In
Adam D. Morton’s and my latest co-authored essay in Socialist
Register 2024 we deliver a contribution to understanding contemporary
geopolitics without shying away from placing our concerns within an analysis of
capitalism. Spotlighting
contributions across the social sciences we demonstrate a common tendency to
avoid any reference to capitalism as a totality. Instead, mainstream approaches
commonly strive for an emphasis on a multiplicity of contingent social factors
shaping geopolitics that results in mystifying economic development. We therefore
argue that there is a common allergy to capitalist totality as well as
historical materialism that grips the international theory of (1) the
science-envy of structural realism; (2) constructivist ideas-centred accounts
of geopolitical change based on contingency; and (3) approaches that focus on
the discursive production and indeterminacy of geopolitics.
Friday 26 April 2024
Sunday 21 April 2024
Vulture Capitalism: Going beyond Keynesianism and Neo-liberalism!
Tired about reading more post- or neo-Keynesian literature on how the
state may be able to step in and solve neo-liberal capitalism’s crisis
tendencies? Then Grace Blakeley’s latest book on Vulture
Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 2024) is the volume to turn to.
Engagingly written around
a host of stories such as the history of Fordlandia, a factory town in the
Amazon rainforest intended to secure rubber for car manufacturing, or the
scandals around Boeing and its faulty 737 Max causing hundreds of deaths in two
aeroplane crashes, this book provides illuminating insights about what is wrong
with capitalism and how we can get beyond it.
Tuesday 19 March 2024
Atonement for the Holocaust through support of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: Germany quo vadis?
The Holocaust has weighed heavily on Germany
and the German population. Taught widely across almost all years in school,
there is a clear sense that Germany today must take responsibility for its past
and act accordingly to redeem itself. Nevertheless, while the German government
and many of my fellow German citizens believe that this implies unquestioning
support for the state of Israel, I will argue in this post that the main focus
has to be on opposing Genocide wherever it occurs.
Monday 11 March 2024
The New Age of Catastrophe: Reviewing Alex Callinicos’ latest book.
With The New Age of Catastrophe
(Polity Press, 2023) Alex Callinicos has published another impressive book of
great historical and thematic breadth and depth. In this blog post, I will
briefly review this volume, outline its merits but also identify a couple of
especially conceptual shortcomings.
Wednesday 14 February 2024
Kai Wiedenhöfer, 3. März 1966 - 9. Januar 2024!
Fotografie war Kais Leben. Es begann damit, dass er die Portraits aller Schülerinnen
und Schüler für die Abschlusszeitung unseres Abiturjahrganges 1986 am
Ludwig-Uhland Gymnasium in Kirchheim unter Teck aufnahm. Ab da gab es kein Zurück
mehr.
Wednesday 6 December 2023
Contesting Musk: Swedish Tesla strike becomes a global conflict
What began as a local strike by 130 mechanics for a
collective labour agreement (CLA) in the Swedish Tesla service workshops is
escalating into a global conflict, argues Roland Erne in this guest post.
According to the Swedish arbitrator for labour disputes, Tesla boss Elon Musk
forbade his local managers to make any concessions to the trade unions, even
though CLAs have been a central component in Swedish labour relations for
decades. Clearly, Elon Musk feels infinitely powerful and thinks he can bring
even Europe's strongest labour unions to their knees.
Monday 4 December 2023
Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century through the Prism of Value: a review of the book by Carchedi and Roberts.
Guglielmo
Carchedi and Michael Roberts are seasoned commentators on the changing fortunes
of capitalism. In their latest, joint book Capitalism in the
Twenty-first Century through the Prism of Value (Pluto Press,
2023), they bring these insights together and assess them through Marx’s theory
of value and here especially the tendency of the falling rate of profit. In
this blog post, I will discuss their main contributions as well as provide some
critical reflections.
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