nav-icons nav-icons
Progress in Political Economy (PPE) Progress in Political Economy (PPE)
LOGIN REGISTER
LOGIN
REGISTER
linklink
  • Home
  • About
  • Manchester University Press Book Series
  • Past & Present Reading Group
  • A Political Economy of Australian Capitalism
  • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • JAPE Issues
    • JAPE Submission Guidelines
    • JAPE Young Scholar Award
  • Australian IPE Network (AIPEN)
  • Forums
    • Forums
    • Debating Anatomies of Revolution
    • Debating Debtfare States
    • Debating Economic Ideas in Political Time
    • Debating Making Global Society
    • Debating Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India
    • Debating Social Movements in Latin America
    • Debating The Making of Modern Finance
    • Debating War and Social Change in Modern Europe
    • Feminist Global “Secureconomy”
    • Gendered Circuits of Labour and Violence in Global Crises
    • Scandalous Economics
    • The Military Roots of Neoliberal Governance
    • Politicising artistic pedagogies
  • Literary Geographies of Political Economy
  • PPExchanges
  • Pedagogy
    • IPEEL Of The Environmental Crisis
    • Five Minute Honours Theses
    • Piketty Forum
    • Radical Economics Pedagogy
    • Unconventional Wisdom
    • Journal Club
    • Marxism Reading Group
  • Wheelwright Lecture
  • Events
  • Contributors
  • Links
    • Political Economy At Sydney
    • PHD in Political Economy
    • Master of Political Economy
    • Centre for Future Work
    • Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
    • Climate Justice Research Centre (UTS)
Novel Reading in 2022
Previous
Why sanctions may backfire
Next

Machiavelli. Morgenthau. Weber. Marx. Foucault by Zubeda Mir

by Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton on December 27, 2022

Machiavelli. Morgenthau. Weber. Marx. Foucault by Zubeda Mir

Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton | December 27, 2022

Tags: literary geographies
literary geographies
| 1 404

Back in 2011, with a view to engaging students through different teaching methods, we launched a poetry competition on the core MA module “Theories and Concepts in International Relations” at the University of Nottingham. After all, Roland Bleiker has himself emphasised the role of the poetic image in challenging dominant modes of thinking and practice within International Relations. With that aim in mind, the winning poem was by Zubeda Mir that sits admirably alongside the social criticism of Benjamin Zephaniah!

Machiavelli. Morgenthau. Weber. Marx. Foucault.

So many others but I really don’t care though

Tell me how to change the system; this is what I need to know

Tell me why illegal wars and occupations continue to grow

I don’t let concepts define and constrain me

But I want to live the words of respected revolutionaries

Now don’t get it twisted I’m not saying I’m on par to be in this category

But teach me the words of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Marcus Garvey

So many more but you feel what my words are trying to say

If we don’t act now we won’t have tomorrows, we’ll only have yesterdays

I don’t have time for narrow theories and philosophy

Teach me the present and how to change this reality

Tell me why capitalism as a system is failing those in poverty

Hell, we have the world in the palms of our hands, yet half the world is hungry

Whilst the empire feeds itself abundantly, raping its colonies

Don’t tell me how states are acting because of national security

It’s an imperial mindset that’s clear to see within American hegemony

That’s why innocents are locked up and thrown into Guantanamo Bay

9/11 constantly occurring in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan everyday

Seems like powers that be are creating modern day holocausts, whichever way

Same people will shut you down like a wikileaks site, but my thoughts are here to stay

But thoughts are provoked when questions are asked

Deciphering the answers makes an addict reach for his flask

War propaganda doesn’t make bombing a country an easy task

Yet Neanderthals line up and shoot their way to the top of the class

When will we wake up and realise that the war is happening on our streets

This is way beyond the war on terror, it not selective of race, religion, gender caste or creed

The rich elitist, ethnocentric men controlling structures are killing humanity

It’s selective in its nature that’s why those who will suffer are you and me

Those at the bottom, barely surviving are being made to bleed

And that’s why the cycle of famine, backed by the IMF, chains Africa to poverty

That’s why a divide is created and the people are oppressed mentally

You see if you contain the people then you contain the problem, allegedly

Hold up, its international relations I’m talking about, let me bring it back

Sit down, belt up I’m going on the attack

My man Machiavelli will tell you if it’s in the state’s interest, you’ve got valid causes

