Aileen Moreton-Robinson in her book The White Possessive: Property, Power and Indigenous Sovereignty presents a collection of essays on race, dispossession and sovereignty. She argues that ‘the thread that weaves the chapter(s) together is the intersubstantive relations between white possession and Aboriginal sovereignty’. Moreton-Robinson’s position aligning with the aim of the book as written by a critical Indigenous scholar is clear and well-defined through a wide range of issues that are addressed in each of these essays. Thus, there are a number of avenues that a commentary on this book c ..read more

Dispossession and extraction have a strange relationship with each other and those within the orbit of their material and epistemic meshwork. One might well concede that it is likely that accumulation, dispossession, and extractivism are more tangible as deeply chaotic entanglements than standalone frameworks for understanding socio-economic-environmental subjectivities. Dispossession and extractive capitalism can often be situated in a tense and seemingly contradictory position in light of how they are perceived instead of how they are in constant intercourse with each other. The conceptual d ..read more

The convergence of a far-right politics of racial exclusion with the logics of market capitalism evident in the Trump administration raises important questions about the relationship between neoliberalism and the far-right. Whilst some suggest that the contemporary rise of the far-right is a reaction against the failures of neoliberalism, more recent scholarship has begun to recognise increasing points of commonality between the neoliberal logic of the market and the exclusionary politics of the far-right. In my recent article in Contemporary Political Theory, I demonstrate that the convergenc ..read more

For our last Political Economy seminar in 2023, three recent doctoral graduates will illuminate the diverse applications and insights offered by a political economy approach. From Latin America to East Asia, via Sydney, these three papers will explore the intersections of political economy with other disciplines, such as geography and psychoanalysis, and a range of theoretical traditions from Marxism to post-Keynesian economics to world-ecology. These conceptual resources are applied to crucial and pressing questions about labour’s subordination to economic development, the role of central ban ..read more

A spectre is once again loitering in the imagination of capital (if not yet haunting it) – industrial democracy. Ever since its inception in the work of Proudhon and the Webbs, the concept of industrial democracy has seemed to go through something of a rinse-and repeat cycle: for a time it gains purchase in the mainstream political discourse and animates working-class ideology and practice, then recedes in the face of some type of political-economic shift, lies in quiescence for a decade or two, before re-emerging and kicking off the process anew. After the last flowering of industrial democra ..read more

The selection committee for the Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2023 prize, as voted on by AIPEN members. The prize will be awarded to the best article published in 2022 (online early or in print) in international political economy (IPE) by an Australia-based scholar. The prize defines IPE in a pluralist sense to include the political economy of security, geography, literature, sociology, anthropology, post-coloniality, gender, finance, trade, regional studies, deve ..read more

Part I: The Commodity Law of Exchange Marxists tend to like the labor theory of value because it provides a vivid account of exploitation and highlights a basic antagonism at the core of capitalism: capitalists and workers are locked in a battle over the appropriation of the surplus that workers produce. But many commentators assume it is either internally inconsistent or hopelessly outdated. The theory is thus hotly contested, but arguably poorly understood by both critics and advocates alike. The debate has also sometimes been mired in arcane mathematical issues. As a consequence, interestin ..read more

Over the past decade, two, intertwined research agendas on international financial subordination (IFS) and subordinate financialization (SF) have proposed to identify how an increasingly finance-dominated global capitalism incorporates the (Semi-)Peripheries. The IFS research agenda recognizes that a “subordinate” national currency comes with a risk premium increasing the costs of financing public debt – in other words, the current, US dollar-based currency hierarchy acts as a structural fiscal constraint in the Global South, limiting the scope for badly needed public inves ..read more

Political Economy Seminar Together We’ll Break These Chains of Love? The Community Ideal and the Multi-Criterial Economy Presenter: Aaron Benanav, Syracuse University Respondent: Dr Mike Beggs Date: Tuesday, 24 October 2023 Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm (AEDT) Join via Zoom – https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/82063454571?from=addon Community regulation has long been heralded as an alternative to market-driven rapaciousness. Communities pool resources, use them responsibly, and foster relationships rooted in trust and mutual support. From community gardens and communes to “the commons” and even comm ..read more

I Growth proliferates — demanding degrading, derailing, deficient destroying, degenerating, detonating demineralising depressing.   Degrowth devolves — deconstructs decentralises, deinstitutionalises, decolonises dematerialises, demilitarises and decommodifies.   Degrowth defuses and designs.   Decide destination degrowth.   II fast slow   slower   very slow   per-fect-ly slow   passionately s…l…o…  w   III momentarily as individuals singly   together, as a group collectively   as a community communally glocally   universally &nb ..read more