Prelims

Trajectories of Declining and Destructive Capitalism

Research in Political Economy

Series Editor: Paul Zarembka

State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

Recent Volumes:

• Paul Zarembka

• State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

• Radhika Desai

• University of Manitoba, Canada

• Thomas Ferguson

• University of Massachusetts at Boston, USA

• Virginia Fontes

• Fluminense Federal University, Brazil

• Seongjin Jeong

• Gyeongsang National University, South Korea

• Jie Meng

• Fudan University, People's Republic of China

• Isabel Monal

• University of Havana, Cuba

• Paul Cooney Seisdedos

• Union for Radical Political Economics, USA

• Ndongo Samba Sylla

• International Development Economics Associates, Senegal

• Jan Toporowski

• The School of Oriental and African Studies, UK

Research in Political Economy Volume 40

Trajectories of Declining and Destructive Capitalism

Edited by

Rémy Herrera

CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research), France

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2025

Editorial matter and selection © 2025 Rémy Herrera.

Individual chapters © 2025 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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ISBN: 978-1-83549-203-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-202-4 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-204-8 (Epub)

ISSN: 0161-7230 (Series)

Rémy Herrera (France) is an Economist and a researcher at the National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS). Graduated from a Business School (École supérieure de Commerce, 1988), the Institute of Political Studies (Institut d’Études politiques, 1990) and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Master of Philosophy, 1994; PhD in Economics, 1996), he supervises students in PhD at the Centre d'Économie de la Sorbonne. He started working in financial audit (1988), at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (1992–1997) and for the World Bank (1999–2000). He was a member of the CNRS National Committee (2000–2005) and of the Scientific Council of Paris 1 (2001–2006). He taught at various universities in France (especially Paris 1 [1993–2013]) and abroad, including the Universities of Aleppo (1998), Cairo (1999–2000), Vitoria in Brasil (2006), Complutense in Madrid (2009–2013), and Lingnan in Hong Kong (2018). He was an adviser to research programmes at the Chubu University (Nagoya). He is or has been associated with: Third World Forum (Dakar), Union of Radical Political Economics (New York), International Initiative for Promoting Political Economics (London), Sociedad de Economía Política Latinoamericana (São Paulo), Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (Buenos Aires), and Asociación Nacional de Economistas de Cuba (Havana). He was the World Forum of Alternative’s (WFA's) executive secretary. He is also a member of the Global University for Sustainability and of the International Observatory of the Crisis. He organized the ‘Marx in the Twenty-First Century’ seminar at La Sorbonne. He regularly works with the Centre Europe-Tiers Monde (Geneva), supporting it in its advisory role to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.

Demba Moussa Dembele (Senegal), an Economist-researcher, is a member of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the Third World Forum (FTM). He has a PhD in Financial Economics from the Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris and an MBA in International Trade and Finance from the American University (Washington DC). He is a former research associate at the Institute of International Finance (Washington DC). He is currently the Chair of the African Association for Research and Cooperation in Support of Endogenous Development (ARCADE).

Marcelo Dias Carcanholo (Brazil) is a full Professor at the School of Economics of the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – and a member of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Studies and Research on Marx and Marxism (NIEP-UFF). He is a member of the International Observatory of the Crisis.

Frédéric Farah (France) is a member of the team EA 7418 Philosophie, Histoire et Analyse des Représentations Économiques (PHARE) at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne. His latest book is Fake State: L'impuissance organisée de l'État en France (2020), written with Olivier Delorme (H&O, Saint-Martin-de-Londres, France).

Hugo Figueira de Souza Corrêa (Brazil) is a Professor at the School of Economics of the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – and a member of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Studies and Research on Marx and Marxism (NIEP-UFF).

Ben Fine (United Kingdom) is an Emeritus Professor of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a Visiting Professor, Wits School of Governance, University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (South Africa). He has been the Chair of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (iippe.org) and the fourth in his series of volumes of edited articles on the Critical Reconstructions of Political Economy is in press with Brill. He was a contributing editor to the Macroeconomic Research Group (MERG) Report of 1993, commissioned by the African National Congress (ANC) to offer progressive post-apartheid options, but it was discarded.

