Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis

The Question of Tactics in an Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

“…More precisely, they relegate the need for a strategy of entering the capitalist state and wielding its power to the status of an afterthought, "beyond the constraints" of their project. 24 By contrast, a key takeaway from the research presented in this Special Issue is the need to strike a balance between tactics and strategy. Without an explicit self-reflexive dimension, the following articles suggest, tactical movements may tend toward the performative, conflating the articulation in public space of their essentialized subjective experiences, with politics itself.…”

“…This emerging "multitude and diversity of class struggles," they insist, while it operates experimentally, without "blueprint" or telos, is resolved nevertheless in its determination to avoid subsumption within the vertically-integrated institutions of the capitalist state. 17 Instead, by inserting themselves in the liminal spaces of everyday peripheral life, these movements seek to bring about a new crystallization in public consciousnessone which will yield, they hope, a "structured agency" sufficient to the task of defeating the regime of global capitalist development. 18 In keeping with this journal's historic mission, to develop "analyses which reflect a commitment to progressive social change as well as those which are within exploratory phases of development in political science," 19 the articles in this Special Issue reflect a diverse set of topics and concerns, unified by the idea that political science ought to be a critical practice and should play a part in the struggle for a better world.…”

EU Aggregate Demand As a Way out of Crisis? Engaging the Post‐Keynesian Critique

“…From the end of the economic crisis in the early 1990s and especially in the first half of the 2000s, GDP growth rates had been comparatively high in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain and often higher than in Germany as well as the Eurozone and EU averages (Bieler and Morton, , p. 223). As a result, when looking at the volume index of GDP per capita in purchasing power standards, as expressed in relation to the European Union (EU28) average set to equal 100, by 2006 Greece had almost caught up with the EU average at a level of 96, with Portugal at a level of 83 having done slightly less well (Eurostat, ).…”

IMF flexibility or neoliberal adaptation: A discursive content analysis of Article IV policy biases in Argentina

“…This suggests that political outcomes are not just a matter of endogenous ideation, but rather that there exists a bidirectionality (or interconnectedness) vis‐à‐vis exogenous, material constraints and/or interests (Hernandez, ). Bieler and Morton () go further by suggesting that, in a dialectical sense, “ideas are material” insofar as they are borne out of discourses, who are ultimately the “social product” of power/class structures. Thus, how material factors constrain agents—and in turn, the range of potential outcomes—cannot be overlooked (Bailey, ; Marsh, ).…”

“…Moreover, this is compounded by the asymmetric power dynamic that exists between the IMF (in its role as a lender of last resort) and the exigent pressures borrowers face. Thus, this lender–borrower relationship is one wherein both parties are effectively bound to two very different constituent groups, whose respective interests are presumed as—materially and ideationally—incompatible (Bieler & Morton, , pp. 73–75).…”