Palgrave Insights into Apocalypse Economics

This book offers the first systematic exposition and critique of the major approaches to periodizing capitalism, bringing to bear both deep rooted theoretical questions and meticulous empirical analysis to grapple with the seismic economic changes capitalism has experienced over the past 150 years.

Westra asks why – despite the anarchic and crises tendencies captured in radical analyses – capitalism manages to reload in a structured stage that realizes a period of relatively stable accumulation. He further evaluates arguments over the economic forces bringing stages of capitalist development to a crashing end.

This book analyses contemporary and future conditions of global finance and capitalism in an age of catastrophe. It illuminates the links between various crises that have beset the world economy in recent decades and sets these in philosophical context, drawing on the work of Marx, Bataille and Baudrillard to forge new understandings of the impact of capitalist hegemony on society and nature.

The book introduces the concept of the ‘over’ as a lens through which to reflect on capitalist excess and its negative consequences, such as over-accumulation of goods, over-pollution of the environment, and over-speculation of capital. In particular, it shines a light on the trends of financialization and stagflation, with chapters examining increasingly embedded features of the world economy such as hyper-inflation, the dominance of advanced economy central banks, the phenomenon of repurchase agreements, new asset managers for the ultra-wealthy and index funds to show how capitalist structures continue to drive inequality, ecological breakdown, and geopolitical precarity on a global scale. With a rigorous philosophical and theoretical framework, this book will appeal to political economists, Marxist economists and scholars interested in theories of capitalism.

This edited volume explores and makes explicit the links between neoliberal economic policies and right-wing ideology. The book focuses on the case of the US while situating these trends in the global political economy.

The book brings together contributions from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating economics, political science and sociology to examine the connections between the economic precarity generated by neoliberalism and the rise of the far right. The book argues that the creation of a flawed capitalist system has left a vacuum in policymakers’ ability to understand the impact of economic policies on human welfare and mental health, and can be directly linked to a right-wing populist movement driven by the frustrations associated with the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial economy. Chapters consider the history of neoliberalism and comparative studies of socio-economic conditions, before tackling specific issues associated with neoliberal policy, such as the demise of unions, the decline in manufacturing jobs, the gig economy, trickle-down economics, income inequality and the rise of elites in America. This book will be of interest to a broad range of readers, including those in politics, economics, sociology, industrial organization and labour studies.

This book offers a deep-dive analysis of the period of globalization from the late 1980s to the present through the lens of long wave theory. It traces how the end of the Cold War transformed the base of the global economy, doubling the working-class producing profits, and its superstructure, reestablishing US monopolar dominance. It explores how the ‘hyper-globalization’ of the period up to 2008 has transitioned into a new long wave of de-globalization, stagnation and multi-polar conflict. The book focuses particularly on the looming and actual wars – in trade, tech, and military terms –intertwined with world economics as the twenty-first century progresses.

The book addresses three overarching themes: globalization versus de-globalization, great power conflict versus cooperation, and trade/tech integration versus competition. It examines the shift from stagnating conditions in the late 1970s to the resurgent hyper-global capitalism of the 2000s after the integration of the former Centrally Planned Economies (CPEs) into the world market, leading to, but not ending with, the 2008 Great Financial Recession. Globalization is analysed in depth at both a national and global level, with insights on the diverging paths of US and China forming a central focus of the chapters. The book provides a comparative analysis of US and Chinese economic development and discusses how globalization inevitably produced de-globalization: reversing trends towards the integration of production, trade and finance that have defined the world economy over the last three decades. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in areas including political economy, macroeconomics, war studies, international relations and more.