Thierry Madjid Labica (France) teaches British Studies at Université Paris Nanterre. He is a member of the editorial board of the online journal Contretemps, revue de critique communiste, to which he has been a regular contributor. He has co-edited several books, with M Bertrand and C. Crowley, Ici notre défaite a commencé: la grève des mineurs britanniques, 1984–1985, Syllepse, 2016. He is the author of L'hypothèse Jeremy Corbyn. Une histoire politique et sociale de la Grande-Bretagne depuis Tony Blair, preface by Ken Loach, Demopolis, 2019.

André Gilles Latournald (France) is a Doctor in Economic Sciences. He works at the National Institute for Young Blind People in Paris. Since 1995, he has taught at the University of Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne). He is a specialist in Adam Smith; his work focuses on liberalism, economic policies, econometrics and epistemology.

Dic Lo (China) is a Political Economist specializing in China and world development. His works have been published in scholarly journals both in Chinese and English. He has been with School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, for almost 30 years. He is currently with the Economics School (Lingnan College) of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou.

Zhiming Long (China), is a Tenured Associate Professor in Economics and a doctoral supervisor at the School of Marxism at the Tsinghua University in Beijing. He is an Associate Editor of the book series A Comprehensive Study on the World Dissemination of Marxist Classic Literature (100 volumes). He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Paris 1. His research focuses on China’s Economy, World Economics and Quantitative Marxian Economics.

Juan Pablo Mateo (Spain) is currently an Associate Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. His research is focused on the theory of crisis, the tendency of the profit rate and the core/periphery relation within the unequal development of capitalism. His last book is The Theory of Crisis and the Great Recession in Spain (Palgrave, 2019), with articles in the Review of Radical Political Economics, Capital & Class, Science & Society, International Review of Applied Economics, among others.

Jérôme Maucourant (France) teaches at the Université Jean Monnet in Saint-Étienne, France, and is a member of the team UMR 5206 Triangle (École normale supérieure of Lyon). He is the host of the Prolégomènes website (jerome-maucourant.com/). One of his last publications is the chapter ‘Karl Polanyi on Money’, In Michele Cangiani and Claus Thomasberge (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook on Karl Polanyi, pp. 206–216, Routledge, London and New York, 2024.

Surajit Mazumdar (India) is a Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, since 2014. He had previously served on the faculty of several other institutions in Delhi too. His academic research has focused on the Political Economy of Indian Development, with special focus on the Corporate Sector, Industrialization and on Globalization and its impact on the Indian Economy.

Seeraj Mohamed (South Africa) is Deputy Director for Economics in the South African Parliamentary Budget Office. He is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape. Before that, he was an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of the Western Cape and the Director of the Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development Research Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In 1993, he was a Research Trainee in the Macroeconomic Research Group (MERG) project commissioned by the African National Congress (ANC) to offer progressive post-apartheid options, which they rejected. (His article expresses his own views and not those of his employer).

Farhang Morady is an Associate Professor in International Development at the University of Westminster in London. His research focuses on the intersection of global politics and the economy, particularly emphasizing the Middle East and its developmental issues. He has collaborated with academics from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to produce scholarly works in English, Turkish and Spanish. His most recent publication, Contemporary Iran: Politics, Economy, Religion, was published by the Bristol University Press in 2020.

Maxence Poulin (Canada) is a PhD student at the University of Quebec in Montreal. He graduated in Political Science from the University of Montreal. His research focuses on socialist transitions in the Global South, imperialism and socialist China. His current research analyzes the dynamics and contradictions arising from the articulations among socialism, capitalism and imperialism in modern socialist China.

Poeura Tetoe (France) has a multidisciplinary background, notably in anthropology and economics. She graduated from the University of Paris 1 where she obtained a Master's degree in development economics and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). She is originally from Tahiti where she currently lives, after having lived for a long time in New Caledonia, but also stayed in Papua New Guinea during her studies.

Ying Yue (China) is a doctoral candidate specializing in modern and contemporary Chinese history at Tsinghua University. She has co-authored The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: A Study on Ravé’s French Translation (Liaoning People's Publishing House, 2023). Her article Gender, Family, and Political Power Construction is to be published in the Journal of China Women's University.

