The Syllabus

On Vivek Chibber, Political Marxism, and the Tradition of Telling Half the Story – Spectre Journal Bilal Zahoor challenges Political Marxism's, and in particular Vivek Chibber's, reduction of capitalism to its hyperlocal origin in the English countryside.

By reducing capitalism’s origins to the English countryside, this piece argues that Vivek Chibber ignores how colonial violence, exploitation, and diverse labor forms were intrinsic to capitalism’s global emergence.

By Bilal Zahoor in @journalspectre.bsky.social

This video is featured in this week's edition of the Best of Political Economy: buff.ly/WLMw523

This seminar was organised on 24th April, 2025 as part of the Economic Histories of the Global South Seminar Series. About the chapter: Marxist scholarship has been instrumental to the theorization… The Making of Mozambique’s Working Class: Race, Empire and Proletarianization

Exploring the dynamics of proletarianization and peasantry in Mozambique, this talk critiques both the colonial forced labor systems and the post-independence shift to neoliberal extractivism under IMF-led structural adjustments.

Ft. Ruth Castel-Branco at @rethinkecon.bsky.social

buff.ly/nqd5EPt

This episode is part of this week's edition of the Best of Political Economy: buff.ly/WLMw523

Ep 368 - Socialism Unmade: Confronting Five Centuries of Capital with Ali Kadri - Macro N Cheese Steve talks with Dr. Ali Kadri, whose academic work focuses on the political economy of development, imperialism, and the Arab world.

Capitalism is a self-perpetuating system of exploitation that commodifies everything. This dialogue argues that since its origins in the 1500s, capitalism has driven inequality, environmental destruction, and premature death, with imperialism intensifying these harms.

W/ Ali Kadri

buff.ly/QN6w75B

World (formerly Worldcoin) is Silicon Valley’s latest gambit to fuse biometric surveillance with finance under the guise of "saving" humanity. Our article of the week dissects World as a paradigmatic case of cyberlibertarian technopolitics.

By @laura4lano.bsky.social et al.

buff.ly/TXMUAce

This essay is part of this week's edition of the Best of Political Economy: buff.ly/WLMw523

Marxism can still change the world I have spent my life interpreting capitalism in order to build an alternative

This piece revisits Marx’s core ideas, breaking them down to reveal how individual capitalist pursuits exacerbate systemic instability, as competition drives labor productivity up while profitability falls.

By @davidharvey.org in @newstatesman1913.bsky.social

buff.ly/qIwZ1v8

W.E.B. Du Bois’s data visualizations offered a subversive intervention of self-representation amid the openly racist grammar of the 1900 Paris Exposition. Our video of the week explores Du Bois's use of infographics.

Featuring Adam Holmes at @umasslibraries.bsky.social

buff.ly/EYvqKMo

This work is featured in this week's edition of the Best of Political Economy: buff.ly/WLMw523

The Road Taken View Table of Contents Read Excerpt

Through a century of trade and war, 19th-century China was pulled into the orbit of European capitalism. This book interrogates this shift, showing how the collapse of China's imperial order paved the way for its capitalist transition.

By Sung Hee Ru on @sunypress.bsky.social

buff.ly/xqrpIqa

Aphorisms—those sharp, compact sentences that map our dilemmas—are more than clever turns of phrase. As our podcast of the week shows, aphorisms are portable tools for resisting and unsettling both official dogma and algorithmic distraction.

With James Geary on @holpod.bsky.social

buff.ly/8kCcesL

If counted as a nation, armed forces would be the world’s fourth-largest polluter. Yet as our Portuguese pick of the week details, the global climate regime systematically exempts militaries from reporting or reducing their emissions.

By Isabel Seta in @apublica.org

buff.ly/QjaGC2B

Once a fringe obsession, prediction markets are suddenly everywhere, promising the ability to channel "collective wisdom." But as our essay of the week argues, apps like Kashi and Polymarket are just the latest stage of financial extraction.

By @ayeshaasiddiqi.bsky.social

buff.ly/peGQPcr

The world may be “capitalizing,” but for many, property income remains a mirage. Our hidden gem of the week reveals that although capital income inequality has declined, ownership remains exclusive.

By @brankomilan.bsky.social & @marcoranaldi.bsky.social at @stone-lis.bsky.social

buff.ly/m5XkTf6

How did Hummus, a dish once shunned by Zionist settlers, become a national symbol of Israeli identity? Rejecting the simple narrative of cultural theft, our book of the week maps how “Arabness” itself is both erased and instrumentalized within Israeli society.

