Gopal Balakrishnan
‘Speculations on the Stationary State’ Will the present crisis issue in a new phase of accumulation, or a growthless ‘stationary state’? Gopal Balakrishnan charts epochal trends in world capitalism, and their imbrication with the debt-fuelled imbalances of the long downturn.

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NLR 59 was mailed out to subscribers on 16th September 2009

CONTENTS

  1. Gopal Balakrishnan: Speculations on the Stationary State Will the present crisis issue in a new phase of accumulation, or a growthless ‘stationary state’? Gopal Balakrishnan charts epochal trends in world capitalism, and their imbrication with the debt-fuelled imbalances of the long downturn.
  2. Jan Breman: Myth of the Global Safety Net Report from the lower depths of the global employment hierarchy, as the economic crisis multiplies the effects of informalization and agrarian decline on the billion-strong reserve army of labour.
  3. Tariq Ali: Death of a Comrade Tariq Ali pays tribute to Peter Gowan, long-standing friend and mainstay of NLR’s editorial board, and his unique combination of analytical acuity, appetite for debate and generosity of spirit.
  4. Peter Gowan: The Ways of the World In an interview recorded earlier this year, Peter Gowan recalls his political and intellectual trajectory, from the end of empires to Marxist militancy, from Eastern Bloc shipyards to the rise of the Dollar–Wall Street Regime.
  5. James Buchan: A Bazaari Bonaparte? James Buchan traces historical patterns of revolution and reaction behind the June Days in Iran. Echoes of the past and likely after-shocks of Ahmadinejad’s electoral coup.
  6. Jean-Paul Sartre: War Diary Selections from Sartre’s first notebook of the Phony War, previously untranslated. Elegant elaborations on an array of themes—philosophy, history, politics, personal life—compose a dazzling self-portrait of the thinker within the frame of his times.
  7. Terry Eagleton: Jameson and Form Identifying Fredric Jameson’s literary style as one of his signal achievements, Eagleton asks whether his formal emphases also serve to stave off questions of content: morality, sexuality, subjectivity.

BOOK REVIEWS

  1. Achin Vanaik on Bill Emmott, Rivals. Contending Asian powers as arbiters of the 21st century, through Western establishment eyes.
  2. Gabriel Piterberg on Shlomo Sand, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?. Heterodox attempt to refute Israel’s founding myths of historical exile.
  3. Owen Hatherley on Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant. A super-curator wanders in search of art after postmodernism.
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Articles:

  2. Peter Gowan,
    ‘The Ways of the World’ In an interview recorded earlier this year, Peter Gowan recalls his political and intellectual trajectory, from the end of empires to Marxist militancy, from Eastern Bloc shipyards to the rise of the Dollar–Wall Street Regime.
  4. Jan Breman,
    ‘Myth of the Global Safety Net’ Report from the lower depths of the global employment hierarchy, as the economic crisis multiplies the effects of informalization and agrarian decline on the billion-strong reserve army of labour.
  5. Perry Anderson,
    ‘A New Germany?’ What have been the outcomes of reunification in the Federal Republic? Perry Anderson charts contradictory cross-currents within its polity, economy, culture and society, gauging the impact of a contested neoliberal offensive on the ‘Modell Deutschland’ and its intellectual life.
  6. Fredric Jameson,
    ‘Filming Capital’ The author of Archaeologies of the Future unearths fragments from ‘ideological antiquity’ in Alexander Kluge’s recent film on Capital. Encounters with Eisenstein’s unrealized equivalent, seeking a cinematic transposition of the commodity fetish.

Editorials:

  1. Afghanistan, Reasons for the West’s stalemate in Afghanistan sought neither in lack of troops and imperial treasure, nor in Pakistani obstruction, but in the very nature of the occupation regime. Tariq Ali on the actual results of ‘state-building’ in the Hindu Kush, as a broken country is subjected to the combined predations of NGOs and NATO.
  2. Europe, Europe’s political landscape, revealed by the protest votes in France and the Netherlands. Mutation and dilation of the EU in the age of liberal hegemony, and lessons to be drawn from the unprecedented irruptions of discontent against it.
  3. Chechnya, Eager to embrace Putin, Western rulers and pundits continue to connive at the Russian occupation of Chechnya, as Moscow’s second murderous war in the Caucasus enters its sixth year. Traditions of resistance, popular demands for sovereignty and Russia’s brutal military response, in Europe’s forgotten colony.
  4. Iraq, With the now unanimous support of the ‘international community’, can Washington hope to recoup its gamble in Iraq? Prospects for the resistance and the Occupation, as the UN-approved government is hoisted into place.
  5. New Labour, Causes and consequences of Britain’s distinctive contribution to the repertoire of latter-day neoliberalism. The domestic and foreign record of the Blair regime, and its hybrid role in a shifting Atlantic order.
  6. Middle East, As fears are voiced within the US establishment of impending debacle in Iraq, a survey of the embattled landscape from Baghdad, Ramallah and Tehran to Beirut and Damascus. American control is slipping, Ali argues—but it is too soon to count on imperial defeat.
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