The Globalisation Decade

A Critical Reader

Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch

Over the past decade the contributors to The Socialist Register have been widely recognised as providing the Left’s most distinctive investigations on the contradictions of globalisation, the internationalisation of the state, progressive competitiveness, the new imperialism and mobilisations against it. Providing political and economic analyses, this anthology looks at the cultural contradictions of globalisation. It includes a set of readings on the role of states—especially that of the United States—in making globalisation happen. It examines the problems these states now confront in trying to keep it going. “Highlights the links between the liberal domestic policies of today’s centre-left, continued international deregulation, growing inequalities and disorder…. They have opposed the ‘progressive competitiveness’ economics of the mainstream left. That is, the belief that social values can be furthered within market limits by an educated workforce able to export successfully.” —Andrew Coates: The Spokesman, reviewing Global Capitalism versus Democracy (Socialist Register 2001)

Contents

• Globalisation and the State (Leo Panitch)
• Capitalism and the Nation State in the Dog Days of the Twentieth Century (Manfred Bienefeld)
• In Defence of Capital Controls (Jim Crotty & Gerald Epstein)
• A World Market of Opportunities? Capitalist Obstacles & Left Economic Policy (Greg Albo)
• Taking Globalisation Seriously (Hugo Radice)
• Globalisation and the Executive Committee: The Contemporary Capitalist State (Constantine Tsoukalas)
• Contradictions of Shareholder Capitalism: Downsizing Jobs, Enlisting Savings, Destabilizing Families (Wally Seccombe)
• Material World: The Myth of the Weightless Economy (Ursula Huws)
• The Nature and Contradictions of Neoliberalism (Gerard Dumenil & Dominique Levy)
• The Growth Obsession (Elmar Altvater)

About the Authors

Colin Leys is an emeritus professor at Queen’s University Canada and an honorary professor at Goldsmiths College London. His most recent books are The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, Market-Driven Politics, and Total Capitalism. He has been studying and writing about the NHS since the late 1990s.

Leo Panitch is a Distinguished Research Professor, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register. He received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and a M.Sc.(Hons.) and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1968 and 1974, respectively. He was a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Carleton University between 1972 and 1984. He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.