1. Introduction: Resumption of History Return of Choice 2. Capitalism as Contradictory Value Production 3. The Geopolitical Economy of Capitalism and Socialism 4. Neoliberalism and its Financialisations 5. The Unexpected Reckoning 6. Know Your Enemy: Between Pseudo-Civic Neoliberalism and (Neo)Fascism? 7. Capitalism in the Balance of International Power 8. Conclusion: What is to be Done?
Radhika Desai is Professor in the Department of Political Studies and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, Canada, and Convenor of the International Manifesto Group.
"Through an astute, timely, and expansive analysis of our political
and theoretical landscape, Radhika Desai’s latest book clears new
ground on which to build a renewed left movement against the
geopolitical rule of capital. Returning to Marx’s thought and
rescuing it from its myriad distortions provides the conceptual
clarity required to understand the structural and historical
factors responsible for producing the overwhelming and indisputable
failures of capitalism. By critiquing responses by both the right
and left to the complex international crises we face—from Modern
Monetary Theory and "pseudo-civic neoliberalism" to social
democracy and anti-communist leftism—Capitalism, Coronavirus and
War offers not only a compelling account of how we ended up in our
current situation but, more importantly, an accessible roadmap for
eliminating global inequality, oppression, and imperialist war.
This provocative, intricately reasoned, and ultimately inspiring
treatise is a welcome contribution to the ongoing global struggle
for socialism that unequivocally demonstrates the necessity of the
communist party, socialist planning, and global solidarity of
working and oppressed peoples necessary for finally ridding the
world of the scourges of capital. Readers will, wherever they
currently stand on these topics, leave the text with a radically
transformed understanding of the path that lies ahead."Derek R.
Ford, Associate Professor of Education Studies, DePauw University,
USA; author of Marxism, Pedagogy and the General Intellect; editor
of LiberationSchool.org; and contributing editor to the Hampton
Institute"Drawing out the contradictions at the core of
contemporary capitalism that precipitate recurring
crises—illustrated by the outbreak of and damage inflicted by the
Covid-19 pandemic and the descent into debilitating proxy wars
across the globe—Radhika Desai’s book challenges the perception
that capitalism is here to stay. Backing that argument with serious
analysis that takes forward progressive assessments of the nature
of contemporary capitalist dynamics and the geopolitical fallout,
the book makes a case for transcending the system. That canvas
allows for a wide audience. Researchers and students as well as
activists and organisers can benefit immensely from reading the
book."C. P. Chandrasekhar, Senior Research Fellow, Political
Economy Research Institute, UMass, Amherst, USA; and former
Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, India"This fascinating, timely, and scintillating
book by Professor Radhika Desai, gives us the clear prognosis and
total symptom picture of a moribund capitalism laid low by
‘lightning bolts of catastrophe’: Covid, war, and
self-cannibalizing neoliberalism.With elegant prose and clarifying,
granular exposition, Professor Desai offers a synoptic analysis
that unmasks and unpacks ‘the deceits of Empire’, while opening the
reader up to the new horizons of hope of a pluripolar world led by
new, visionary socialisms.
