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Written in the autumn of 1985, this paper argued that the political economy of Britain under Margaret Thatcher had up until then been discussed largely as a national phenomenon, and one that reflected the subordination of industry to financial interests. The paper proposed that the internationalisation of British capital was in fact a crucial part of the strategy to defeat labour and roll back the state, since Thatcherism welcomed inward investment as well as outward, and was supported by industry as well as finance. A left alternative had not only to challenge this strategy at national level, but also to be resolutely internationalist in its theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past two decades, the left has increasingly embraced European integration as a bulwark to globalisation. However, the view that the EU provides the potential for realising a progressive social and economic policy is problematic, since its approach is antithetical to traditional democratic-socialist objectives. Thus, the left either has to redouble its efforts to realise a fundamental reform of the EU's institutions and policy framework, or consider nationally-orientated alternatives which inevitably question the nature of the UK-EU relationship. This paper outlines a number of these policy options and evaluates their potential benefits and costs from within a political-economy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of risk as a common part of contemporary societal construction has been tied to an environment of proliferation, multiplication, specialism, counterfactual guess-work, and, above all, anxiety. Deliberations on the growth of anxiety and fear have concentrated largely upon the impact of globalisation and the advent of new technological regimes. However, as discussed here 'ambient fears' and anxieties can saturate the social spaces of everyday life. Hence, this paper examines a mundane and routine social activity—cinema-going—to demonstrate that fear, risk and anxiety are deeply embedded in the fabric of contemporary capitalist cities, shaping all manner of social practices. A central argument within this paper is that fear is inescapably caught up in the fabrication of social difference, with the strategies of risk avoidance that people practice in their everyday lives reinforcing boundaries between Self and Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the neglected issue in the 'globalisation' debate concerning the contraction and withdrawal of capital from the territories. The analysis is built upon consideration of the institutional architecture, state inter-relations and territoriality and nationality of capital. The paper concludes that historical evolution and contingency are critical to left analysis of the 'globalisation' of capital and may help to resist and contest regressive changes and lay the foundations of collaboration and alliance building for more progressive economic and social strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques Los work on the Asian Crisis (see Spring 1999 issue of Capital & Class) and offers a regulationist alternative. This suggests there was a certain structural coherence between the production and financial forms in the post-Plaza period and that this productive-financial configuration was prone to crises of overproduction-underconsumption, overborrowing, and exchange weaknesses. This vulnerability was exacerbated by specific conjunctural developments that disrupted the previous coherence. The resulting disarticulation has had differential effects on economies in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies three defining features of globalisation that have been habitually misrepresented by the anti-globalisation movement. First, that globalisation entails a universal shift towards economic liberalisatlon, rather than a selective liberalisation with particular disadvantage to the Third World. The movement also bewails the erosion of traditional economic functions in Northern governments, thus diminishing their agency in globalisation and largely absolving them of responsibility for it. Instead, the focus of protest should shift from international financial institutions (IFIS) to the state-IFI interface. Finally, the movement fails to engage with the ever-changing nature of capitalism's structural search for expanding profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is perhaps understandable that until the fall of the Soviet Union, the study of Marxism within the discipline of international relations was restricted largely to discussion of the state ideology Marxism-Leninism. The events of 1989, and the spectacular rise of the sub-discipline of international political economy in the context of globalisation, have, somewhat paradoxically, led to a resurgence of interest in critical, open forms of Marxism. Attempts to break away from the dogmatism of Marxism-Leninism whilst avoiding the complementary error of humanistic subjectivism have, of course, a long tradition in marxist thought.[1] Consistent with the 'open', critical tradition is the work produced by, amongst others, Luxemburg, Korsch, Bloch, Rubin, Pashukanis, Rosdolsky, the Italian tradition of 'autonomist' Marxism and the work of contributors to debates on value and the state held in the early years of the Conference of Socialist Economists.[2] This paper briefly outlines the contribution the 'CSE tradition' offers to the study of international relations and the fashionable analysis of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that two key issues need to be addressed in seeking to renew the socialist movement. First, the left must respond to globalization by breaking once and for all with nationalism. Secondly, we need to focus again on the critique of wage-labour broached in the 1970s, but neglected ever since. