Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis: special review forum.

Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis. Published by Adam D. Morton and myself in 2018, this book analyses how these conditions can be understood in terms of their internal relationship so as to capture capital’s connection to the states-system of uneven and combined development, social reproduction, and the contradictions facing humanity within world-ecology. In this blog post, I draw attention to a recently published Forum on this book by the journal International Relations with a range of exciting, critical interventions.

 

The failure of Robin Hood Energy and the missing labour-centred perspective

The attempt to address energy poverty through a municipal, not-for-profit public company was as ambitious as it was path-breaking. And yet the failure of Robin Hood Energy, owned by Nottingham Council, in September 2020 has ultimately undermined all those, who work towards the re-municipalisation of utilities such as water, energy, the railways and postal services. In this blog post, I will reflect on a presentation by Steve Battlemuch about the failure of Robin Hood Energy to the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) in November 2020. While key reasons for the failure had already been known, this presentation revealed an additional, astonishing factor: a missing labour-centred perspective by the labour movement itself.

 

Call for Papers - Trade unions and Free Trade in the post-pandemic environment: moving towards trade justice?

Free trade has been criticised for some time as being an obstacle to independent development of countries in the Global South supporting working people’s real needs. The assumed benefits of free trade for people in the Global North too have come increasingly under scrutiny. Does COVID-19, which has demonstrated the fragility of the global free trade regime, open up new space for labour movements in their struggles for an alternative regime organised around principles of trade justice?

 

Labour Conflicts in the Global South

Against the background of the global economic crisis since 2007/2008 and increasing inequality across the world, we have experienced widespread, large-scale industrial action throughout the Global South, including in countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa, which had been hailed as the new growth engines of the global political economy as part of the so-called BRICS. In this blog post, I will introduce a new special issue of the journal Globalizations, dedicated to unravelling the underlying dynamics of these moments of contestation.

An education system gone astray

On 5 January, the government cancelled all GCSE and A-level exams in England for the summer 2021, following similar decisions by the devolved governments of Wales and Scotland. The announcement was greeted with an outcry by many pupils and their parents. The cancellations were called a ‘big disappointment’ by some, apparently potentially preventing students to reach their full potential and endangering their future career prospects (BBC, 5 January 2021). Why is it that many pupils and their parents are so unhappy about the cancellation of an enormously intensive set of exams? 

 

Beyond “Koyaanisqatsi”: Reimagining Civilization

There is an emerging view in the present crisis, illustrated in recently burgeoning commentary across the globe, expressing a realization that our present form of world order and civilization has brought humanity and “nature” into a great crisis, and that we must act radically to transform the foundations. In this guest post, Barry Gills argues that the combination, or “triple crisis,” of the three Cs – Climate, Capitalism, and COVID-19 – has brought forward a momentum to address the fundamental causes of this crisis.

 

Re-arranging the deckchairs of capitalist control: The departure of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain.

By Sunday, 15 November 2020 it was clear, Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, two of Prime Minister Johnson’s key advisers were to leave the government (The Guardian, 15 November 2020). Commentators were quick to paint the Prime Minister as someone who was asserting his authority and started speculating about potential policy changes. Looking at the charade from outside the Westminster bubble, however, it becomes clear that this has little to do with policy, and is more about trying to steady a ship, which has gone completely out of control.