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This paper invites a conversation between world-systems perspective and radical criminology to contribute to a more robust materialist, historical, and global understanding of policing, prisons, and carceral power. We trace the genealogy of these two approaches to the larger transformations of global capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s, including ruling class responses to capitalist crises vis a vis neoliberal restructuring as well as the social struggles waged by antisystemic movements. Both world-systems and radical criminology brought a critical and Marxist perspective to the liberal social sciences, yet dialogue between them has been lacking. On the one hand, worldsystems analysis offers a structural explanation of capitalism but often side steps the role that carceral power plays to manage the system's deepening contradictions. On the other hand, radical criminology focuses on carceral power but often limits its analysis to advanced core countries and not to the entire capitalist system. We argue that bringing these two critical approaches together can offer us a renewed Marxist perspective to the interrelated issues of capitalist crisis and carceral power and thus make possible new lines of inquiry and research best suited for grappling with the major contradictions of capitalism in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three primary ideas that effectively tie the history of conquest, colonialism, and imperialist domination to the global structure of capitalist reproduction. I argue that capitalist reproduction on a global scale requires ongoing original accumulation (conquest, slavery, and war) and a global racialized stratification of labor as the foundation of imperialist transfer that together result in economic crisis. These crises in the global economic structure become apparent in the imperialist world but require forms of domination perfected in the colonial world (fascist repression, intensified racism, super-exploitation etc) to recover and stabilize. The argument rests on the work of anti-Apartheid political theorist and revolutionary, Hosea Jaffe, who has demonstrated how the South African Apartheid economic structure is a microcosm of the global world-system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper invites a conversation between world-systems perspective and radical criminology to contribute to a more robust materialist, historical, and global understanding of policing, prisons, and carceral power. We trace the genealogy of these two approaches to the larger transformations of global capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s, including ruling class responses to capitalist crises vis a vis neoliberal restructuring as well as the social struggles waged by antisystemic movements. Both world-systems and radical criminology brought a critical and Marxist perspective to the liberal social sciences, yet dialogue between them has been lacking. On the one hand, world-systems analysis offers a structural explanation of capitalism but often side steps the role that carceral power plays to manage the system’s deepening contradictions. On the other hand, radical criminology focuses on carceral power but often limits its analysis to advanced core countries and not to the entire capitalist system. We argue that bringing these two critical approaches together can offer us a renewed Marxist perspective to the interrelated issues of capitalist crisis and carceral power and thus make possible new lines of inquiry and research best suited for grappling with the major contradictions of capitalism in the twenty-first century.

This paper analyses the right‐wing populist rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) in Turkey, focusing on the crisis of capitalism, emerging discontent in the rural populations, and opportunities for and obstacles to a successful left‐wing populist mobilisation. We put forward three arguments. First, through an examination of the historical evolution, class‐based and social‐demographic foundations of the ruling right‐wing populist alliance between the AKP and the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP), we argue that the MHP is a more classical case of far‐right populism, whereas the AKP is a "heterodox" case that borrows several elements from the left. These "heterodox" features of the AKP, together with the interlinked crisis of the 1990s, played a significant part in the support the AKP received from the subordinate majority. Second, we argue that the success of the AKP's hegemonic right‐wing populism from 2002 to 2013 was linked to an unusually favourable macro‐political‐economic climate that helped the AKP counterbalance its neoliberal policies with pragmatic social assistance programmes. However, together with the disappearance of this macro‐political‐economic climate in the second decade of its rule (2013‐present), the disastrous consequences of the AKP's neoliberal policies became more explicit, and the AKP's populism moved from a hegemonic to an authoritarian right‐wing populist type. Third, we claim that today, due to the deepening of the current economic crisis (further exacerbated by the Covid19 pandemic), the AKP's cross‐class alliance began to break down, and the rural movements in the Turkish countryside have been playing a major role in unmaking the AKP's hegemony. However, in the absence of a strong left‐wing populist movement with a stronghold in the Turkish countryside, emergent possibilities for a radical progressive transformation are not utilised. Instead, the groundwork is being laid for another wave of right‐wing populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, the succession of financial crisis, neoliberal reform processes, and emergence of anti-establishment and far-right political forces has become a familiar pattern across Europe. But in few countries has it been