The purpose of this blog is to provide analytical commentary on formal and informal labour organisations and their attempts to resist ever more brutal forms of exploitation in today’s neo-liberal, global capitalism.

Thursday 30 August 2012

Samir Amin, Global Capitalism and the impossibility of developmental catch-up – Part II.

Is developmental catch-up within the global capitalist system possible? ‘The current success of emerging countries in terms of accelerated growth within globalized capitalism and with capitalist means reinforces the illusion that catching-up is possible’ (Amin 2011: 12). In this post, I will critically engage with (neo-) liberal promises of catch-up by looking more closely at Samir Amin’s book The Law of Worldwide Value (2010).

Friday 17 August 2012

The precariat – a new class agent for transformation?


In this blog post, I provide a critical engagement with Guy Standing’s powerful book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). While it provides important insights into the conditions of the increasingly large informal sector of the economy, I will argue that several conceptual as well as empirical problems ultimately undermine the analytical significance of the book.


Monday 13 August 2012

Samir Amin, free trade in agriculture and the impossibility of developmental catch-up.


Free trade in agriculture has increasingly become a focus for discussions about a potential path of development for countries in the Global South as well as a solution to the problem of how to feed the ever expanding global population. Drawing on the contribution by Samir Amin to the workshop ‘Trade unions, free trade and the problem of transnational solidarity’, held at Nottingham University on 2 and 3 December 2011, I will critically engage with this argument.  

Friday 3 August 2012

The global economic crisis and the challenges for trade unions in the UK!


The financial market crisis has led to global economic recession. While many banks were bailed out by governments at high costs, it is now working people and society more generally, who are made to pay for the crisis. In this post, I will assess the challenges for British trade unions in their attempts to resist welfare state cuts and austerity.