Paul Zarembka (United States) is a Research Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and, since 1977, has been Series Editor of Research in Political Economy. He published in mainstream economics and edited Frontiers in Econometrics, before moving into Marxist political economy. Along with numerous articles and presentations, he was an editor and a contributor for The Hidden History of 9–11 (Seven Stories Press, 2nd edition, 2008). In 2021, he published Key Elements of Social Theory Revolutionized by Marx (Brill hardcover, Haymarket softcover). Among other indices, he has appeared Marquis Who's Who in the World.

Chen Zhang (China) is a PhD student at Peking University. She specializes in French imperialism and State-led and social anti-imperialist movements in West Africa. She published papers on Canadian neo-fascist social movements and the CFA (zone franc de la Communauté financière en Afrique, or franc zone of the Financial Community in Africa) franc in Francophone Africa. Her current research analyzes anti-French imperialism social movements in contemporary Senegal.

Shaozhi Zhong (China) is a graduate student at the School of Economics at Renmin University of China and Kyushu University in Japan. His primary research interests lie in historical and comparative political economy.

This new volume of Research in Political Economy is devoted to themes related to various ‘trajectories of declining and destructive capitalism’, within the framework of contemporary Marxism. To discuss these themes, we brought together 15 texts, written by 20 social scientists from 10 countries. These authors are, for some, internationally renowned and experienced personalities and, for others, young researchers starting their careers, but all working in their own way to strengthen Marxism in order to apply its powerful methods to the interpretation and, above all, the transformation of the world. Their contributions deal with 12 economies, covering five continents: Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Senegal, South Africa, Lebanon, Iran, India, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Chile in the current period or very near past – plus two other countries, China and Cuba, in their more distant past preceding their respective socialist revolutions. In addition, the cases of Palestine and Israel, but also of Ukraine, are addressed in a final postscript written by Paul Zarembka.

Capitalism has always been destructive, since its origins. Let us take as examples the process of enclosures which, at the very centre of the world system, closed access to land to peasants, expelled many of them from their countryside, pushed them into an exodus towards the miserable slums of the working-class neighborhoods of industrial cities and threw their children into the throes of ‘dirty work’ during the First Industrial Revolution, or, more massive still, the processes of primitive accumulation at the time of the great ‘discoveries’ and the colonizations, accompanied by the variations of modern slavery, from encomienda imposed on Amerindians to ‘black birding’ suffered by the Oceanians, through the deportations of forced laborers from Africa to plantations of the Americas for centuries or, later, through the recruitment of Indian ryots or Chinese coolies. And what about the immensely devastating effects of imperialism on the peoples who were its victims or the human cataclysms of the World Wars, which were inter-imperialist clashes?

Nevertheless, these calamities were associated, in the northern countries, with high economic growth rates, productivity gains, technological innovations or even infrastructure construction and job creation. But present capitalism is now declining at the core of the global system, where economic growth of low intensity or close to zero prevails. Japan or, in Europe, Germany (and recently France), have been experiencing recession for years, Canada is almost there – the United States owing its relative ‘dynamism’ only to wealth transfers from abroad and its (still for a while) hegemonic position over the world system. Most of the indicators went haywire: drops in economic growth rates, consumption, trade; operating deficits of industrial companies; losses of jobs, housing, savings – the worst consequences of the structural crisis of capitalism still being borne by the poorest among the working classes. However, today, on a global scale, capitalism is above all destructive for individuals, societies and the environment.

The damages include a generalized malaise, pains in life, bad feelings in the workplace and phenomena of individual psychological collapse. This is about the combined effects of tension and stress caused by the threat of unemployment and pressures exerted by evaluation methods, leading to heightened competition between workers within a same production unit. From there comes a rupture in the bonds of respect, loyalty, conviviality and solidarity between colleagues. Hence the appearance of distrust among them, fear at work, self–control, reciprocal surveillance or pathologies of loneliness, accompanied by feelings of moral betrayal of oneself, awareness of a lie in the face of the requirements of ‘total quality’ and ‘certification by the market.’ Hence also – in a universe where the mobilization of energies is permanent, instability and flexibility become normalized, and collective spaces for thinking and acting together are shrinking –, a loss of moral reference points, of the sense of responsibility and of motivation to regain the tools to transform human relationships at work. Not to mention the hardening of labour conflicts and forms of repression against workers who resist and those who defend them. In this context, cases of suicide at work (wage earners, peasants) or elsewhere (unemployed) have multiplied.

