Arguments for a new left Answering the free market right

Drawing an alternative view of knowledge from the practice of social movements (from the 1968 student revolt, through militant shop stewards’ organisations and the women’s movement, to the peace and green activism of the 1980s) as well as from new philosophical currents, Wainwright counters Hayek’s individualism and denial of the legitimacy of collective action, with a conception of knowledge as fundamentally social. On this foundation she establishes a new understanding of transformative political agency as self-consciously experimental and involving a combination of representative and participatory forms of democracy.

Preface The arguments: a new left and the democratisation of knowledge

1. An eastern challenge to the western left
   1. Encounters in the new Europe
2. At the heart of the challenge
   1. Frederick Hayek and the social-engineering state
   2. Transformation from below
   3. The theory and politics of knowledge
3. Knew kinds of knowledge for new forms of democracy
   1. From social movement to self-management: a case study from the women’s movement
   2. From grass-roots organising to new economic networks
   3. From extra-parliamentary opposition to parties of a new kind
4. Why movements matter in the new Europe
   1. Ending the Cold War
   2. Conclusions: transforming governability