I’d be interested in either Imperialism or Desai’s Geopolitical Economy, I’ve recently read and Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, and liked it. I made some annotations (I should go back and turn then into notes), but I do remember getting bogged down in the middle parts where I felt like I didn’t have enough background in Finance for her arguments to sink in. So a reading group would definitely be helpful.
I have on my list some other books that comrades here have also listed:
Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century (2016), Patnaik and Patnaik’s A Theory of Imperialism (2017), and I’d like more recommendations of Amin’s Political Economy work, even if we don’t end up reading any. On my list already I have Accumulation on a World Scale (1957) (An older work), Unequal Development (1976), and Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx’s Law of Value (2018).
Jacobin was my gateway into leftism back in the Bernie days, but since then I (and I believe many on Hexbear) have mostly nothing but bones to pick. And somewhat like the zeal a new convert has, I love dunking on Jacobin. Their social democracy, or democratic-socialism, whatever-ism annoys me, and Even here on hexbear you can find examples of their silly takes. From equating all forms of political violence, such as the Trump shooting with Trayvon Martin, as bad, saying that we in America are actually in the most free of societies and that Marx was wrong, and their endorsement of Liberal Socialism
.
They’re an insult to their namesake lol.
Also their theory journal, Catalyst is sus. And I just see it as the vehicle for the acceptable “left” academics who at heart are liberals and coop leftist ideas. Vivek Chibber, the founder of Catalyst rejects Lenin’s theory of Imperialism as flawed, implying that imperialism is actually divorced from the laws of motion of capitalism. And also rejecting the notion of labor aristocracy.
Jacobin is just the reincarnation of Kaustky. They don’t shy away form it. They were important to me at earlier phase of my own development, but I think most of us on Hexbear have grown to a point where we have mostly nothing but criticism of them.
And when the chips are down and the it’s the time for action. The new “Jacobins” will have nothing but contempt for the revolution, for the real anti-imperialist movement, for real de-colonization. They show this already.