as striking as in Italy. After the 2018 national elections, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League joined forces to form a government characterised by its rejection of past neoliberalising reforms and by its defiant stance towards European Union fiscal rules. The League's victory in the latest European elections confirmed its ascendance and its centrality in the Italian political landscape. This article examines these developments in light of the recent trajectory of the Italian political economy and investigates whether the rise of these parties, and particularly the League, marked a break with the post-2011 neoliberalisation process. Analysis of the M5S-League government's action indicates that these forces can further neoliberalisation processes together with a mix of anti-migration and welfare chauvinist measures. Moreover, an investigation of the political-economic project of the League shows that far-right parties can advance 'nation-based' neoliberalisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The goal of this article is to explain long term restructurations and transformations of the media industry. In order to do so, the article uses theory elements of a critique of the political economy of the media. The paper is a contribution to the development of theoretical approaches that provide a theoretical analysis of the media in capitalism based on Karl Marx’s concepts. The capitalist mode of production is the primary driving force of media corporations‘ strategic action and of the media economy’s structural transformations. Factors that are of particular relevance in such structural transformations include profit orientation, capital accumulation, capitalist crises, state policies, behaviour of producers and consumers, private property, class relations, the antagonism between productive forces and relations of production, the antagonism of variable and constant capitalism, the antagonism of use-value and exchange-value, and competition. Competition, capital’s need to survive, and capitalism’s immanent crisis potentials force corporations try to create innovations such as new digital technologies. Informatisation, which includes the use of the computer as universal machine and the Internet, is the provisionally latest stage in the development of the productive forces that has affected media technologies and the media industry. The capital-driven structural digital transformation of the media industry has resulted in the convergence of production, distribution and consumption, the creation of a variety of non-tangible digital products, digital rationalisation and automation, and the universal real subsumption of labour under capital. These developments have also created the potential potentials for overcoming the capitalist character of the media economy and advancing decommodification based on the emergence of a universal digital media system.

The conception of financialization and the impacts of the oil market will be presented in this work from an alternative perspective. Financialization will not be analyzed as a dominance of finance over industry, as if these two sides of the productive process were dissociated. Financialization will be understood as a moment of expansion of a mechanism of domination, reaching not only the state-form and enterprise, but also the own constitution of the social being as an "individual capitalist," being part of the process of constitution of form-value. Oil, from production to the market, cannot be seen only in a reduced view of its high incomes. Oil must be understood as a social relationship. Oil from the 1980s onwards became one of the central elements of support for the US dollar, therefore, of support for the international monetary system. In addition to this new social role of sustaining the international currency that oil now has, this commodity also incorporates a determined form of social relation through its imposition as an energy source. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to show how both financialization and recent developments in the oil market are part of the actual constellation of the forms of capitalist social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do we make sense of the ways in which COVID-19 has developed and been responded to in the United States? How can nondeterminist class analysis help us to understand why the pandemic has impacted the United States so severely compared to other nations? What do these policies and experiences reveal about current capitalist economic and social relations within the United States today? Are there possibilities for interventions through a nonessentialist Marxist analysis and understanding? On a beautiful June afternoon, Rethinking Marxism coeditor Vin Lyon-Callo discussed these questions via zoom with his former professor, long-term RM board member, and host of the quite popular public intervention Economic Update, Richard Wolff (lightly edited for content and clarity). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global police state refers to three interrelated developments. First are the ever more omnipresent systems of mass social control, repression, and warfare promoted by the ruling groups to contain the real and the potential rebellion of the global working class and surplus humanity. Second is how the global economy is itself based more and more on the development and deployment of these systems of warfare, social control, and repression simply as a means of making profit and continuing to accumulate capital in the face of stagnation – what I term militarized accumulation, or accumulation by repression – and that now goes well beyond military Keynesianism. And third is the increasing move towards political systems that can be characterized as 21st century fascism, or even in a broader sense, as totalitarian. Digitalization makes possible the creation of a global police state. The mounting crisis