Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Stocks, Jails, Welfare

In this short but powerful book of interlinked essays, noted cultural critic Vijay Prashad examines the contradictions of the American economy.
Prashad assesses a range of related issues: the oft-vaunted US economy, propped up by the rising debt of poor and middle-class workers; welfare policies that punish those attempting to escape the grip of debt and poverty; and a prison industry that regulates and houses the unemployed, as well as a reserve army of laborers.
In Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses, Prashad argues that the advent of mass production and advertising has converted citizens into consumers whose desires are captured by the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses."
Yet, as Prashad so persuasively demonstrates, keeping up with the Joneses is a trap: Americans have gone into massive consumer debt, with the poorest forty percent of the public borrowing money to compensate for stagnant incomes, not to spend on luxuries. Only the richest twenty percent borrow money to invest in stocks. Not surprisingly, in the last few years, income and wealth differentials have risen to record highs. By making crystal-clear connections between the economy, welfare reform and the profit-driven prison industrial complex, Prashad offers a vision for a sustainable and vital anti-imperialist movement.
Vijay Prashad is Associate Professor and Director of International Studies, Trinity College. He is the author of several books including Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, Fat Cats and Running Dogs and The Karma of Brown Folk. Each was included in the Village Voice’s "25 Best Books of the Year" list.

Business & Money

Vijay Prashad

Economics

South End Press

Vijay Prashad's Communist Manifesto (Marginalia)

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Marginalia Books

Namaste Sharon

Literature & Fiction

leftword

Across the Third World, people grew up reading inexpensive, beautifully-produced books from the Soviet Union - children's books, classics of world literature, books on science and mathematics, and works of Marxist theory. The first half of The East Was Read is an homage to the lost world Soviet books. Wang Chaohua and Pankaj Mishra recall with fondness the meaning of these books for their very different lives in China and in India respectively. Deepa Bhasthi goes on an emotional journey into the library of her grandfather, a communist intellectual. Rossen Djagalov writes a short history of Progress Publishers. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o talks about how he wrote Petals of Blood in Yalta on the sidelines of the Afro-Asian Writers' Association in 1973. Sumayya Kassamali writes about Faiz in Beirut, giving us a sense of the cultural worlds that drew in both the Soviet Union and the Third World Project. The second half of the book pivots from the page to the stage. Maria Berrios brings an artist's eye to the cultural world of socialist Cuba. Sudhanva Deshpande identifies a momentum in socialist cinema, from the early Soviet period to the early Cuban period. Revati Laul reminds us that watching a Soviet ballet or reading a Soviet book can have an impact in other times and other histories. The East Was Read is a treasure trove of sparkling essays on the impacts of socialist culture in various parts of the Third World. This is a must-have book for bibliophiles, cinephiles, for lovers of reading, watching, listening.

The East Was Read

Brown world history (Korean Edition)

Roots and Leaves

Uncle Swami

History

Americas

Harpercollins

The Poorer Nations

Left Word Publisher

Over the past twenty years, the Indian political climate has shifted decidedly to the Right - with the BJP and the Congress dragging India into a growth trajectory that squanders the hopes of working people. The old consensus on Indian socialism is threadbare, and socialist parties in disarray. The future of Indian communism is rooted in the popular hopes for a better tomorrow and in the popular discontent with the bitter present. No Free Left is a critical examination of the past of Indian Communism and an assessment of its future. Most literature on Indian communism feels claustrophobic. It assumes that the communist movement lives on a detached landscape - its programme and political judgments are adjudged against a divine standard. A history of communism cannot be written, Gramsci said, without writing a 'general history of a country'. Vijay Prashad does exactly that. No Free Left stays alive to the details of the present while drawing out the long term dynamic, combining a rich historical survey with acute political analysis of the present. It is a compelling work for students of Indian politics. For activists of the Left, it is indispensable reading. Above all, it is a live work, an invitation to debate and discussion.

No Free Left

Contemporary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vijay Prashad. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Vijay Prashad