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In his penetrating analysis of the structure of power and the human condition, Jeff Vail unravels the functioning of our world and proposes a core concept of patterns of power-relationships. This historical critique of hierarchy sweeps from anthropology and psychology to economics and politics, ultimately presenting a model for a sustainable, human-compatible future.

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really?

The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests? This documentary series describes the ways public relations and politicians have utilized Freud's theories during the last 100 years for the "engineering of consent".

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, Gandhi - in 16 in-depth lectures, Professor Dennis Dalton puts the key theories of power formulated by several of history's greatest minds within your reach.

Dr. Dalton traces two distinct schools of political theory, idealism and realism, from their roots in ancient India and Greece through history and, ultimately, to their impact on the 20th century—via the lives and ideas of two charismatic, yet utterly disparate, leaders: Adolph Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi.

Thought Police. Big Brother. Orwellian. These words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, 1984. The story of one man's nightmare odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory, 1984 is a prophetic, haunting tale.

The Road to Serfdom is a book written by the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek between 1940–1943, in which he "warned of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning," and in which he argues that the abandonment of individualism, liberalism, and freedom inevitably leads to socialist or fascist oppression and tyranny and the serfdom of the individual.

Escape from Freedom examined the plight of man in the post existentialist world; it saw man as cut off from the homely security of the medieval paradise, driven by loneliness and fear to seek solutions to his predicament in the shelter of political tyrannies. Fromm's was a subtle exploration of the negative aspect of freedom, a situation in which he saw modern man as alleviating his unbearable powerlessness and isolation only by morbid activity.

In 1936 George Orwell went to Spain to report on the Civil War and instead joined the fight against the Fascists. This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s experience.

This volume represents some of Rothbard's most advanced and radical theorizing on topics impacting on human liberty. The book's title comes from the lead essay, which argues that egalitarian theory always results in politics of statist control because it is founded on revolt against the ontological structure of reality itself. It is an attempt to replace what exists with a Romantic image of an idealized primitive state of nature, an ideal which cannot and should not be achieved. The implications of this point are worked out on topics such as market economics, child rights, environmentalism, feminism, foreign policy, redistribution - and a host of other issues that are driving public debate today.

The Rebel (French title: L'Homme révolté) is a 1951 book-length essay by Albert Camus, which treats both the metaphysical and the historical development of rebellion and revolution in societies, especially Western Europe. Camus relates writers and artists as diverse as Epicurus and Lucretius, the Marquis de Sade, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and André Breton in an integrated, historical portrait of man in revolt.

Originally published in 1964, One-Dimensional Man quickly became one of the most important texts in the ensuing decade of radical political change. One-Dimensional Man offers the reader a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the Soviet model of communism, documenting the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in both these societies as well as the decline of revolutionary potential in the West.

He argued that "advanced industrial society" created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought. This results in a "one-dimensional" universe of thought and behaviour in which aptitude and ability for critical thought and oppositional behaviour wither away.

Finally, back in print again, the essential handbook for all of us still alienated by modern capitalism. Together with Debord, Vaneigem was the main theorist of situationist ideas. He has the added benefit of being eminently more readable! An incredible work, more potent now than ever.

A new edition of Zerzan's first collection of essays, exploring alienation, and the resistance it has engendered. Elements of Refusal is regarded by many as the bible of anarcho-primativism, a spiritual call to dismantle domination and return to wilderness. In these technocratic, totalitarian times, Zerzan's profound critique of industrialism, capitalism, work and the machine itself is utterly life-changing and urgent.

Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been "privatized," or taken over by a private money cartel. Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions - including the private Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices - and robbing you of the value of your money. Web of Debt unravels the deception and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading.

A new anthology edited by the anarchist philosopher John Zerzan, Against Civilization: Readings and Reflectionn, is composed of excerpts from the works of a wide range of authors who've offered radical critiques of industrial society. Against Civilization is not all poetic rage; the various contributions include reasoned analyses of the inherent contradictions of industrial capitalism, celebrations of vernacular culture, and inspiring visions of worlds beyond systematic domination and exploitation.

In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition.

The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history.