On Friday 15 September 2023, the International Manifesto Group will host book symposium for Radhika Desai’s latest book, Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy.
Author Radhika Desai will discuss the book with a panel of commentators.
This symposium will take at 8AM US Central Time, 9AM US Eastern Time, 2PM London Time over Zoom and YouTube Live.
Click here to register to attend and please share widely!
Speakers
Jayati Ghosh taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for nearly 35 years, and since January 2021 she has been Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. She has authored and/or edited 20 books and more than 200 scholarly articles. Recent books include “The making of a catastrophe: Covid-19 and the Indian economy,” Aleph Books forthcoming 2022; “When governments fail: Covid-19 and the economy,” Tulika Books and Columbia University Press 2021 (co-edited); “Women workers in the informal economy,” Routledge 2021 (edited); “Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women’s Work in Globalising India,” Women Unlimited, New Delhi 2009; co-edited “Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development, 2014; co-edited “After Crisis,” Tulika 2009; co-authored “Demonetisation Decoded,” Routledge 2017. She has received several prizes, including the 2015 Adisheshaiah Award for distinguished contributions to the social sciences in India; the International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Research Prize for 2011; and the NordSud Prize for Social Sciences 2010, Italy. She has advised governments in India and other countries, including as Chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Commission on Farmers’ Welfare in 2004, and Member of the National Knowledge Commission of India (2005-09).
Martin Jacques is the author of the global best-seller When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. It was first published in 2009 and has since been translated into fifteen languages and sold over 350,000 copies. Martin is a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing; Fudan University, Shanghai; and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. Until recently, he was a Senior Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University. He was also a non-resident Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC.
Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (Editions 1968, 2003, 2021), ‘and forgive them their debts’ (2018), J is for Junk Economics (2017), Killing the Host (2015), The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971), amongst many others.
Robert H. Wade is professor of global political economy at the London School of Economics. A New Zealand citizen, he worked earlier at the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex University), the World Bank, US Congress (Office of Technology Assessment), Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School), MIT (Sloan School), and Brown University (Watson Institute).
Ruslan Dzarasov is a senior research fellow at the Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of The Conundrum of Russian Capitalism (Pluto, 2013).
Victor Gao is Vice President of CCG, the Chairman-Elect of the National Organization Committee of the IGU (International Gas Union)/the WGC 2024 (World Gas Conference) 2021-2024; Chairman of China Energy Security Institute; Vice Chairman of China Beidou Industrial Promotion Organization, Chairman of OBOR Group of Hong Kong, a member of the Beijing Energy Club, a Member of the Global Counsel of Asia Society in New York City, a member of the International Advisory Board of the Energy Intelligence Group in London; an advisor to Saudi Aramco and a member of the Board of Directors of several listed companies in Hong Kong.
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.
Moderator – Ben Norton is the founder and editor-in-chief of Geopolitical Economy Report, an independent news website dedicated to publishing original journalism and analysis.
About the book
Capitalism, Coronavirus and War 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.
This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and researchers of international relations, international political economy, comparative politics and global political sociology.
Thanks to Knowledge Unlatched, this book is open access.
Click here to download the full PDF for free.
Click here to purchase a physical copy of the book.
