This collection of essays engages in the analysis of key concepts, concerns, and cutting-edge insights in radical political economy.
Offering a robust critique of capitalist institutions as well as of mainstream economics, radical political economics reveals the structures and dynamics of global capitalism. The attention to method, ideology, and institutions differentiates it from mainstream approaches to economics, which often obfuscate how capitalism actually works. While maintaining a central focus on capitalism, the analyses in this book encompass a variety of issues from racial discrimination, gender inequality, to economic development and imperialism. Capitalism is an economic system based on the exploitation of workers to generate surplus value (profit) which is then appropriated by the owners of capital. Under global capitalism, profit maximization precedes other social concerns such as protection of the environment. Political economy understands that social relations are shaped by class, race, geography, and gender. Capitalism skews social relations of production and reproduction. It perpetuates inequalities along classed, gendered, racialized, and geographic lines.
Radical political economy offers ideas and policies to change capitalism, in ways that are more beneficial for people and the planet. Incorporating insights from a range of disciplines including history, philosophy, political science, anthropology, sociology, and law, the wide range of topics, diverse set of scholars, and consideration of future political-economy formations offers readers a deeper understanding of the contours of contemporary global capitalism and post-capitalist possibilities in the twenty-first century.