The Geopolitics of Global Capitalism and Ukraine

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.

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.