She also gives an astringent antidote to the western intellectual
‘left’ and their poisonous distortions of sovereign socialist
accomplishments by the peoples of the Global South.This book is a
must-read for anyone who wants to understand the tectonic shifts
occurring in the world we live in: how to untangle the
contradictions inherent in commodity production; how to challenge
the ideological domination of western ‘universalism’ and its
propensity to war; how to plan and transform time, space, knowledge
and labor; ultimately, how to resist total immiseration and
ecological catastrophe.Bracing, bold, and brilliant, Professor
Desai gives us a glimpse of the blueprints for a world beyond the
predations and violence of Capital and Empire, the foundations of
which are being laid in the sovereign socialisms of the Global
South, and which all justice-seeking peoples of the world must
unite to build and develop."K.J. Noh, journalist, political
analyst, writer, and educator specializing in the geopolitics of
the Asia-Pacific region; writer for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda
Report, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, Asia Times, MR Online;
frequent commentator on the news programs The Critical Hour, By Any
Means Necessary, Fault Lines, Political Misfits, Loud & Clear,
Breakthrough News, Flashpoints"Radhika Desai’s new book Capitalism,
Coronavirus, and War: A Geopolitical Economy is truly a magnum
opus. Drawing on a wide range of sources and building on much of
her earlier work, she clearly and precisely delineates multiple
facets of the current conjuncture, a moment of profound
intensification of the contradictions of late capitalism and the
possibility of socialist transformation. In eight chapters Desai
takes us through a careful exposition of the structural features of
finance capital, the long contention between capitalism and
socialism, the rise and bankruptcy of neoliberalism, and the
‘unexpected reckoning’ brought on by the crises of the present
period, the devastations of the coronavirus pandemic which has
killed millions in the capitalist core, and the onset of the
NATO-provoked war with Russia that has further destabilized global
capital and precipitated crises of livelihood for billions around
the planet. She brings this account to a brilliant conclusion with
her final chapter, boldly invoking the spirit of Lenin’s What is to
be Done? Here she sets out both the failures of bourgeois reformism
and the working class turn to populism, and the possibilities for
radical political action and revolutionary change.Capitalism,
Coronavirus, and War is both a major intervention and call to arms
for the present moment, and a critical contribution to the overall
theorization of the history of late capitalism. This is a work for
our times, and for all times."Ken Hammond, Professor of East Asian
and Global History, New Mexico State University, USA, and a member
of Pivot to Peace and the Party for Socialism and
Liberation"Radhika Desai offers us a brilliant and useful
reconstruction of the main theoretical and geostrategic issues that
socialist movements face in this era, characterized by neoliberal
financialization and the dangerous reaction of US imperialism
desperate to maintain its dominance and domination of its currency
in the world. The correct understanding of this phase of capitalism
allows us to identify some errors in the perspective of some
progressive movements, and some lessons for the construction of
socialism. The text is very useful to both the scholar and the
communist militant."Ascanio Bernardeschi, Rifondazione Comunista;
La Città Futura; "Antonio Gramsci" Popular University,
Italy"Desai’s timely book does a magnificent job at showing how the
capitalist West’s catastrophic management of the Covid-19 pandemic,
along with its potentially planet-annihilating New Cold War against
Russia and China — carried out through a ‘hot’ proxy war in
Ukraine, and potentially in Taiwan — are not isolated and
accidental events. These are all interconnected and symptomatic of
a moribund capitalism, whose contradictions, and their
manifestation in the 1970s crisis, drove it into an era of
neoliberal financialization which merely prolonged its death
sentence. With the emergence of socialist China and pluripolarity,
the spectacle of capitalism’s decay is before us, but with it also
is the fact that it prefers an apocalyptic end to the end of its
hegemony. The question for us will be: can we take advantage of
these objectively ripe conditions to organize for socialism? Or
will we continue to be haunted by Fukuyama’s proclaimed end of
history so much so that we lose sight of the fact that the end of
history is itself coming to an end? Desai definitively shows the
putrescent condition of capitalism and the genuine potential this
provides for those who can imagine a socialist world beyond our
current barbaric one."Carlos L. Garrido, PhD Student and Instructor
in Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA;
editor in the Marxist educational project Midwestern Marx, and in
the Journal of American Socialist Studies"Radhika Desai’s
Capitalism, Coronavirus and War explains why the dream of a
neoliberal ‘end of history’ has turned out to be a dead end. Her
excellent book provides a clear perspective to frame the internal
contradictions of America’s neoliberal policies that are driving
Western capitalism into austerity and a chronic health crisis as
its New Cold War actually is a class war.What makes Radhika’s book
so important is her clear explanation of how the world’s actual
history is being created by the socialist Beijing Consensus based
on public infrastructure to raise living standards and
productivity. This is what the West’s former socialist and labor
parties have lost, she explains. Most insightful is her analysis of
how the socialist policy of making money and credit a public
utility saves economies from the US–British disease of
financialization and debt deflation that has left its only hope for
prosperity to be what it can exploit from Eurasia, Africa and South
America."Michael Hudson, author of The Destiny of Civilization and
Super Imperialism, Distinguished Professor of Economics, University
of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), USA"Radhika Desai has written a
masterful modern history of the capitalist-imperialist system,
detailing the common threads that link the colonial era to today's
financialized neoliberalism.