appears to cement the emerging digital economy with the global police state. There is a triangulation of far-right, authoritarian, and neo-fascist forces in civil society, reactionary political power in the state, and transnational corporate capital, especially speculative finance capital, the military–industrial–security complex, and the extractive industries – all three interwoven with high-tech or digital capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalation of worldwide inequalities reflects a crisis of global capitalism that is as much structural, one of over-accumulation, as it is political, one of hegemony. This article explores the current restructuring of global capitalism and global labor. Capitalist globalization has undermined earlier redistributive arrangements at the level of the nation-state, unleashing unprecedented global social polarization and also aggravating over-accumulation pressures. The transnational capitalist class has turned to several mechanisms to sustain accumulation in the face of stagnation: financial speculation, the pillaging of public finance, and militarized accumulation. Digitalization is driving new world capitalist restructuring that is resulting in increased precariatization and the expansion of surplus labor or surplus humanity. This precariatization includes cognitive workers who are atomized and isolated as the labor process has become individualized, which poses new challenges for working-class consciousness and solidarity among multilayered members of the global working class. The crisis poses a danger of twenty-first century fascism and a global police state but also new possibilities for emancipatory projects. An emancipatory project must bring together surplus humanity and its struggles in the margins and at points of social reproduction with workers inserted into the circuits of global capital under precarious work arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses dimensiones of the relation of bourgeois democracy and political aconomy, having as prime reference of teh analysis the question of greek debt explained in the year 2015. Emphasizes that the problem of the debt is not limited to the experience of Greece and of other Southern Europeam Countries, by contrast, is much more comprehensive ando f other Southern European countries, by contrast, is much more comprehensive and is in the nature of capitalist production, especially in crisis phase. Concludes that the Greek case shows that bourgeois democracy, increasingly, it is reduced to a ritual substantially pointless. Front of the population of Greece, crushed between adherence to the demands of representative institutions of the continent’s capital block and respect for “delegation” given by the electorate, the Greek government is solving the conflitc bowing to blackmail and endorsing at this time, the regime of “suspension” democratic sovereignty.

In this article, I seek to explore the political and epistemological implications of European Union developmental funds in settings of policymaking in Greece. Building on fieldwork with specialized technocrats in Athens and with political personnel in Evros, I initially posit that the discourse on European funds has functioned as a recurrent argument for the justification of a coherent liberal idealist paradigm starting in the 1980s. Notwithstanding the ideological usage of European funds, I suggest that its increasing relevance in the practices and worldview of these social agents also pertains to a broader relocation of political and analytical focus onto the ethical conduct and qualitative features of dominated classes. Most evidently, the recent manifestation of the capitalist crisis in Greece reactualized the precept of moral and cultural introspection as well as its interrelation with the discourse of past benefaction. In this sense, the recent crisis also made evident the pertinence of Michel Foucault's "hermeneutics of the self" to understand the delineation of class hegemony in capitalism. I argue that the discourse of European funds has been conducive to the consolidation of the "hermeneutics of the self" as an overarching political imperative in Greek society over the last decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires on the causes, the evolution and the perspectives of the economic crisis since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, until the actuality, i.e. the debt crisis of the southern countries of European Union. By means of Marxian theoretical tools the article explains the reasons which this crisis can be considered as a typical capitalistic crisis, once that the overproduction and the relative fall of the profit rate are common factors in the prevalent part of the world. In this way we drastically exclude the interpretation of some researchers sustaining its financial nature assigning the responsibility to the behavior of a few number of capitals (rating agencies). Giving an interpretation of current evolution of the crisis by means of the intra-capitalistic battle, we show how the capital linked to the dollar, overthrew the main consequences of the crisis - originated in the U.S. in the ‘70s, in the twentieth century - on the EU countries.

This paper makes a study about the budgetary execution of the State of Maranhão, the costs of health an d education and spending with public debt service. In this direction, shows the trajectory of recent public and external indebtedness of this state and the increasing commitment of social spending in favor of payment of servicing that debt, whi le public services were transformed into objects of capital appreciation with its progressive commodification. Complementarily reflect on the trajectory of the Federal Government's spending in relation to the service of the Brazilian public debt. In the closing remarks discusses the private enrichment and social impoverishment, therefore, the worsening of social problems.

