Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism: Review of William I. Robinson’s latest book.

In his latest book Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism (CUP, 2025), William I. Robinson provides a masterful analysis of the current crisis engulfing global capitalism. Robinson is clearly one of the best contemporary Marxist thinkers when it comes to investigating the current dynamics tearing capitalism apart. In this blog post, I will highlight some of his major contributions while also point to some of the blind spots in his analysis.

 

EU Court Upholds Minimum Wage Directive in Victory for Social Europe

‘The Court of Justice of the European Union has delivered a landmark verdict on the EU Minimum Wage Directive that I would characterise as “Social Europe 2, Liberal Europe 1”.’ In this guest post, Roland Erne argues that this ruling represents another example of an unintended yet politically motivated “spillover” of policymaking powers to the EU level—one that ironically stems from employers’ own strategic miscalculations during the financial crisis.

The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads: Review of Kevin B. Anderson’s latest book.

In his recent book The Late Marx’s Revo-lutionary Roads (Verso, 2025), Kevin B. Anderson reveals Marx as a flexible, inquisitive thinker, who is constantly striving to analyse new avenues of revolutionary possi-bilities, unafraid to revise earlier held, firm believes. He thus builds on his previous work Marx at the Margins, in which he had established Marx’s rejection of a unilinear understanding of historical development. In this blog post, I will highlight some of the key contributions of Anderson’s latest volume.

 

On the storm to come: Right-wing extremism moving centre-stage in British politics.

‘We Want Our Country Back’ – On Saturday, 6 September, the third Saturday in a row, English nationalists draped in union jack and St George flags protested noisily outside the Best Western Hotel in Long Eaton, where many asylum seekers have been housed. Shouts of ‘Stop the Boats’ were combined with anti-trans, anti-Palestine and anti-left slogans, intermixed with direct personal attacks on migrant supporting counter-protesters, taking up position on the other side of the road in front of the hotel itself. In this blog post, I will discuss why these developments mark a dangerous turn in British politics.

 

Politicising Commodification: book review of Erne et al

In their major monograph Politicising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Roland Erne, Sabina Stan, Darragh Golden, Imre Szabó and Vincenzo Maccarrone provide a masterful study of the main policy drive underpinning the European political economy since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In this blog post, I will outline the main theoretical and empirical contributions as well as provide some critical reflections.

 

Confronting the Far Right – Contesting the Reform Party!

In recent local elections on 1 May, the Reform Party of Nigel Farage made huge electoral gains winning hundreds of council seats and overall control of 10 councils. It also won the mayoralty in Greater Lincolnshire as well as an additional MP in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election (BBC, 2 May 2025). In response, the Labour Party government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer published an immigration white paper, toughening conditions on migration. In his ‘island of strangers’ speech (Gov.uk, 12 May 2025), Starmer near-echoed the Rivers of Blood speech by Enoch Powell of 1968 (Guardian, 13 May 2025). The travel of direction is clear. To regain voters, the Labour Party tries to outdo Reform on their anti-migration territory. The country as a whole is shifted to the right as a result.

Nevertheless, how should we confront the rise of the Reform Party from a progressive position?

Facilitating genocide – the UK’s role in the Middle East

In December 2024, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK parliament invited contributions to an enquiry about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this guest post, Andreas Wittel publishes his response to that enquiry, highlighting the UK’s deep complicity in the ongoing genocide by Israel of the Palestinian people.