Can Global Capitalism Endure? A review of William Robinson’s latest book.

For some time, William I. Robinson has been one of the most adept observers of, and commentators on, global structural change. In his latest book Can Global Capitalism Endure? (Clarity Press, 2022), he analyses the current crisis of overaccumulation as a result of the tendence of the falling rate of profit. Most dangerously, in capital’s ever more desperate search for profitable investment opportunities, global economic crisis is spilling over into geo-political confrontation. In this blog post, I will discuss some of the book’s key contributions.

The global financial crisis and service provision: The public sector in difficult times.

Public sector restructuring is generally justified with reference to the need to save money in view of large public debt resulting from the global financial crisis. In this post, I want to investigate this claim and unravel the real motivations behind current attacks on the public sector.

National Demo against Sussex University Privatisation - Serena Cheung

The Enduring Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg

The work of Rosa Luxemburg has received renewed attention in recent years. To celebrate the centenary anniversary of her seminal book The Accumulation of Capital in 2013, a collective of colleagues from within the Marxism Reading Group of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at Nottingham University has written the article ‘The Enduring Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital’, which has now been published online by the Journal of International Relations and Development. In this blog post, I will present some of the key findings of the article.

Chinese workers in the grip of global capitalism: What possibilities for resistance?

The workshop on Chinese Labour in the Global Economy, concluding a large ESRC research grant project, was held on 11 and 12 September 2014 at Nottingham University, co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Studies (CSSGJ) and the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Politics (CCCP). The purpose of the workshop was not only to understand better the situation in China, but also an aspiration of contributing to the improvement of workers’ conditions. Hence, both academics as well as activists had been invited. In this blog post, I will assess some of the key themes discussed during the workshop.

Analysing exploitation and resistance: the centrality of class struggle.

In my recent article ‘Transnational Labour Solidarity in (the) Crisis’, published in the Global LabourJournal and freely downloadable here, I assert three key claims: (1) the importance of a historical materialist approach to the analysis of exploitation and resistance; (2) the significance of understanding the structuring conditions of global capitalism; and (3) the centrality of class struggle defined broadly. In this post, I will provide an overview of the main claims. This article is my conceptual contribution to the Transnational Labour Project at the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo/Norway.

The perpetuum mobile of privatisation

Privatisation is a truly fantastic thing. Privatising public services would result in four benign consequences, we are told: (1) the production of services becomes more efficient and, therefore, cheaper; (2) the quality of the services is improved; (3) the cost of services for the consumer is reduced; and (4) companies providing these services can still make a profit. And this all as a result of private services being subject to the competitive pressures of the free market. Like a perpetuum mobile, a hypothetical machine which continues to function once activated, privatization would have an inevitable and continuing positive impact once implemented. In this post, I will critically evaluate these claims against the background of my research on the Italian water movement against privatisation (see Road to Victory and La lotta continua) and discuss why it is that this discourse continues to enjoy such widespread acceptance, although it is empirically so obviously wrong.