By Dafna Hirsch

buff.ly/xM7iUnr

Who Makes a Doll of their Ex? | History's Worst Break Ups | Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Listen to Who Makes a Doll of their Ex? | History's Worst Break Ups from Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A 'bad boy' of Austrian art meets the 'loveliest girl in Vienna',…

Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler’s turbulent romance inspired art, scandal, and the bizarre. This dialogue traces how Kokoschka’s obsession drove him to commission a life-sized swan-skin doll of Alma post-breakup, which he ceremoniously destroyed in a drunken fit.

With Caitlin Hoerr

The Gunpowder Hegemony: The Assault Rifle as a Vector of Sociopolitical and Territorial Transformation in Rio de Janeiro Analyzing public security in Rio de Janeiro over the last four decades requires isolating a variable that transcends its tactical function to assume an ontological status in criminal governance: the…

Rio de Janeiro's assault rifle epidemic has redefined crime, power, and governance. This piece argues that tackling this crisis demands dismantling international supply chains and choking the financial lifelines of criminal factions.

By @robertouchoa.bsky.social

Beirut’s History Is Being Repaved Developers have dismantled part of the ancient Roman walls in the city center to make way for a parking lot

This piece traces the erasure of the Roman city wall beneath a new parking lot in Beirut, exposing how private capital and complicit officials conspire to sever the city’s living residents from the archaeology underfoot.

By Madeline Edwards in @newlinesmag.bsky.social

This video is featured in this week's edition of the Best of Social Justice: buff.ly/JIQWK6V

In this webinar, prof. Fressoz explores how the idea of “energy transition”—from wood to coal, coal to oil, and now to renewables or nuclear—has shaped the way we imagine climate solutions. It… Energy Transition: A Reassuring Future Built on an Imaginary Past

This webinar debunks the widely accepted notion of seamless shifts from one energy source to another, arguing instead that energy history is one of "addition," not substitution, with fossil fuels continually expanding alongside new technologies.

Featuring Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

buff.ly/iAzK4Cu

This book can be found in this week's edition of the Best of Social Justice: buff.ly/JIQWK6V

Medicines That Feed Us: Plants, Healing, and Sovereignty in a Toxic World We will be performing site maintenance on Thursday, Feb. 26 and expect checkout to be unavailable for several hours beginning at 8:00 a.m. EST. If you need assistance during this time, please contact…

If the line between poison and remedy is shaped by power, whose health—and soil—gets sacrificed for the promise of progress? This book responds by tracking Tanzanian plants and healers who refuse to let “toxicity” remain invisible.

By Stacey A. Langwick on @dukepress.bsky.social

buff.ly/HSjrjeY

Egalitarian dreams often cast long and troubling shadows: that's the key takeaway from our open-access article of the week, which argues that efforts to produce equality always hinge on the violence of commensuration.

By Natalia Buitron & Grégory Deshoullière

buff.ly/UdlzsAC

This episode can be found in this week's edition of the Best of Social Justice: buff.ly/JIQWK6V

Needs No Introduction: Pension divestment: From funding crises to a radical pension politics In our third episode of the season, Tom Fraser, a union researcher and author of Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future, and Becca Steckle, a research and policy analyst with…

Canadian public sector pensions are entangled with global capital markets, driving housing crises, militarism, and even funding human rights violations like the occupation of Palestine. This conversation examines how pension funds profit from exploitation.

With Tom Fraser et al.

buff.ly/0JyBozN

The university is under siege—from both the right and from within. As our video of the week details, decades of privatization have transformed higher education from a public good into an individual investment, feeding both popular resentment and elite capture.

Ft. Craig Calhoun

buff.ly/YlBp41q

This piece is featured in this week's edition of the Best of Social Justice: buff.ly/JIQWK6V

Housing Cost: One in Seven Municipalities in Europe Unaffordable for Nurses This map by CORRECTIV.Europe shows the places where even a mid-level salary like a nurse's isn't enough to afford a small apartment.

Europe’s housing crisis is squeezing out essential workers. This data analysis shows that even nurses, earning middle-class wages, can't afford small apartments in over 15% of EU cities.

By Lilith Grull & @fridathurm.bsky.social in @correctiv.org

buff.ly/LvCxYx3

The past is not an emotional void, our podcast of the week insists, but a landscape of feeling shaped by contested histories and ruptured boundaries. As the guest argues, emotions are embedded in historically contingent “emotional communities.”

With @barbararosenwein.bsky.social

buff.ly/cSRFTfi