Ilias Alami

Next book to be discussed with the @scwobservatory.bsky.social comrades

Epstein Family Values • EQUATOR The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants

Fascinating, wide ranging piece by Melinda Cooper. Strongly recommend.
www.equator.org/articles/eps...

Non-Hegemony | Phenomenal World The neoliberal world order is collapsing. In its wake, powerful states have abandoned multilaterialism in pursuit of national aims.

Over at Phenomenal World, @iliasalami.bsky.social, @jacktaggart.bsky.social, and @tomchodor.bsky.social consider the causes and consequences of the emerging post-multilateral world.

Some recent acquisitions. Very excited!

Converge's new album 💘

This is so good!

Thanks, Jess!!

Melinda Cooper pulls no punches 🔥🔥🔥

"Primal fathers want an extended household, not a family. They gladly transgress the conservative taboos against adultery, incest and intergenerational sex because all members of their household have the status of servant, whatever their blood relationship"

I'm reading a literature review which is basically everything I have written on state capitalism over the past 6 years but chewed on and spat out cold by a Chatbot. Gross.

For those in Cambridge, I'm giving a talk on Wednesday 18 February, 6-7:30pm, at St Catherine's college

www.politicaleconomy.group.cam.ac.uk/events/dr-il...

Non-Hegemony | Phenomenal World The neoliberal world order is collapsing. In its wake, powerful states have abandoned multilaterialism in pursuit of national aims.

🚨 New article w/ @jacktaggart.bsky.social & @iliasalami.bsky.social in @phenomenalworld.bsky.social examining the structural drivers of the crisis of the "rules-based order" & the emerging non-hegemonic order characterised by unmaking of multilateralism 👇 www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/non...

WTO chief urges China to shift on trade surplus FILE: Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva on February 16, 2024. (Photo by PIERRE ALBOUY /

What a world we live in. WTO chief urges China to trade less.
I don't want to downplay what China could do to "address" this, but this outcome is less a story of Chinese trade policy than it is one of extremely uneven global capitalist development.
business.inquirer.net/574306/wto-c...

Weekend reading

Thanks Toby!

Helpful overview of how the US and other global north countries are undermining multilateral institutions and/or weaponizing them for great power conflict. Ends with a fair and concise assessment of the alternative approach to sustaining and reshaping multilateralism led by China

Non-Hegemony | Phenomenal World The neoliberal world order is collapsing. In its wake, powerful states have abandoned multilaterialism in pursuit of national aims.

Link to the piece: www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/non...

New piece for @phenomenalworld.bsky.social, written with @jacktaggart.bsky.social and @tomchodor.bsky.social! It's an attempt at grasping the dismantling of multilateral global governance, in light of intensifying geopolitical rivalries, resurgent state capitalism, and hegemonic crisis. Link below:

Rent and the Critique of Capitalist Political Ecology: From the Appropriation of Nature to Uneven Development Recently, critical scholars interested in the political ecology of contemporary capitalism have highlighted rent as a key category for the analysis of nature–capital relations. However, this ecolog...

It's some of the best English-language writing on ground rent since Harvey's "Limits to Capital."

Notably, it draws on the untranslated work of the Argentinian researcher Juan Iñigo Carrera, who has revolutionized the materialist analysis of ground rent, value circulation, and uneven development.

Many congratulations to Baptiste Albertone for defending his fantastic PhD dissertation yesterday! A pleasure to examine his thesis "On the Periphery of the Anthropocene: Development, Freedom, and Nature" with @abenanav.bsky.social

Reading Marx and drinking Guinness

Shot and chaser on Venezuelan oil, the reluctance of private companies to invest and the (state capitalist) alternative (last pic giving context from @iliasalami.bsky.social and @adamdixon.bsky.social's book on state capitalism).

Imperial State Capitalism A new geopolitics is shaping the development of AI and the energy transition.

NO MATTER how AI data centers are powered, their proliferation is a scandalously undemocratic—and therefore unsustainable—allocation of resources.

"State-capitalist AI wars encourage the irrational use and allocation of resources."

— @iliasalami.bsky.social on @transitionsec.bsky.social

Apply!

That looks great, Daniel!

🚨New piece in Politics & Society! w/ @maxkiefel.bsky.social @mathiaslarsen.bsky.social
Internationalizing Industrial Policy: How China and the United States Use State Capacity to Secure Critical Minerals for Electric Vehicles 🇨🇳 🇺🇸
doi.org/10.1177/0032...

New paper in CNS:

'Cold War Ecology. Socialist Environmental Reflexivities from the “Club of Moscow” to Harich's “Degrowth Communism” in the GDR'

This link gives full access ⤵️
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/VNGYF...

An illustrated thread Part 1 ⬇️

First lazy sunday in a while. Spending some time with this!

Iran in Revolt | Kayhan Valadbaygi Deep political-economic transformations are causing recurrent waves of unrest, with no long-term solution in sight.

📣 My new article on Iran’s latest unrest for @phenomenalworld.bsky.social
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ira...

Iran has witnessed another wave of unrest beginning on 28 December—the fourth major uprising since 2017. (1/5)

Santiago de Chile doing it right

On Tuesday 13 January in Santiago de Chile