Radical Political Economics: Principles, Perspectives, and Post-Capitalist Futures

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.

Mona Ali is Associate Professor of Economics at the State University of New York. Her research on international political economy has been published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the International Review of Applied Economics and Géopolitique, Réseau, Énergie, Environnement, Nature among elsewhere. Her popular writing for Phenomenal World has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic and featured in the Financial Times. She received her PhD from the New School for Social Research and she has served on the steering committee of Union for Radical Political Economics.

Ann E. Davis is Associate Professor of Economics (retired) at Marist College, and served as chair of the Department of Accounting, Finance, and Economics, and chair of the Faculty. She has published articles in the Review of Radical Political Economics, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Critical Historical Studies, and Journal of Economic Issues. She has published four books and various book chapters, and served in leadership roles in heterodox economic associations.