PROKLA - Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft
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Editorial: Geopolitische Konflikte nach der „neuen Weltordnung“
Get PDFEditorial: Geopolitische Konflikte nach der „neuen Weltordnung
Editorial: Die politische Krise in Europa und die Reorganisation der bürgerlichen Kräfte
Get PDFEditorial: Die politische Krise in Europa und die Reorganisation der bürgerlichen Kräft
Auspolierte Kratzer: Das US-Finanzkapital: Durch mehr Regulierung weiter hegemonial?
Get PDFIn contrast to the widely held belief that a crisis undermines the legitimacy, and thus the hegemony, of a particular group, this article shows how finance capital retained its hegemonic position after the financial crisis of 2008. The reregulation of the sector through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act contributed to this success. The Act keeps the regulators and Congress busy without restricting banks’ and investors’ speculative activities in any significant way. Finance capital maintains its central place in a financialized regime of accumulation. Most other fractions of capital support it. Its losses have been restricted to the area of passive support among the American public. But finance capital’s main message – that citizens have the right to keep their money and to invest it according to their preferences – continues to resonate with a sizeable portion of the American electorate
Syriza unter Druck: Zu den strategischen Perspektiven des linken Regierungsprojekts in Griechenland
Get PDFThe success or failure of Greece’s left government will be decisive not only for Greece but for the left in Europe in general. The Syriza led government faces obstacles both on the European and on the national level. It becomes increasingly clear that Syriza’s equation for the European level doesn’t add up. The main European institutions want to see Syriza fail and block therefore any acceptable compromise. On the national level the level of political mobilization is low and the question arises if Syriza can maintain its connection with the social movements under the current situation. Despite all obstacles there are still options left to regain the initiative
Das Massaker von Paris
Get PDFIn the light of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, this essay seeks to analyse and understand the objective conditions and power relations within the capitalist world system as they have unfolded since the end of the Soviet Union. Its specific point is to understand the role of the leading strategies and practices of imperialism and of socalled „political Islam“within these conditions and power relations. The main strategies aim at fostering bonapartist, fascist and right-wing ideologies at home, in the dominant imperialist countries that is, and structurally reactionary/„Islamist“ ideologies in the periphery to, both, strengthen the leading factions of capital in the imperialist centres. The essay claims that the only viable option for the left is to remain independent of and in active opposition to the strategies of imperialism. Furthermore the left will have to take up the fight against creatures such as the Islamic State that were provided a fertile ground and nurtured by imperialism. It also concludes that the left has to defend and engage its own independent democratic and socialist perspective countering both the powers of imperialism in the centres and reaction in the periphery
An den Grenzen des American Empire: Geopolitische Folgen des chinesischen Aufstiegs1
Get PDFDuring the last decade, China has become an active player in global political economy. China’s rise has led to important structural changes: First, China is close to replace the US as the “consumer of last resort” in the world economy, thus, being able to influence states and companies in other world regions by granting or restricting access to its huge domestic market. Second, China is heavily investing in infrastructure and commodity supply chains in the Global South, thereby gaining control over important trade routes. And, third, China has become a major creditor of several governments, thus, challenging US-dominated international financial institutions such as the IMF. The paper draws on World-Systems Analysis in order to give an assessment of these developments. Even though China’s influence in global political economy is likely to continue to grow, internal and external factors (China’s increasing economic woes and the US counterstrategy in East Asia) might stall China’s rise
Zerfällt die Europäische Währungsunion? Handels- und Kapitalverflechtungen, Krisenursachen und Entwicklungsperspektiven der Eurozone
Get PDFGrowing imbalances in the balance of payments of the euro countries are usually attributed to the divergence in competitiveness related to unequal increases of wages or unit wage costs in member states. However, an empirical analysis of international trade and portfolio investment data shows that the growing current account deficits in countries like Greece, Spain, and Portugal up to the recent crisis were rather due to growing capital exports from countries like Germany and France. Moreover, economic divergences are not so much the result of direct competition between the countries of the eurozone but rather due to their unequal integration into the changing international division of labour. While German producers profited a lot from the transformation in regions like Eastern Europe and China, producers in Southern Europe came under increasing pressure by new competitors in other low-wage areas. Even if to a different extent, the relative importance of the eurozone as a market and an area of investment has declined for all the member states analyzed here. The growing economic and political contradictions in the eurozone are leading to different scenarios, depending on the development of the balance of forces: There could be a deepening of the integration of the eurozone member countries, but also the exit of single countries from the eurozone. Depending on the political balance of forces, ruptures with the current regime of the monetary union and with the European treaties could have very different meanings for the social classes
Die Erweiterung des Resonanzraums: Pegida, die Aktualisierung des Völkischen und die Neuordnung des Konservatismus
Get PDFMultiple Movements can be observed hitting the streets since 2014, which represent something new. Although these Movements are prima facie thematically very different, all share some common motives, which can be described as an actualization of folkish-nationalism. The Article focusses on the so called “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident” (Pegida) and tries first to put out the major motives, which are extracted from the speeches held at Pegida-manifestations. Secondly one motive will be traced back to the 1990s to show the development of conservationism and its rearrangement. It will be argued that the old conservative structure became disintegrated and it is renewal is based on folkish-nationalist believes. The new folkish-nationalist movements are a real threat of an open and plural society, not only because a new wave of violence against migrants and leftists takes place, but also because of a normalization of paranoid views of society and the enhancement of the possibilities of authoritarian-violent solutions to phenomena of crisis
„Anders denken, anders sprechen“: Ein Besprechungsessay zu „Das Kapital lesen“
Get PDFOriginally published in 1965, Reading Capital is a landmark of radical theory. Previously only available in a highly abridged form, the publishing house Westfälisches Dampfboot and the translator Frieder O. Wolf make an unabridged edition available in German for the first time and restores original chapters by Roger Establet and Pierre Macherey. Louis Althusser and his scholars interpret Marx’s analysis as a revolutionary break—the basis of a completely new science. Demirovi? opens in his review essay the discussion about Reading capital. He refers not only the history of reception of misunderstanding and repression but also underlines why the contributions in Reading Capital underachieve the critical-marxian theory of capitalist social formation
Ultraimperialismus oder interimperialistische Konkurrenz? Fragen an eine aus den Fugen geratene Zeit
Get PDFDuring the last decade of the twentieth century, the concept of “imperialism” was not used very much by social scientists. But after 9/11, the concept started a new career. Not only left-wing theorists, but also members of the establishment like Michael Walzer and Michael Ingnatieff used the term to describe the foreign policy of the US under George W. Bush. Marxists like Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin and David Harvey argued that within the “New Imperialism” the ultra-imperialistic cooperation between the US and Europe plays a dominant role for the world order. A decade later, the rivalry between the big empires has aquired new importance