The first in-person book launch in Canada for Radhika Desai’s new book Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy will take place in Montreal on June 15 at 7PM local time.
At this event, the author will engage with prominent figures of Montreal’s socialist and anti-imperialist left.
The event will take place in person at the Centre St. Pierre at 1212 rue Panet. It will also be broadcast live on the International Manifesto Group’s YouTube channel.
This event will take place in English, and live French translation will be available
Click here to register to attend and please share widely!
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Click here coupon code EFL01 to buy a hard copy at a discount until the end of June!
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Speakers
Arnold August (Masters Political Science, McGill University) is a Montreal based award -winning journalist whose work appear in English, Spanish and French on several continents including (in English) New Cold War, Friends of Socialist China, Orinoco Tribune and is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Manifesto Group. He appears among others on Press TV, TeleSur TV and Sputnik Radio. He has written three acclaimed books in English and Spanish on Cuba-US-Latin America. He is a member of the US-based Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network.
Jennie-Laure Sully is a community organizer at La CLES, a support center for sexually exploited women and girls. She has been a member of Solidarité Québec Haiti since it was founded in 2019. She is active in the fight against imperialism, for the sovereignty of Haiti and for the defense of migrants rights in Canada. She has worked as a research coordinator in hospitals and as a psychosocial caseworker in a rape crisis center. She has written for several French and English media outlets, most notably The Monitor, Le journal des Alternatives and Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme.
Claude Morin (Ph.D., Université de Paris-X) is a retired professor. He taught Latin American history at Université de Montréal from 1970 to 2006. He authored or edited six books, wrote close to 30 articles and chapters for journals and collective works. Most of his publications deal with colonial Mexico, contemporary Cuba, international relations and revolutionary politics in the Caribbean Basin. He was and still is a regular commentator in francophone media about events and processes in the area. He has been travelling extensively all over Latin America for more than fifty years.
William Ging Wee Dere is the author of the award-winning “Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). He was an anti-imperialist political organizer and was also a leading activist in the 2-decade movement for redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. He is a member of the Progressive Chinese of Quebec.
Author – Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies. She is the Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. She is the convenor of the International Manifesto Group. Her books include Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2023), Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month.
Co-sponsors:
-International Manifesto Group
-Solidarité Québec Haïti
-Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba
-Canada China Friendship Promotion Association
-Geopolitical Economy Research Group
About the book
Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy investigates the decay of neoliberal financialised capitalism as revealed in the crisis the novel coronavirus triggered but did not cause, a crisis that has been deepened by the conflict over Ukraine and its repercussions across the globe.
Leading domestically to economic and political breakdown, the pandemic accelerated the decline of the US-led capitalist world’s imperial power, intensifying the tendency to lash out with aggression and militarism, as seen in the US-led West’s New Cold War against China and the proxy war against Russia over Ukraine. The geopolitical economy of the decay and crisis of this form of capitalism suggests that the struggle with socialism that has long shaped the fate of capitalism has reached a tipping point. The author argues that mainstream and even many progressive forces take capitalism’s longevity for granted, misunderstand its historical dynamics and deny its formative bond with imperialism. Only a theoretically and historically accurate account of capitalism’s dynamics and historical trajectory, which this book provides, can explain its current failures and predicament. It also reveals why, though the pandemic—by revealing capitalism’s obscene inequality and shocking debility—prompted the most serious critiques of capitalism to emerge in decades, hopes of ‘building back better’ were so quickly dashed. This book sheds searching light on the dominant narratives that have normalised the neoliberal financialised capitalism and the dollar creditocracy dominating the world economy, with even critics unable to link capitalism’s neoliberal turn to its financialisations, historical decay, productive debility and international decline. It contends that only by appreciating the seriousness of the crisis and rectifying our understanding of capitalism can progressive forces thwart a future of chaos and/or authoritarianism and begin the long task of building socialism.
The book is open access! The full PDF can be obtained for free here. Knowledge Unlatched, a pioneering venture that makes scholarly work available open access, chose to make the book one of its offerings. As such, one only has to pay for a hard copy.
Praise for Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy
“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
“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)
