---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Örsan Şenalp <[email protected]> Date: Mon, May 18, 2015 at 2:51 AM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Oligarchies of the World Unite by Van der Pijl To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]

Finally finished Van der Pijl's The Discipline of Western Supremacy. Together with Molecular Red it is my nomination for all times best read. Below is the abstract of a new paper from the author, which puts un-informational dimension of global rivalries in its place. another must read: Oligarchies of the World Unite https://www.academia.edu/12423426/Oligarchies_of_the_World_Unite Kees van der Pijl Abstract The argument of this paper is that after the crisis of 2008 which has turned into an enduring stagnation amidst proliferating violence, capitalist property relations are increasingly being upheld by authoritarian means. The mode of production and social organisation, including the supremacy of the West in international affairs, has lost its self-evidence in the face of a deepening crisis of the biosphere and the effective running aground of the accumulation process on a world scale. Under these circumstances processes of class formation on both sides of the historic divide between a liberal West and a series of contender states are converging along the lines of authoritarian, oligarchic capitalism. The paper argues that corporate liberal capitalism based on class compromise in the 1980s was displaced by to neoliberalism, initially intended to restore systemic market discipline but increasingly degenerating into speculative, predatory forms undermining the forces of stability in the global political economy and fostering oligarchic enrichment. A contradiction is identified between global oligarchic convergence on the one hand and conflict at the level of political (governing and state) elites on the other, and which explains the current turbulence in the global political economy. ;;; Orsan _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/