دانلود کتاب Ideology and Change: The Transformation of the Caribbean Left

Although the Caribbean Left has made significant contributions to political development in its region, until now little attempt has been made to chronicle and analyze its activities. Ideology and Change provides the first comprehensive record and analysis of the experience of these political movements, organizations, and trends in the English-speaking Caribbean.Perry Mars views the Left as a dynamic force that has made indelible contributions toward advancing democracy since the 1940s, and he here examines the contributions of its organizations at both theoretical and practical levels. He identifies their role in Caribbean political culture and processes, the problems they face, and the strategies they employ toward political change within a hazardous political and social environment.Mars argues, however, that the entire Leftist movement in the Caribbean has been seriously circumscribed by both the nature of its political environment and the class character of its leadership, and that much of the failure of the Left can be attributed to inertia imposed by capitalism and the limitations of the middle classes that invariably lead leftist movements. He shows how the Caribbean Left began gradually shifting to the right even before the breakdown of communism in Europe and the self-destruction of Grenada's New Jewel Movement in 1983, and has now become almost unrecognizably transformed. His analysis of Leftist trends is cast within a global political-economic framework utilizing Gramscian concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemonic struggle.Because their impact has been out of proportion to their membership and constituencies, these movements are an especially important subject ofstudy. By examining how political radicalization takes place in an aggressively conservative milieu and addressing the implications of these findings for change on the part of weaker groups, Ideology and Change can help both scholars and activists better understand past successes and failures and prospects for future contributions to the region's development