Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

This module introduces recent developments of Critical Political Economy.
Throughout the reading of leading theorists, we will contrast the invariants of capitalism with the specificities of neoliberalism, crisis dynamics and the politico-institutional unfolding of globalizations. Some insights about social, political and ecological contradictions and the mutation of productive forces will also be discussed

This course will provide students with knowledge on recent developments of Critical Political Economy

Classes will be given in English, in the form of lecture courses.

The sessions are dedicated to the presentation and discussion of a selection of books’ extracts and articles.
Reading the texts in bold is required, reading more is better. Because the course will not allow to explore the details of the texts, it is a pre-condition to engage with the arguments.

There are two options for the evaluation:
1. The presentation during one course of one text from the Syllabus in 15 min followed by a brief written critical summary (3/4 pages). If you’re interested, think about it ahead of the first course.

or

2. A brief essay (3/4 pages) based on the presentation of one original stylized fact (a graph) designed to corroborate (or challenge) one theoretical insight discussed in the course.
The essay should explicit the motivations, the technicalities of the elaboration of the stylized fact and a discussion of its interpretation.

BELLOFIORE R. (2018), « The Multiple Meanings of Marx’s Value Theory », Monthly Review, 69 (11).
HARVEY, D. (2017), Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason, Profile Books. chap 1. « The Visualisation of Capital as Value in Motion » 

SHAIKH (2016), A., Capitalism, Oxford University Press, chap 7. “The theory of real competition”
PECK, J., & THEODORE, N. (2007). Variegated capitalism. Progress in Human Geography, 31(6), 731-;772.
AMABLE, B. (2017), Structural Crisis and Institutional Change in Modern Capitalism: French Capitalism in Transition, Oxford University Press, « introduction »
BRENNER, Robert (2006), The Economics of Global Turbulence. The Advanced Capitalist Economies from Long Boom to Long Downturn, 1945-2005, Verso, « Introduction »
BROWN, W. (2015), Undoing the Demos: neoliberalism’s stealth revolution, Zone Books. Excerpt frop chap 2 « Foucault’s Birth of Biopolitics Lectures: Charting neoliberal Political rationality »
DUMENIL AND LEVY (2011), The Crisis of Neoliberalism, Harvard University Press, chap. 1 « The Historical Dynamics of Hegemony »
PANITCH, L. and S. GINDIN (2012), The making of Global Capitalism, Verso. Introduction
SPERBER N. (2019), « State Capitalism and the State-;Class Nexus », Science & Society, 83 (3), p. 381-407.
DURAND C., M. GUEUDER (2018), “The investment-profit nexus in an era of financialisation, globalisation and monopolisation. A profit-centred perspective”, Review of Political Economy.
DURAND C. (2017), Fictitious Capital, Verso. (Libgen)
VAN DER ZWAN N. (2014), « Making sense of financialization », Socio-Economic Review, 12 (1).
FRASER, N. (2015), « Legitimation Crisis? On the Political Contradictions of Financialized Capitalism », Critical Historical Studies, 2 (2) SYLLABUS 2019-08-13 3
DURAND C., W. MILBERG (2018), « Intellectual Monopoly in Global Value Chains », Working paper 1807, New School for Social Research - REPEC.
PAGANO, U (2014) “The crisis of intellectual monopoly capitalism”, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 38 (6), 1409-;29.
PEREZ C. (2011), “Finance and Technical Change: A Long-term View », African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development, 3 (1), p. 10-35 .
WARK, MK (2016), “The Sublime Language of My Century”, posted on Public Seminar.
MALM, A. (2018), The Progress of This Storm. Nature and Society in a Warming World, Verso. « Introduction ».
HUI W. (2016), “The Equality of all Things and Trans-Systemic Society”, in China’s Twentieth Century, Verso, London & NewYork, p. 252-283. (Libgen)
KEUCHEYAN, R. (2018), Insuring Climate Change: New Risks and the Financialization of Nature. Development and Change, 49: 484-501.
MOORE, J. (2015), Capitalism in the web of life, Verso, chap 7 ”Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: On the Nature and Origins
of Our Ecological Crisis »