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the Bank for International Settlements, as a collective organic intellectual of finance capital, has sought to maintain the hegemony of financial globalization in the context of an increasingly fractured global order following the 2007–2009 financial crisis. I show how the Bank for International Settlements' defence of financial globalization has pivoted around the construction of a new 'economic imaginary' of global capitalism in which the global financial cycle, which culminates in systemic financial crises, threatens economic and political stability. Asserting that this cycle can be 'properly managed', the Bank for International Settlements has advocated a set of formal shifts in macro-policy frameworks. Focusing on the temporality of economic governance as envisioned by the Bank for International Settlements, I highlight two important dimensions of the organization's discourse: the reduction of policy to process and the fetishization of policy innovation. Here, the pursuit of principles of 'good' economic management is prioritized over the achievement of concrete economic or social outcomes. In traversing this economic imaginary, this article offers insights into how global capitalism and its management are envisioned by elites in the current period of hegemonic disorganization and political-economic turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ‘finance’ or the ‘financial system’ can be confusing. The assumption is that the financial system consists of related markets trading in a variety of financial instruments that are ultimately of a similar nature. In the late-19th century, however, financial assets have bifurcated into broadly two classes of property titles: incorporeal assets and intangible assets. This article argues that interrelations between the two classes of assets have generated pro-cyclical trends that are not dealt with by current regulation. It argues that these pro-cyclical trends can be even more confusing in the age of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper subjects grand theories to critical appreciation and argues that the state played a central role in transforming the Cypriot economy which is characterised as a small economy heavily dependent on export industries such as textiles and tourism. The relationship between the Cypriot economic miracle and globalisation is investigated in the light of the experience of the export-led textile industry suffering from the consequences of American destabilisation of the Libyan economy–historically Cyprus' major export market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews debates concerning financialization in South Korea, with a focus on ongoing arguments between liberal, post-Keynesian, institutionalist and Marxist economists. It argues that post-Keynesian and institutionalist perspectives in particular neglect important class processes through which the financial circuit operates within the Korean economy, especially the power of Korea’s large, family-led conglomerates, or chaebol. In order to build upon Marxist approaches to Korean finance, we argue that Nitzen and Bichler’s approach to the ‘capitalization’ of capitalist class power provides a useful heuristic for understanding the differential power of Korean chaebol and their integration into global capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current scenario in western countries is characterised by a crisis over the last thirty years of class conflict; by the mainly negative consequences of globalisation and of the transformations by production processes of the mobilising strength of work; by the cancellation of the relationship between labour and political representation; by the difficulties of traditional trade unionism; and by the emergence of the social movement unionism (SMU) paradigm. In this article, these phenomena are analysed from the point of view of the workers’ struggles against the closure of factories. The analysis concerns the mobilisation factors on which the struggle rests; the presence or absence, in the representations of workers, of references to class conflict; the major proximity of these mobilisations to the paradigm of traditional syndicalism or to the SMU paradigm; and the prevalence within them of the Marxist or the Polanyian root of conflict. This analysis is mainly based on an empirical study carried out in an engineering company in the province of Milan, Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Turkish economy has been crisis-prone since the establishment of the Republic in1923. The various policies that resulted from the series of crises following the 1929 world economic recession have not only shaped the country’s integration into the global economy, but have also determined the specificities adopted by the accumulation regimes. The impact of the current global crisis on Turkey, and the government’s reaction to it, need to be analysed in relationship to the existing accumulation regime shaped by the country’s history. Thus, while this article is concerned with Turkey’s reactions to the current global crisis, it contends that policies from 2008 onwards show a degree of continuity with the policies already in place to cope with the problems generated by the 1994 and 2001 crises experienced in the country. The internationalisation of the Turkish economy, the relationship between core and periphery within the country, and the shifting relations of production and labour relations have all informed the AKP’s response. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author examines the cosmopolitan social democracy (CSD) advocacy of political theorist, David Held. He notes the argument of Held that democracy is being undermined by globalisation and his advocacy for the establishment of a cosmopolitan democracy to allow social-democratic policies to be globally implemented. A discussion on major strengths and weaknesses of the CSD is provided. The author argues against Held's belief that CSD can reform the global capitalist order.

