Paul Cockshott
William Paul Cockshott (born 16 March 1952) is a British Marxist and computer scientist. His work focuses primarily on Marxist econophysics and economic computability. He is primarily known for co-authoring Towards a New Socialism (1993), in which he lays out the implementation of a democratic and efficient command economy using modern computational resources. He maintains a blog and in 2018 became active on a personal YouTube channel with short presentations on Marxist topics.
Biography
Paul Cockshott, along with his comrades C.K. Maisels, Tony McCulloch, Jenny Nussey, Neil McKeown, and Gwyn A. Williams. on 1 January 1974 established the Communist Organisation in the British Isles after having declared the British and Irish Communist Organisation revisionist. The claim of revisionism was due to what he perceived as the B&ICO’s degeneration into liberal constitutionalist politics. Specifically the B&ICO was accused of ding little to nothing to develop class consciousness in Ireland despite having done well in bringing many Irish into the party.[1] Cockshott While working on his PhD at Edinburgh during the 1980s Cockshott was recruited into the Communist Party of Great Britain along with his fellow computer science student Muffy Calder. He now gives talks at the Communsit University, affiliated with the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Politics and Thought
Works
Books
Paul Cockshott has authored or co-authored the following books:
- (2020) How the World Works, Monthly Review Press.
- (2015). Computation and its Limits, Oxford University Press.
- (2012). Classical Econophysics, Routledge.
- (2012). Arguments for Socialism, Lulu.
- (2011). Glasgow Pascal Compiler with vector extensions, Lulu.
- (2010). Transition to 21st Century Socialism in the European Union, Lulu.
- (2004). SIMD Programming Manual for Linux and Windows, Springer.
- (1993). Towards a New Socialism, Spokesman.
- (1990). A Compiler Writer's Toolbox: Interactive Compilers for PCs With Turbo Pascal, Ellis Horwood Ltd.
- (1990). Ps-Algol Implementations: Applications in Persistent Object Oriented Programming, Ellis Horwood Ltd.