This book provides a critical engagement between contending historical materialist approaches that have played a crucial role in shaping post-positivist International Relations theory. It analyzes globalization as a process of state formation and argues that its fate depends on the neo-liberal recomposition of labour relations. .

Provides a critical engagement between contending historical materialist approaches that have played a crucial role in shaping post-positivist International Relations theory. It draws out the differences of how class struggle is understood as well as the common concern for understanding the historical specificity of capitalism and process of state formation, through a focus on the social relations of production and labour.

This original collection builds towards a new theory of spatial development, in the context of a new and dynamic era of capitalism. Economic restructuring is no longer limited to the nation-state, but is now seen on a global level. The distinguished contributors to this volume examine global economic dynamics and place these dynamics in their historical context. Throughout, specific studies present evidence and sketch the contours and dynamics of this new socio-territorial world. This exceptional work makes an important contribution to our understanding of both the processes of global restructuring and their consequences for urban and regional development. It will be essential reading for scholars and students in sociology, economics, political science, human geography, planning, urban and regional studies, and development studies. "This work makes a contribution to our understanding of both the processes of global restructuring and their consequences for urban and regional development." --Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society

This book assesses the forces of social struggle shaping the past and present of the global political economy from the perspective of historical materialism. Based on the philosophy of internal relations, the character of capital is understood in such a way that the ties between the relations of production, state-civil society, and conditions of class struggle can be realised. By conceiving the internal relationship of global capitalism, global war, global crisis as a struggle-driven process, the book provides a novel intervention on debates within theories of 'the international'. Through a set of conceptual reflections, on agency, structure and the role of discourses embedded in the economy, class struggle is established as our point of departure. This involves analysing historical and contemporary themes on the expansion of capitalism through uneven and combined development, the role of the state and geopolitics, and conditions of exploitation and resistance. These conceptual reflections and thematic considerations are then extended in a series of empirical interventions, including a focus on the 'rising powers' of the BRICS, conditions of the 'new imperialism', and the ongoing financial crisis. The book delivers a radically open-ended dialectical consideration of ruptures of resistance within the global political economy.

Bill Dunn considers and contests accounts of globalization and post-Fordism that see structural economic change in the late Twentieth-century as having fundamentally worsened the conditions and weakened the potential of labour. Including a comparative survey of restructuring in four major industries; automobiles, construction, microelectronics and finance, the book suggests the timing of change and its complex and contradictory nature undermine structural explanations of labour's situation. It redirects attention towards labour's political defeats and own institutional shortcomings.

This book examines the role that the IMF has played in the management of financial crises in developed nations. The topic is of particular significance in light of the global financial crisis that emerged following the collapse of American sub-prime mortgage markets in 2007, and the subsequent sovereign debt problems of many Western states.