The scope of the work is truly impressive. It explicates the
inherent contradictions of capitalism and its propensity for
crisis, illustrates the blood on the hands of neoliberal
governments in the face of the Covid disaster, and elucidates the
imperial machinations driving the proxy war in Ukraine.
Capitalism, Coronavirus and War is an invaluable contribution to
geopolitics and economics, greatly enriching our understanding of
both fields – and effortlessly showing how to unite the
disciplines. It is undoubtedly one of the most important books to
understand the profound crises we face in the world today."Ben
Norton, journalist, writer, and filmmaker based in Latin America;
founder and editor of Multipolarista"This book discusses a wide
range of theoretical issues germane to the analysis of the nature
of the capitalist system at its core, and relates this analysis to
the most striking economic and political developments of very
recent years, namely pandemic impact, and (so far) localised war.
The author writes with a style and elan which engages the reader,
while providing very many insights of value. In particular her
trenchant critique of what she terms ‘western Marxism’ and its
failures, combined with a stout defence of Marx’s vision, will be
of special interest to many readers."Utsa Patnaik, Professor
Emerita, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social
Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India; author of The
Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era (2011) and The Republic of
Hunger and Other Essays (2007); co-author (with Prabhat Patnaik) of
Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History and the Future (2021) and
A Theory of Imperialism (2016)"The latest of Dr. Radhika Desai’s
many books is a tour de force from a modest Canadian expert.
Skillfully linking the pandemic, China as a vivid example of the
antidote to capitalism through socialism, and a war is no easy
task; moreover, the text is published at a time when all three
phenomena are still evolving. What is the secret of this success?
First, from the beginning, in the dedication, Dr. Desai shows her
colours: she takes a stand for socialism and communism, freeing
herself and the readers from any cover that confuses more than
clarifies. Thus, when readers arrive at the Conclusion after about
230 pages of factual, rigorous but balanced analysis, her socialist
and communist reaffirmation flows naturally. Second, the University
of Manitoba professor reveals her own intellectual evolution over
several decades. It was not until she was a graduate student at a
Canadian university that she began to assimilate Marxism–Leninism.
This is a major advantage for readers because, while there are
people in the capitalist West who were born into a communist
family, some of them exhibit the worst deviations and dogmatic
interpretations of Marxist–Leninist thought and action. Thus, a
very wide spectrum of society in the capitalist West can identify
with her writing, despite their complexity, because Dr. Desai
writes with the reader’s background in mind. At the time of
writing, there seems to be a backlash in China against China’s
coronavirus policy. Does this contradict her analysis? I say no, it
will stand the test of time; however, readers and national and
international developments are the best judges. The same goes for
her views on the NATO/Ukraine war against Russia."Arnold August,
author/journalist based in Montreal, Canada; M.A. Political
Science; member of the International Manifesto Group"In this
powerful new work, one of the world’s leading political analysts
and economists takes on some of the most pressing issues of the
day: the crisis of neoliberalism, the global pandemic, US-led
imperialist wars, and the rise of China. She provides much needed
historical perspective within a resolutely internationalist
framework of analysis grounded in geopolitical economy. Anyone who
wants to understand the world we’re living in would be well-served
to follow Desai’s intrepid investigation into the current state of
global politics and the essential question: ‘what is to be
done?’"Gabriel Rockhill, Founding Director of the Critical Theory
Workshop, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University, USA
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