Southern Africa is probably the most unevenly developed region on earth, combining the most modern technologies and an advanced working class with the world's extremes of inequality and social militancy. The two most extreme countries, both with settler-colonial populations and accumulation processes that created durable class/race/gender distortions and extreme environmental degradation, are South Africa and Zimbabwe-both of which Neil Smith visited in 1995. His contribution to our understanding of political economy, before and after, was exemplary. We consider in this article how Smith's theory assisted in the understanding of crisis-ridden financial markets within the framework of capital overaccumulation and intensified spatial unevenness; the politics of scale, difference and community; and the ways that class apartheid and durable racism in the two countries together fit within contemporary geopolitical economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this essay is to deconstruct, from an openly Marxist and politically engaged perspective, the false progressive image that many on the left ascribe to the European Union. I argue that the EU has been from the very beginning and continued to be a project of the capitalist elites in Western Europe, as reflected by its the entire institutional architecture. Moreover, contrary to a widely-held perception, the EU has not been acting as a bastion of the "European social model" against the neoliberal counter-reform but has in fact led that counter-reform in Europe. Indeed, even the seemingly progressive aspects of the EU are mere concessions that either serve capitalist interests too or are simply ineffective. I conclude by showing why the EU cannot be realistically reformed and why the left needs to urgently oppose it in the current context of the crisis of capitalism and the growing popular disillusionment with this system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apresentamos discussão sobre a complexa relação entre a educação como política pública e a vinculação do Serviço Social a ela, em especial, sua integração à escola pública, neste momento de crise do capital. Trata-se de um debate relevante e crescente que atrai muita atenção por seu aprofundamento recente e pela ampliação de vagas na área.We introduce the debate on the complex relationship between education as a public policy and the Social Service link to it, in particular, its integration into the public school at the current moment of crisis of the capital. It is an important and growing debate which attracts a lot of attention for its recent deepening and expansion of jobs in the area.

This text deals the relationship between the occurrence of the capitalist crisis, the predicament in the reproduction of private property and state intervention as an agent countercyclical deficit and public debt amplification. In other words, we analyze the occurrence of the capitalist crisis of 1929 and the Depression of the 30s, the introduction of Keynesian policy and military spending, which led to capitalist recovery and defined bases of so-called "thirly glorious years" of the postwar period. Then we highlight the return of the crisis in the mid 70s, the introduction of neoliberalism to the occurrence of the global capitalist crisis of 2008 and the return of state intervention in saving large companies and banks. Finally, we affirm that state intervention to try to overcome this crisis ends by amplify it furlher, besides expand the debt, deteriorating more and more the Iiving conditions of the working class. For this reason we defend, neither capitalist restoration or public debt. For an anti-capitalist resort.

This paper intends to analyze the external debt of Maranhão, since 1972, its conversion into public debt, making a connection between the crisis of overproduction in the early '70s and the expansion of a private international monetary system, called Euromarket of currencies, which had in the military regimes in Latin America a fertile field for their actions.

This article engages in the ongoing anthropological discussion on the concept of ‘moral economy’ and opts for its multileveled use. It affirms the concept’s suitability for grasping class-specific sets of moral values and considerations on the economy, as well as universalized moral frameworks through which the economy is commonly addressed by both dominated and dominant classes. In dealing with such universalized moral economies, it is suggested that our analysis should critically address the symbolic construction of the economy as an essentially moral process. The value of such a focus lies in analyzing and historicizing the recurrence of epistemologies that deny the centrality of structural oppositions in capitalism and, rather, place emphasis on moral categories, such as fairness, intentionality, and obligation. This multileveled understanding and use of the concept of moral economy can help us to further comprehend the delineation of neoliberalism in European space and the moral reformulation of the political economy of capitalism-in-crisis. The article is based on ethnographic material addressing the course of action taken by Greek technocrats specialized in the policies and cohesion funds of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is as dubious for Marx's critics to claim that Marxism and socialism are dead as it is for Marxists to claim that Marxism and socialism are historically inevitable. Three developments in world capitalism, however, considerably enhance Marxism's standing as a theory of contemporary affairs: capitalism's world ascendancy, as personified in the world market; the waning ideological dominance of neoliberalism; and the retrenchment of one of capitalism's oldest and most effective answers to socialism, the welfare state. When world capitalism and neoliberalism advance and when the shield of the welfare state recedes, capitalism and its contradictions become more transparent. In the past, greater transparency was necessary for greater resistance, which is one reason why Marxism and socialism have an annoying tendency (for Marx's critics) to defy efforts to keep them down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A chorus of activists and intellectuals claim that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation has either ceased to exist or become politically irrelevant for Mexico and the world. In this paper I put forward the rather different thesis that despite the enormity of their task, the Zapatista project continues apace and merits careful consideration. To this end, I first argue that much of the confusion regarding the ‘death’ of the Zapatistas arises from a change in Zapatista strategy in response to the decomposition of Mexican society resulting from the contemporary global crisis of capitalism. Next, I detail how, having foreseen this decomposition, the Zapatistas set out to both theorize the nature of contemporary capitalism and reconceptualize anticapitalist politics accordingly. Since the early 2000s this reconceptualization has led to a shift in Zapatista strategy that, although not easily intelligible to contemporary media or much academic discourse, centers on the construction of ‘other geographies’. Finally, I argue that judging from the events of the past few years, this strategy has allowed the Zapatistas not only to persevere but also to pose a concrete alternative to the dominant strains of left political and spatial strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the 1944 work "The Great Transformation" by Karl Polanyi, focusing on his theory of 'fictitious commodities.' Topics include Polanyi's argument that capitalism turns land, labor and money into a commodity; connections between Polanyi's work and economic circumstances in the 21st century; and ecological, social and financial crises in the 21st century.