On the scale of society, the damage caused by capitalism, under the effect of the concentration of private ownership of means of production and the logic of maximizing immediate individual profit, is innumerable at the levels of families, ethical values, political life, institutions – the State seeing its perimeter less reduced than its repressive functions reinforced to the detriment of its social ones – and, of course, the economies. The downward pressure on the rate of profit is incessant, despite its counter-trends. But the rise of credit allows capital to accumulate in various forms of money capital. The current crisis is reflected in explosions of fictitious capital, however, associated with real devaluations. In capitalism that throws workers into competition, pits people against each other, fuels racism and far rights, its neoliberal form leads all countries into a destructive spiral which pushes to make labour markets more flexible, to lower the ‘cost of work’, to privatize and outsource. Social rights and public services are dismantled. Trapped in a systemic crisis, capital no longer finds solutions and is much more dangerous. Between business bankruptcies and mass unemployment, bank destabilization and stock market crashes, the probability of a worsening of the systemic crisis of capital is high. The conditions are ripe for the contradictions of the capitalist system to become even more accentuated.

Let us take a concrete example, among others, of such contradictions. For decades, the peasantries of the capitalist world have been suffering an intensification of attacks by capital on their land, natural resources and means of production. These attacks have also been eroding national sovereignty, destroying communities, devastating ecosystems and threatening the survival of huge numbers of human beings. While agricultural production far exceeds needs, billions of people on earth today continue to suffer from undernourishment, most of them being peasants. Besides, the expansion of cultivated areas worldwide has been accompanied by a decline in peasant populations relative to those in cities, which absorb massive flows of rural exodus, mainly into overcrowded and unsanitary slums. Furthermore, a growing proportion of land is cultivated by transnational firms which no longer intend their agricultural production for household food consumption, but for agro-fuels or industrial outlets. In most southern countries which find themselves excluded from the benefits of capitalist globalization, growing agricultural exports derived from rental crops coexists with increasing imports of basic food goods.

Today, we are dealing, within the power of finance itself, with a systemic crisis: capital does not find internal solutions to the contradictory dynamics it deploys. Among the options for exiting the crisis which are considered by the dominant fractions of neoliberal globalist capital, there is unfortunately that of the war economy, i.e. a sector which programmes the destruction of human lives, as well as material and natural wealth. Militarization is the mode of existence of financial oligopolies' capital. Overaccumulation is the chronic disease of capitalism, from which it cannot escape and which in the long term marks its structural tendency to enter into crisis – and even decadence. To avoid this overaccumulation, a drastic, dramatic solution exists: the devaluation of capital through its massive destruction, and this is the terrain of war – even if, ultimately, imperialist wars further aggravate the imbalances of capitalism. An illustration of this extreme violence is given by the current drama experienced in Gaza by the Palestinian people, already the victim of a colonization and apartheid project, unconditionally supported by US imperialist hegemony and its northern allies, maintaining a permanent war and leading to what the International Court of Justice itself considers a ‘plausible risk of genocide.’

And how can we not talk about environmental disasters directly caused by the capitalist system? Nowadays, the general public is widely aware of the deterioration of the state of the planet and the global risks that result from it. This is the case of the ‘greenhouse effect’ and the expected manifestations of global warming linked to anthropogenic gas emissions. The effects of climate change are already perceptible, and in most ecological scandals, those responsible are clearly identifiable. Capitalism has become a threat to humanity as a whole – its neoliberal form only aggravating its impact. Climate crisis multiplies the risks of ecological disasters, but also of wars for access to natural resources – with their consequent migrations. The present situation resembles the beginning of a process of slow, gradual, huge collapse of the oligopolistic-financialized stage of capitalism. The latter, however, will not fall of its own accord; only popular struggles, massive, convergent and organized, will succeed. Thus, we have to get out of capitalism in order to finally open post-capitalist transitions made of authentically social or, better still, socialist alternatives.

Rémy Herrera, July 9, 2024