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Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is ...
The aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis still reverberate throughout the globe. Markets are down, unemployment is up, and nations from Greece to Ireland find their very infrastructure on the brink of collapse. There is also a crisis in the management of global affairs, with the institutions of global governance challenged as never before, accompanied by conflicts ranging from Syria, to Iran, to Mali. Domestically, the bases for democratic legitimacy, social sustainability, and environmental adaptability are also changing. In this unique volume from the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations and the Social Science Research Council, some of the world’s greatest minds—from Nobel ...
The debate about globalisation and its discontents
In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the wall of Wittenberg church. He argued that the Church’s internally consistent but absurd doctrines had pickled into a dogmatic structure of untruth. It was time for a Reformation. Half a millennium later, Steve Keen argues that economics needs its own Reformation. In Debunking Economics, he eviscerated an intellectual church – neoclassical economics – that systematically ignores its own empirical untruths and logical fallacies, and yet is still mysteriously worshipped by its scholarly high priests. In this book, he presents his Reformation: a New Economics, which tackles serious issues that today's economic priesthood ignores, such as money, energy and ecological sustainability. It gives us hope that we can save our economies from collapse and the planet from ecological catastrophe. Performing this task with his usual panache and wit, Steve Keen’s new book is unmissable to anyone who has noticed that the economics Emperor is naked and would like him to put on some clothes.
The text aims to provide succinct summaries of topical, wide-ranging issues and controversies, presenting a compact guide which should be of use to students and lecturers in IPE and international relations.
This edited volume offers the first critical engagement with one of the most provocative and controversial theories in political economy: the thesis that capital can be theorized as power and that capital is finance and only finance. The book also includes a detailed introduction to this novel thesis first put forward by Nitzan and Bichler in their Capital as Power. Although endorsing the capital as power argument to varying extents, contributors to this volume agree that a new understanding of capital that radically departs from Marxist and Neoclassical theories cannot be ignored. Offering the first application and appraisal of Nitzan and Bichler’s theory, chapters examine the thesis in t...
-- A call to transform Israel into a secular democracy by a leading writer --'This book is absolutely fundamental for those who reject the unfortunate confusion between Jews, Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel -- a confusion which is the basis for
Critical Architecture examines the relationship between critical practice in architecture and architectural criticism. Placing architecture in an interdisciplinary context, the book explores architectural criticism with reference to modes of criticism in other disciplines - specifically art criticism - and considers how critical practice in architecture operates through a number of different modes: buildings, drawings and texts. With forty essays by an international cast of leading architectural academics, this accessible single source text on the topical subject of architectural criticism is ideal for undergraduate as well as post graduate study.
How might an objective observer conceive of what humans have accomplished as a species over its brief history? Benjamin argues that history can be judged as one giant catastrophe. Liberals suggest that this is to sombre an assessment and that human history can be read as a story of greater and greater progress in human rights, prosperity and the decrease of arbitrary and extra-judicial violence. But is there a third reading of history, one that neither interprets human history as a giant catastrophe or endless progress? Could we not say that human development has been a tragedy? This book explores the idea of human development as a tragedy from the perspective of capitalist power. Although the argument of this book draws heavily on critical political economy, the analysis considers interdisciplinary literature in an effort to explore how major revolutions have transformed human social relations of power and created certain path dependencies that may ultimately lead to our downfall as a species. Intellectually sophisticated and readable, this book offers a provocative genealogy of capitalist power and the tragedy of human development.
Rethinking Global Political Economy contains incisive analysis of history, linguistics, class, culture, empirical data and normative concerns. This important volume presents innovative approaches to fundamental issues in global political economy. Together they provide multiple arguments and avenues for rethinking global political economy in a time of turmoil and system transformation. It will appeal to those interested in seeing new perspectives and healthy heterodoxy in the study of political economy.