The global financial and economic crisis has prompted some scholars to suggest that a fundamental regulatory shift away from neoliberalism will take place – both in general and in the field of EU competition regulation. This paper shows that so far no radical break with the neoliberal type of competition regulation is heaving into sight. It sets out to explain this from the vantage point of a critical political economy perspective, which identifies the circumstances under which a crisis can result in a regulatory paradigm shift. Contrasting the current situation with the shift in EC/EU competition regulation after the crisis in the 1970s, the paper argues that the preconditions for a fundamental shift in this issue area are not present this time around. Several reasons account for this: the current crisis has been construed by economic and political elites as a crisis within and not of neoliberal capitalism; the social power configuration underpinning the neoliberal order remains unaltered; no clear counter-project has surfaced; the European Commission has been (and remains) in a position to oppose radical changes; and finally, there are no signs of a wider paradigm shift in the EU's regulatory architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a research developed nationally on the implementation 01 SUAS (Unique System 01 Social Assistance) in Brazil. It considers the importance 01 the investigation process in the capacity-building 01 researchers and aims to contribute with the debate in the lield 01 social protection by presenting Social Assistance as a public policy and as a right 01 the population. It also presents problematizations on the central categories 01 the National Policy 01 Social Assistance - PNAS/2004, pointing out the need lar understanding its conllicting character and the challenge 01 overcoming a conservative perspective disseminated in the area. It introduces the debate on the trends 01 social protection in the context 01 a new capitalist crisis. Finally, it indicates the need to strengthen the rellection on the so-called process 01 "asistencialization" 01 social policies and argues that it is necessary to pro mote the debate affirming the importance 01 Social Securily in the lield 01 social protection.

This essay explores not the imaginative fictions that represent or respond to the financial economy but the fictions produced by financialisation, the historical ideologies that have underwritten a newly financialised economy in the post-1973 epoch. It connects recent popular discourses about the future to transformations in the economy, arguing that the adjacent ideologies of ‘the end of history’ and ‘investment in the future’ emerge, respectively, out of the ‘new economy’ of immaterial labour and the deferred temporality of financial speculation. It further suggests that certain of these ideological fictions also haunt explicitly critical accounts of the period. The fiction of end-of-history abundance appears as a historical fact in post-marxist theories of ‘immaterial labour’, while an almost messianic account of finance capital appears in post- structuralist theories of financialisation. The ideas of history that have come to dominance since the 1980s are not only deeply rooted in the economy but have also blocked our access to actual economic history. This essay thus concludes with a reading of Marx's term ‘fictitious capital’, locating in it a reminder about the necessity of critical historical materialism, even in an age of ostensibly ‘immaterial’ value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the round of collective bargaining that took place between the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW), Canada’s largest private-sector union, and the ‘Big Three’ auto manufacturers (Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors) during the most recent crisis of capitalism (sometimes popularly referred to as the ‘Great Recession’). During this round of bargaining, the union made concessions in order to secure production; the article argues what while this may have represented a short-term success, in the long run the union has implicitly bought into the logics of neoliberalism, which will have disastrous consequences for both the union and the larger labour movement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a keynote speech by Leo Panitch, research professor of political science in York University and research chair in Comparative Political Economy in Canada, delivered at the Society for Socialist Studies 2011 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, in which he discussed global capitalism and American imperialism.

