Book Launch: Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis

Global Capitalism. Global War. Global Crisis. How can these conditions 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?

This book assesses the forces of social struggle shaping the past and present of the global political economy from the perspective of historical materialism. Based on the philosophy of internal relations, the character of capital is understood in such a way that the ties between the relations of production, state-civil society, and conditions of class struggle can be realised. Conceiving the internal relationship of Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis as a struggle-driven process is a major contribution of the book providing a novel intervention on debates within theories of ‘the international’. Through a set of conceptual reflections, on agency and structure and the role of discourses embedded in the economy, class struggle is established as our point of departure. This involves analysing historical and contemporary themes on the expansion of capitalism through uneven and combined development (Global Capitalism), the role of the state and geopolitics (Global War), and conditions of exploitation and resistance (Global Crisis). The conceptual reflections and thematic considerations raised earlier in the book are then extended in a series of empirical interventions. These include a focus on the ‘rising powers’ of the BRICS (Global Capitalism), conditions of the ‘new imperialism’ (Global War), and the financial crisis since the 2007-8 Great Recession (Global Crisis). As a result of honing in on the internal relations of Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis the final major contribution of the book is to deliver a radically open-ended dialectical consideration of ruptures of resistance within the global political economy.

Venue: Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham

Date: Wednesday 20 June, 7:00 – 8:30

Author: Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton

Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton are joint authors of Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Andreas Bieler is Professor of Political Economy and Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Globalisation and Enlargement of the European Union: Austrian and Swedish Social Forces in the Struggle over Membership (Routledge, 2000) and The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade Unions and EMU in Times of Global Restructuring (Manchester University Press, 2006) as well as co-editor (with Bruno Ciccaglione, Ingemar Lindberg and John Hilary) of Free Trade and Transnational Labour (Routledge, 2015) and (with Chun-Yi Lee) of Chinese Labour in the Global Economy (Routledge, 2017). Adam David Morton is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (Pluto Press, 2007) and Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), which was awarded the 2012 Book Prize of the British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group (IPEG). He is the founding editor of the blog Progress in Political Economy (PPE) that is a central forum for political economy debates and was awarded the 2017 International Studies Association (ISA) Online Media Caucus Award for the Best Blog (Group) and the 2018 International Studies Association (ISA) Online Media Caucus Award for Special Achievement in International Studies Online Media.

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Book Launch: Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis