During the past decade, it has become obvious that economic interconnectedness did not bring forth frictionless international relations as many liberal theorists had predicted. To the contrary, the fact that economic integration has been profoundly uneven has enabled the weaponisation of asymmetrical economic relations for the achievement of geopolitical and/or economic goals (Whyte 2022; Farrell 2023). The weaponisation of the unique international role of the US dollar is one of the most consequential examples of this trend. For instance, in the period since 2001, US sanctions designations have expanded by an extraordinary 933%. In the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, dollar hegemony made it possible to freeze Russia’s foreign reserves and expel the country from the SWIFT payments system and US correspondent banking.
capitalism
In the dying stages of innovation, companies at the top of the heap use their market power to maintain their high profits.
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Last year I published an edited volume called Clickbait Capitalism. The title came as a surprise, even to me. The book was meant to be called Libidinal Economies of Contemporary Capitalism. No one was interested in the volume until I changed the title. This surely tells us something about the publishing industry and how it likes to market the political-economic. A list of recently published books includes the following: Chokepoint Capitalism, Crack-up Capitalism, Cannibal Capitalism. Whatever next? One pundit on Twitter cut to the heart of the matter: “Why not ‘capitalist’ capitalism?” Anyway, I sent an email out to a few publishers: “I have a book manuscript called Clickbait Capitalism. Do you want to see it? Click here!” And just like that, they were interested. It was almost an accident. At the very least an experiment. There was no mention of clickbait whatsoever up until that point. Then suddenly it became the hook for the entire project.
Whoever keeps posting Karl Marx quotes on the breakroom bulliten board needs to stop.– Management Engage yourself with consequential reflections about labor and class struggle in the 21st century with these (not just thought but also action-provoking) five superb books: — Anderson, Elizabeth. 2023. Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers […]
Pieces of the web that make differing and complementary sense of the threat and promise of AI.
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Fred Wright was a cartoonist for the United Electrical Workers of America (UE), from 1949 until 1984. Wright’s cartoons reflected the daily routines experienced by the working men and women: layoffs, discrimination, income inequality, industrial accidents, union-busting, etc. These realities of the class structure of capitalism were the basis for his artistic and activist work. […]
by Aaron Major* I was first introduced to Richard Lachmann’s work as a graduate student and then had the privilege of calling him a colleague when I joined the faculty at the University at Albany in 2008. His sudden passing two years ago, on 19th September 2021, was a great personal loss to me and […]