This article seeks to review the recent incarnation of a long-standing engagement in international political economy (IPE)

Published in British Politics

This article develops a critical engagement with the politics of British satire. After first engaging the mainstream critique of satire—that it promotes cynicism and apathy by portraying politicians in stereotypically corrupt terms—we develop a performative approach to comedy as an everyday vernacular of political life. Beyond a focus on ‘impact’, we suggest that satire can be read as an everyday form of political reflection that performs within a social context. This argument yields an image of Morris, Iannucci and Brooker as important critics of contemporary British politics, a point which we explore through their interventions on media form, political tragedy and political agency.

A prominent theme in scholarly analyses of contemporary international affairs concerns the extent to which the unrivalled power and activities of the United States can be said to constitute a form of imperialism. Typically, the contours of this debate center on the ostensible differences between “old” and “new” varieties of imperialist practice. Yet the concept of “new imperialism” remains one on which little consensus exists. Wide differences of opinion on its origins, dynamics, and characteristics are evident, as is an analytical bifurcation between distinct “economic” and “geopolitical” explanations. This absence of conceptual unity leads to accounts of new imperialist strategy that are partial, limited, and incomplete. If the theoretical value of new imperialism is to be realized, a more holistic approach is needed. To this end, some of the key differences between the contexts of new and old imperialism are explored.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the basis for a theory of imperialism that is consonant with open Marxism. The paper argues that accounts of imperialism heretofore have been contingent and focused on the appearance of imperialism, and spent little time considering its essence as a manifestation of the state’s power and desire to maintain the circuit of capital both nationally and internationally. The paper seeks to show that open Marxism is well placed to achieve this, and to move towards an idea of an open Marxist theory of imperialism.