Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) became associated with the triumph of liberal democracy at the end of the twentieth century. But was Fukuyama really a triumphalist? David explores what Fukuyama had to say about the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy and asks whether his analysis still holds true today. What have we learned about the modern state from its history? And can it, and we, really change now?

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241960240.html

Going Deeper:

• Paul Hirst for the LRB on ‘Endism’
• Fukuyama at the 2020 Munich Security Conference
• Fukuyama on the 2016 presidential election
• Louis Menand, ‘Francis Fukuyama Postpones the End of History,’ The New Yorker.
• Talking Politics with Fukuyama 

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Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) challenges two dominant ways of thinking about politics: liberalism, which wants to protect us from the power of the state, and Marxism, which wants to liberate us through the power of the state. What if neither is good enough to emancipate women? Mackinnon explains why patriarchal power permeates all forms of modern politics. David

discusses what she thinks we can do about it.

Recommended version to purchase: 

• Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a feminist theory of the state (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
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Going Deeper:

• Lorna Finlayson in the LRB on Catharine MacKinnon, feminism, and the law
• Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sexual harassment of working women: a case of sex discrimination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).
• Drucilla Cornell, ‘Sexual difference, the feminine, and equivalency: a critique of MacKinnon’s Toward a feminist theory of the state’, Yale Law Journal, vol. 100, no. 7, article 12.
• The NYTimes on Catharine MacKinnon and sexual harassment
• Catharine Mackinnon for The Atlantic on #MeToo

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Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who both experienced and analysed the impact of colonial violence. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961) he developed an account of politics that sought to channel violent resistance to colonialism as a force for change. It is a deliberately shocking book. David explores what Fanon’s argument says about the possibility of moving beyond the power of the modern state.

Free online version of the text:

• http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/573/57385/the-wretched-of-the-earth/9780141186542.html

Going Deeper:

• Megan Vaughan for the LRB on Fanon and psychiatry in North Africa
• Frantz Fanon, Toward the African revolution: political essays
• Frantz Fanon, Black skin, white masks (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008).
• (Video) Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers [film] (1966)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Preface’, in Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2001)
• Alice Cherki, Frantz Fanon: a portrait, Nadia Benabid, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

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Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958) is a remarkably prophetic book. At its heart is an analysis of the relationship between labour, work and action, set against a time of rapid technological change. Arendt worried about the power of computers, believed in the capacity of people to reinvent themselves through politics and despaired of the influence of Thomas Hobbes. Was she right?

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo29137972.html

Going Deeper:

• James Miller in the LRB on Hannah Arendt
• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
• Hannah Arendt, Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
• In Our Time on Hannah Arendt
• Matthew Beard for the Guardian, ‘With Robots, is a life without work one we’d want to live?’ 

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Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) was written during the Second World War but Hayek was really worried about what would come next. He feared that wartime planning would spill over into the peacetime economy and destroy hard won freedoms. David explores where Hayek’s fears came from and asks why he worried that democracy would only make the problem worse. He also considers what makes Hayek such a politically influential and divisive figure to this day.

Free online version of the text:

• https://archive.org/details/TheRoadToSerfdom/page/n7/mode/2up

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-road-to-serfdom/f-a-hayek/9780415253895

Going Deeper: 

• Geoffrey Hawthorn on Hayek and his overcoat for the LRB 
• F.A. Hayek, ‘Individualism: True and False’ 
• Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The iron cage of liberty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)
• Stephen Metcalf in The Guardian, ‘Neoliberalism: The Idea that Swallowed the World’ 
• Hayek vs. Keynes
• Matt Ridley, The rational optimist: how prosperity evolves (London: Fourth Estate 2011)

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Max Weber’s The Profession and Vocation of Politics (1919) was a lecture that became one of the defining texts of twentieth century political thought. In it, Weber explores the perils and paradoxes of leadership in a modern state. Is it possible to do bad in order to do good? Can violence ever be virtuous? Does political responsibility send politicians mad? David discusses the legacy of Weber’s ideas and asks: who is the true Weberian politician?

