In this eye-opening and often scathing book, Walden Bello provides a forensic dissection of contemporary capitalism's multiple crises. Trenchant but constructive, Bello's analysis of the collapse of the global real economy - covering such issues as the Wall Street meltdown, the disintegration of the Greek economy and the rise of China - emphasizes the ever more pressing need to engage in a radical process of 'deglobalization' towards a decentralized, pluralistic world system. Only then will we be able to construct a fairer and more equitable society.
A stirring call to arms for all those interested in global economic justice.
Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines. He is currently also an adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton and St. Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, and before that, a professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. He was founding director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) in Oakland, California. He is the author or co-author of 17 books, including Dilemmas of Domination: the Unraveling of the American Empire (London: Zed Books, 2006) and Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy (London: Zed Books, 2004). He obtained his PhD in sociology from Princeton University.
Introduction: Globalization's Debacle - Crisis and Opportunity
PART I: THE DESTRUCTIVE DYNAMICS OF FINANCE CAPITAL
1. Why and How Finance Became Dominant
A Primer on the Wall Street Meltdown - Recovery Recedes, Convulsion Looms
2. The US: Cutting Edge of Crisis
Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood - The Political Consequences of Stagnation - Lessons of the Obama Debacle
3. Europe's Tragic Spiral
The Celtic Tiger Follows the Asian Tiger to Extinction - Greece: Same Tragedy, Different Scripts - Germany's Social Democrats and the European
4. Invulnerable Asia?
Chain Gang Economics - China Lassoes its Neighbors - Will China Save the World from Depression
PART II: GLOBALIZATION IN CRISIS
5. Real Economy of the Global Economy
Capital is a Fickle Lover - The Apple Connection - Labor Trafficking: the Modern-Day Slave Trade - Destroying African Agriculture
6. Capitalism and the Environment
Climate and Capitalism in Copenhagen - Can Capitalism Survive Climate Change? - Breaking the Climate Stalemate - Seven Billion… and Rising
7. The End of Multilateralism? - The Crisis of Multilateralism - The Dracula Round - U20: Will the Global Economy Resurface?
PART III: COMPETING ALTERNATIVES
8. Keynesianism in the Breach
Keynes: a Man for this Season? - The Coming Capitalist Consensus
9. Resistance and Transformation
Elites versus Greens in the Global South - Defy the Creditors and Get Away with it - The Arab Revolutions and the Democratic Imagination - The World Social Forum at the Crossroads
Conclusion: Deglobalization - An Idea Whose Time Has Come?
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