The internationalisation of Gulf capital throughout the economies of the Middle East has been a striking feature of regional capitalist development over the last two decades. This article traces the nature of Palestinian class formation in light of this trend (drawing empirically on 2006-2007 data), arguing that a full understanding of capitalism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip needs to integrate the internationalisation of Gulf capital with the exigencies of Israel’s occupation. The theoretical and political implications of this are discussed in light of the projection of both US and Israeli power in the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The regulation of medical work in the has been shaped by the post-war settlement, which lead to the creation of the National Health Service in 1948. The removal of clinical care from the market was supported over the following decades by prohibitions of the sale of human organs and gametes. That settlement is now being dismantled, with the increasing privatisation of NHS facilities. The recommodification of medicine in Britain is achieved as part of broader patterns of neoliberal globalisation. Crossborder markets in health services are realized in law through international (e.g. the General Agreement on Trade in Services) and regional trade law (e.g. European Community law). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the number of different ways in which critical theory is applied within International Political Economy (IFE) and argues that, while a great deal of material claims to he 'critical', much of it fails to fully scrutinize the traditions of reflexivity and critique that are grounded in the critical tradition. While Cox, the neo-Gramscian 'turn' and Frankfurt-inspired accounts have made certain advances for the application of critical thought in IPE, these need to be articulated more explicitly, through a set of principles that allow critical thought to aspire towards a more feasible set of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that studies of counter-hegemony and resistance in International Political Economy (IPE) have often ignored the cultural dimensions of anti-globalisation. We argue that a greater understanding of the elements needed for the articulation of counter-hegemony within IPE can be achieved through an engagement with the traditions inherent in the Birmingham School, and with the elements of Situationism contained within the anti-consumerist movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation between capital accumulation, crisis and class struggle has been a central theme of CSE since its foundation, indeed it has been central to Marxism since Marx and Engels first addressed the issue in The Communist Manifesto in 1848. In the wake of the East Asia crisis, and perhaps on the eve of another wave of crises of global capitalism, it is worth returning to the ideas that Marx and Engels developed in addressing the first crises of global capital.[1] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to business fears about growing national interventionism during the 1930s and 1940s, the United States channelled national state power into an indiosyncratic strong warfare/weak welfare governance paradigm. By making the welfare state a weak adjunct to a powerful warfare state and a subordinate and controversial part of postwar U.S. governance this paradigm has delimited, skewed, and distorted postwar U.S. political development. Postwar policy developments leading right up to the recent attacks on the welfare state and the growing neo-liberal consensus related to globalization can be understood in terms of this paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, union membership declined massively, and many union leaderships lost their former eminence in the economic and political arenas. In an examination of recent developments in manufacturing and the restructured public sector, it is argued that unions face a set of problems, associated with economic restructuring, institutional reorganisation of the state sector and the uncertainties of internationalised economies. There has been a recomposition of power relations within the current political economy, so that even with diminished power and in more difficult circumstances, unions face new prospects and possibilities. The implications of these developments and the prospects for union renewal are reviewed with reference to the changing patterns of trade unionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that the driving force of today's new internationalism is not a common ideology, but needs and the practical necessities of different movements within the context of the global economy. The Zapatistas are one of the movements that most have explicitly and systematically voiced a vision of a different world developed from within the old. Therefore this article analyses its literature and investigates important insights about the conditions of struggle in today's world and about the constitutive processes that can be envisaged in these new practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a brutal massacre of 45 indigenous sympathisers, mostly women and children, of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in a refugee camp near Acteal in the south-eastern state of Chiapas, Mexico. The success of the Zapatistas in mobilising Mexican and international 'civil society', particularly through the Internet, in a common struggle against the disastrous human and environmental consequences of neoliberalism, globalisation and "tree trade" and for increased autonomy for indigenous peoples has forced the PRI regime, under the instigation of the US government and World Bank, to adopt a more violent and politically riskier strategy of repression through state terror. As in Bosnia and Rwanda, the war is not being fought so much against the armed guerrillas of the EZLN, but rather the civilian population of the Zapatista 'base support communities'. The PRI regime's aim is to exterminate and expel the Zapatista communities, so depopulating huge areas of the oil, water and mineral-rich Lacandona Jungle, an area even more biodiverse than the Brazilian rain forests.

This article seeks to expose some important gaps in current influential analyses in the field of International Political Economy (IPE). By neglecting these areas the discipline faces problems in claiming to be genuinely concerned with political economy, particularly when analysing the current process(es) of globalisation. The areas are, firstly the role of the organised working class, and the role of class conflict in social change; and secondly the continuing importance of nationstates in the international political economy. Firstly, it will be argued that class conflict and/or class alliances involving the state, national capital and the working class are an integral factor in explaining the timing and course of globalisation. Secondly, nation-states will be examined as important forces in relation to the global economy, a fact reinforced by the continuing importance of national economies. The article will firstly discuss some important trends in IPE thought, and the way in which class and class conflict has been neglected as an explanatory tool, even by structuralists and neoGramscians who might have been expected to have employed it.