy  
by Prof. John McMurtry

Published by Pluto Press September 2002

The slogan 'Marxism is dead' was proclaimed almost immediately after the fall of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Very soon after, a strange ideological inversion occurred. In place of the 'inevitable victory of the proletariat' espoused by Marx, there was the 'inevitable process of globalisation," a line now adopted by corporations, politicians and the media the world over. John McMurtry unravels the moral contradictions inherent in this "new world order", and argues that it cannot succeed because it is based on essentially inhuman values. Connecting across a broad spectrum of issues including the iraq and deregulation of public institutions, and the principles of technology, neo-classical and Marxian economics, McMurtry's compelling study lays bare the battle lines of an emerging global ethical war.

Tracking social uprisings across continents from the rural landless and women's movements of the South to the workers, students and civil alliances marching in the North, the author's original "life-ground ethics" explains the unseen bonds uniting people across cultural and class divisions. Defining the clear choices available to us, and taking apart the official line of "no alternative",  John McMurtry offers a devastating philosophical critique of the global market paradigm and a principled economic manifesto.

John McMurtry is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His articles in philosophy, economics and politics have been published across the world, and his analyses of transnational trade and investment treaties are internationally known. His recent books are The Cancer Stage of Capitalism(Pluto Press, 1999) and Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System (Garamond Press, 1998).

Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy
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277 pp, 26 September 2002
ISBN: 0 7453 1889 4                       Price: £15.99 Paperback
ISBN: 0 7453 1890 8                       Price: £50.00 Hardback
Trim Size: 215 x 135mm