Free online version of the text:

•  http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/politicsasavocation.pdf

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weber-Political-Writings-Cambridge-History/dp/0521397197

Going Deeper:

• Geoffrey Hawthorn on Max Weber for the LRB
• Joachim Radkau, Max Weber (Polity, 2009)
• Talking Politics on ‘Politics as a Vocation’ with Jonathan Powell
• Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting democracy: political ideas in twentieth century Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013)
• David for the LRB on Weber, Tony Blair, and the politics of good intentions

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Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) was a defining text of the movement for Indian independence from British colonial rule. It also articulated a radical new idea of politics in a modern context – peaceful protest or non-violent resistance. David explores the wider legacy of Gandhi’s ideas and asks what Gandhi’s withering attack on ‘machine’ politics means for the politics we have today.

Free online version of the text:

• https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf 

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/gandhi-hind-swaraj-and-other-writings-2nd-edition?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• Stephen Haggard on Gandhi for the LRB
• M.K. Gandhi, An autobiography: or the story with my experiments of truth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001).
• Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1915-1948
• Talking Politics with Ramachandra Guha on Gandhi’s politics
• Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
• Martin Luther King, ‘My Trip to the Land of Gandhi’
• E.M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’

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The Communist Manifesto (1848) remains the most famous revolutionary text of all. But what was the problem with politics that only a revolution could solve?  And why were the working class the only people who could solve it? David explores what Marx and Engels really had to say about capitalism, crisis and class and he asks what still resonates from that message today.

Free online version of the text:

• http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61/pg61-images.html 

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/marx-later-political-writings?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• Karl Marx, ‘The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German ideology
• Jonathan Wolff, Why read Marx today? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
• Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx: greatness and illusion (London: Allen Lane, 2016)
• In Our Time on Marx

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Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835/40) can claim to be the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written about America. David discusses what Tocqueville was expecting when he went to see American democracy for himself and what he actually found. Tocqueville was amazed and impressed by the American way of doing politics, but his fears about how its democracy might go wrong remain as prescient as ever.

Free online version of the text:

•  Volume 1 and Volume 2

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Democracy-America-Essays-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447601

Going Deeper:

• In Our Time on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
• Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr, Tocqueville: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Annette Gordon Reed, ‘America’s Original Sin: Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy’
• Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: prophet of democracy in the age of revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
• Talking Politics American History series on the 15th and 19th amendment

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Benjamin Constant’s ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to the Liberty of the Moderns’ (1819) examines what it means to be free in the modern world. Are we at liberty to follow our hearts? Do we have an obligation to take an interest in politics? What happens if we don’t? David explores the lessons Constant drew from the failures of the French Revolution and his timeless message about the perils of political indifference.

Free online version of the text:

• https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/constant-the-liberty-of-ancients-compared-with-that-of-moderns-1819

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/constant-political-writings?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• Benjamin Constant, Adolphe 
• William Doyle, The French Revolution: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• In Our Time on Germaine de Stael
• Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’

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Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the most remarkable books in the history of ideas. A classic of early feminism, it uses what’s wrong with the relationship between men and women to illustrate what’s gone wrong with politics. It’s a story of lust and power, education and revolution. David explores how Wollstonecraft’s radical challenge to the basic ideas of modern politics continues to resonate today.

Free online version of the text:

•  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/wollstonecraft-vindication-rights-men-and-vindication-rights-woman-and-hints?format=PB 

Going Deeper:

• In Our Time on Mary Wollstonecraft 
• Wollstonecraft in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Sylvana Tomaselli, Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)
• Virginia Woolf on Mary Wollstonecraft
• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

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Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) reimagined how we could do politics. It redefined many of the ideas that continue to shape modern politics: representation, sovereignty, the state. But in Leviathan these ideas have a strange and puzzling power. David explores what Hobbes was trying to achieve and how a vision of politics that came out of the English civil war, can still illuminate the world we live in.

Free online version of the text:

•  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/hobbes-leviathan-revised-student-edition?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• David Runciman, ‘The sovereign’ in The Oxford handbook of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
• Richard Tuck, Hobbes a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
• (Video) Quentin Skinner, ‘What is the state? The question that will not go away’
• (Video) Sophie Smith, ‘The nature of politics’, the 2017 Quentin Skinner lecture. 
• Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• David for The Guardian on Hobbes and the coronavirus

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A short trailer to introduce a new series of talks by David Runciman. In a series of twelve podcasts, he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, from revolution to lock down. Plus he talks about the crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – that generated these new ways of political thinking. From the team that brought you Talking Politics: a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today.

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