Globalize this

Bay Area journalist Sasha Lilley collects 15 dynamic interviews with leading left thinkers in Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations With Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult. Her subjects agree that capital is both a means of production (e.g., factories) and a relation between buyers and sellers of labor power. Yet they apply that critique to diverse themes. Ellen Meiksins Wood, for instance, unpacks the meanings and methods of market dependence under an empire of capitalism. David Harvey links “accumulation by dispossession,” forcing peasants off the land to work for wages (China and Mexico) to capital’s push to privatize public services (U.S. charter schools). Leo Panitch suggests practice and theory for labor unions under attack. Ursula Huws outlines the rise of a gendered and racialized cybertariat here and abroad. Tariq Ali considers anti-imperialism, revolution and reaction. Noam Chomsky and Andrej Grubacic examine anarchism and Marxism. Lilley’s anthology is a fine intro to radical political economy.