Imperialism And Global Political Economy

Callinicos (European studies, Kings College London, UK) adds his contribution to the recent Marxist renaissance in theorizing imperialism. His intervention in the debate stands in contrast to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's insistence that capitalism is now organized politically and economically along transnational lines as well as Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin's argument that, while the state system is still relevant to capitalism, the US has managed to subordinate other leading capitalist states into an "informal empire" in which they defer to American hegemony for managing the common global interests of capital. Callinicos instead is representative of the "theorists of the new imperialism," a perspective shared by David Harvey, Walden Bello, Peter Gowan, and others. This perspective asserts that global capitalism has not exited from an era of economic crisis begun in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that this crisis is characterized by the division of advanced capitalism between three competing centers of economic and political power (Western Europe, North America, and East Asia), and that this competition in the context of the long downturn is likely to lead to geopolitical struggles. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Alex Callinicos is Professor of European Studies at King's College, London.