That’s why we are seeing the colonisation of Africa ‘cos they want the natural resources

Realist thinking will tell you that states are inherently aggressive

And will continue to do what they please if it’s in their national interest

Now that doesn’t really sit right with me

You can see how that is implemented within American hegemony

At this rate you could wage countless wars against a global enemy

But what do you do when the face of evil is just an ideology

And what about the evil that resides in the white house and palaces and kingdoms

Don’t switch though the people are regaining their mental freedom

Can you hear the rumble as the tremors grow

2011 being the year when the people rose

Imperialists sitting in ivory walls overawed

Revolutionaries unleashed as dictators are overthrown

Mothers burying children, fathers burying families chasing the dream of freedom

A term which only makes sense when the soul is sleeping

See capitalism has us chained into a never-ending system

But if you’re white and some private school boy your life is breezin’

But if you’re poor and brown your life will be spent chasing

The money that will be enough to just get you through to the next day

Where one hand feeds you and the other lines the pocket of the rich but that’s okay

Cos this system was developed overtime to keep the rich man fat

Whilst those at the bottom fail to climb up, it’s destroying society and that’s a fact

So whilst you so called theorists and philosophers, sit back and relax

With a glass of champagne in one hand and in the other a hypocrisy axe

And whilst you laugh with the same people that you angrily criticise

I will laugh at you because you have failed to realise

You didn’t change the system but you became a part of it, open your eyes

You have churned out robotic apolitical individuals who have failed to materialise

The same institution which practices hierarchy doesn’t let its people rise

So yes, let’s learn about liberalism, realism, constructivism and other concepts

And let’s fail to challenge and speak out for those who the system squeezes to death.

Zubeda Mir

Share this post

  • Tweet
  • Share Post:

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.

Related Posts

 

Political Economy Through Speculative Fiction: The Case of New York 2140

The experimental world of speculative fiction is like a history of political economy. It explores topics like dystopias, post-scarcity, automation, and AI. But it doesn’t stop th...

 

Nature and genocide – ecofascism in world literature

How does Australian author David Ireland’s last novel, The World Repair Video Game read as a literary exploration of ecofascism and, perhaps, the most powerful we have in Austral...

 

Marxist Viewing of Dune: Part Two

The latest movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune, Dune: Part Two directed by Denis Villeneuve, has set truly intergalactic box office records, and been globally ...

 

Class War: A Literary History

My new book Class War is a literary history, but it is committed to literature as something more than a record of past events. With a textual archive comprising letters, slogans, ...

Comments

  • Frank Stilwell | Dec 27 2222

    It’s a ripper!

    0

Leave a Response Cancel reply


Join our mailing list

© Progress in Political Economy (PPE)

Privacy | Designed by Nucleo | Terms and Conditions

  • Home
  • About
  • Manchester University Press Book Series
  • Past & Present Reading Group
  • A Political Economy of Australian Capitalism
  • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • JAPE Issues
    • JAPE Submission Guidelines
    • JAPE Young Scholar Award
  • Australian IPE Network (AIPEN)
  • Forums
    • Forums
    • Debating Anatomies of Revolution
    • Debating Debtfare States
    • Debating Economic Ideas in Political Time
    • Debating Making Global Society
    • Debating Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India
    • Debating Social Movements in Latin America
    • Debating The Making of Modern Finance
    • Debating War and Social Change in Modern Europe
    • Feminist Global “Secureconomy”
    • Gendered Circuits of Labour and Violence in Global Crises
    • Scandalous Economics
    • The Military Roots of Neoliberal Governance
    • Politicising artistic pedagogies
  • Literary Geographies of Political Economy
  • PPExchanges
  • Pedagogy
    • IPEEL Of The Environmental Crisis
    • Five Minute Honours Theses
    • Piketty Forum
    • Radical Economics Pedagogy
    • Unconventional Wisdom
    • Journal Club
    • Marxism Reading Group
  • Wheelwright Lecture
  • Events
  • Contributors
  • Links
    • Political Economy At Sydney
    • PHD in Political Economy
    • Master of Political Economy
    • Centre for Future Work
    • Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
    • Climate Justice Research Centre (UTS)