The unraveling of the Washington Consensus in Latin America is part of a broader decline of US hegemony in the region and beyond. Four distinct approaches by Latin American analysts from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Cuba are introduced that examine different aspects of this decline. It is argued that any serious analysis of regional hegemony must include consideration of the interrelationship between economic and military factors; the emergent modalities of exercising hegemony such as free trade agreements; the power structure of the hegemonic state; and the broader context of the global political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The supremacy of fictitious capital together with the contraction of average growth rates and the global economic production system have plunged capitalism into severe crisis. The crisis is not simply a contradiction between real and speculative economies, as these are merely manifestations of the difficulties that confront productive expansion and the valuation of capital. At this point, timid state intervention and exchange rate regulation are insufficient policies to calm the profound crisis being experienced by Europe and the United States. While it may not spell the end of the capitalist system, it does mark depletion of its progressive phase and its capacity to sustain further development of the productive forces. This signifies a contradictory phase of structural stagnation as the planet’s natural resources and ecological systems become incorporated into a massive chain of exploitation, thus redefining the historical context in which the global working class must organize and struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This seminal article analyses the current structural crisis and instability in an ever more polarised world in relation to earlier systemic crises that were resolved through fascism or through Fordist-Keynesian ‘class compromise’ (the 1930s) and the emergence of capitalist globalisation (the 1970s). The authors identify three basic responses to the crisis: popular insurgency from below; reformist stabilisation from above; and, a twenty-first century neo-fascism. Looking specifically at the US, they analyse political and economic developments that demonstrate fascistic characteristics. While no simple replication of the past, the emergence of a Christian Right since the mid-1980s, the growth of certain currents within the Tea Party movement, the sharp increase in violent hate groups, the spread of a vicious anti-immigrant movement, the psychopathology of white decline, sharp militarisation and pervasive policing give some indications of the rise of fascist tendencies. But what is crucial today is the sophistication of such a project, made possible by the ideological domination of media together with new surveillance and social control technologies that allow it to rely more on selective than generalised repression. In calling for a co-ordinated fightback, both in the US and beyond, the authors see the only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism as a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity, along the lines of a twenty-first century democratic socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Marxism's insistence on the inherently contradictory nature of capitalism remains an enduring strength compared with orthodox accounts, which are unable to explain recurrent crises. However, no less inherent to capitalism is the transformation of slumps into booms, and Marx saw crises as momentary and forcible solutions to capitalism's contradictions. Despite this, extensive Marxist controversies have concentrated on how capitalism enters rather than how it recovers from crises. This paper examines prevailing theories in terms of their capacity to explain both sides of capitalism's cyclicity, considering their theoretical consistency and offering some provisional empirical examinations. None of the major existing interpretations appears entirely satisfactory. While the evidence is far from conclusive, this essay tentatively suggests a synthetic interpretation based around disproportionality and changing value compositions of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to scholarship on health and environment by focusing on connections between human health and political economy of seafood. The contemporary rise of aquaculture is an effort on the part of the seafood industry to escape the contradictions of capital that create crisis in capture fisheries. Yet intensive aquaculture may also create human health problems that contribute to new crises. Aquaculture practices not only increase production of healthful fish, but also lead to fish burdened with chemical pollutants about which there are a variety of health concerns. These health concerns pose problems for producers who may not be able to sell contaminated seafood. By examining the intertwined biochemical and social processes that produce multiple natures (fish bodies, human bodies and the aquatic environment), the paper shows that concerns about health are not only an outcome of political economic processes, but are also an explanatory factor in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like most capitalist crises, today's challenges economists, journalists, and politicians to explain and to overcome it. The post-1930s struggles between neoclassical and Keynesian economics are rejoined. We show that both proved inadequate to preventing crises and served rather to enable and justify (as “solutions” for crises) what were merely oscillations between two forms of capitalism differentiated according to greater or lesser state economic interventions. Our Marxian economic analysis here proceeds differently. We demonstrate how concrete aspects of U.S. economic history (especially real wage, productivity, and personal indebtedness trends) culminated in this deep and enduring crisis. We offer both a class-based critique of and an alternative to neoclassical and Keynesian analyses, including an alternative solution to capitalist crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of what makes the current conjuncture so extraordinary is the coincidence of the massive economic meltdown with the implosion of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, and the reappearance of US liberal internationalism in the guise of “smart power” defined in terms of Diplomacy, Development, and Defence. This essay engages these challenges through a framework that distinguishes between “Development” as a post-war international project that emerged in the context of decolonization and the Cold War, and capitalist development as a dynamic and highly uneven process of creation and destruction. Closely attentive to what Gramsci calls “the relations of force at various levels”, my task in this essay is to suggest how the instabilities and constant redefinitions of official discourses and practices of Development since the 1940s shed light on the conditions in which we now find ourselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue marks a transition in the life of Rethinking Marxism. David F. Ruccio steps down as the editor of the journal, and S. Charusheela steps in as editor, along with associate editors Joseph Childers, Yahya M. Madra, and Maliha Safri. Here, we reflect on the legacies and futures of the journal at this transitional moment. The transition in the journal takes place at a time of crisis in the global economy. Thus, unlike the moment of the journal's founding, we look ahead to a future in which there is much more space for Marxian discourses. We view this space as a crossroads that requires investigation into the types of approaches, themes, and issues that call for urgent response. The past two decades of the journal have given us a legacy of transdisciplinary Marxian conversations on multiple fronts and genres with a commitment to noneconomistic and nondeterministic accounts of the world. Building on this legacy, the essay provides an exploration of the current context and discusses the types of themes and issues—ranging from the raced and gendered nature of labor practices, to nationalism, to social movements for change—that we see as calling for discussion. Particularly, we highlight the dangers of lapsing back into determinist forms of Marxism in narrating the current crises and call for symposia, special issues, art, Remarx, reviews, and other submissions that take up the task of elaborating a nondeterminist and nuanced approach to the current crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that the events of 1968 were an historic turning point of the order of 1905 in Russia. The latter was a dress rehearsal for the revolution in 1917 and the question is the extent to which the lessons of 1968 are crucial for the next upsurge. It discusses the causes of the events of 1968 and later noting that they constituted an historic break in the stability of the bourgeois world order. In particular, it refers to the end of Keynesianism, the decline in the role of the Cold War and of imperialism. It stresses the importance of the overthrow of the state itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to the debate on the short- to medium-term political implications of the 2001 Argentine crisis (see issues 10.4, pp. 5–38 and 14.1. pp. 155–248 of this journal). The bulk of the argument deals with the criticism of the notion of 'reinvention of politics'. The article presents the theoretical premises and empirical data which sustain this proposal. It is argued that in order to appreciate the political innovation brought about by the events of December 2001, it is important first to consider the political, social and economic forms of capitalist transformations and crises that shaped them. Secondly, to locate this event in historical perspective, as a constitutive node within a non-teleological continuum of resistance. Thirdly, to view capitalist crises as presenting open opportunities for the reinvention of the forms of resistance, and to underscore that reinvention occurs as a result of simultaneous struggles against capital and for self-affirmation and recognition. By using examples of organisational innovation and social intervention by the piquetero movement it is suggested that December 2001 led to new practices or facilitated the development of existing forms of collective action that have often been overlooked by those disappointed by the ensuing political developments. The article also discusses the problem of periodisation, addressing the relationship between Marxism and the use of data produced by non-Marxist researchers, and calls into question the adequacy of Cartesian rationality for understanding December 2001 and the meaning of political change in Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imperialism is a useful analytical tool that must be further developed to comprehend the present day contradictions of a multi-polar, capitalist system and its implications for Latin American social struggles. A critical look at the contributions of Wallerstein and Arrighi are taken as a point of departure for suggesting how imperialism in the context of its sharpening contradictions can help inform oppositional forces to think in terms of social transformation. A critical look at provisions within the general framework of regional and bilateral free trade agreements reveals their tactical relationship to recent attempts to maintain and further consolidate U.S. hegemony. The "total market utopia" of imperialist projects such as the FTAA can be usefully understood when conceptualised against the backdrop of neoliberal and imperialist crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]