Author: IPE
IPE LECTURE 1
Globalisation; world market; global capitalism; world economic system; international financial markets; global money markets;
TNCs; multinational corporations; global brands;
G8; IMF; World Bank; WTO; TRIPS; United Nations; Davos;
World Social Forum; ILO; NGOs; Greenpeace; Amnesty International.
Modernisation: urbanisation; development; industrialisation; democratisation; feminism; civil rights.
Empire: imperialism; neo-colonialism; Americanisation; Coca-colonisation; North v South; proletarianisation.
Neo-classical economics: demand-and-supply curves; marginal utility; mathematical illusion; ahistorical theory; rational bourgeois egoist; “private vice is public gain� (Bernard Mandeville).
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Volume 1 & Volume 2. (1776)
Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society.
Aristotle, The Politics.
Muhammad Ibn Khaldûn, The Mugaddimah.
The Scottish Enlightenment 1707-1789; David Hume; Liberalism; the materialist conception of history; social evolution; grand narrative of human progress; social organisation of human labour.
Adam Smith’s theory of historical evolution: hunting -> herding -> agriculture -> commerce.
140,000 years ago: hunter-gatherer tribes;
12,000 years ago: agricultural villages;
4,000 years ago: market towns;
300 years ago: capitalist cities.
Politics and economics are phenomena of the last 4,000 years of human history, i.e. one 35th of the total.
Pre-modern tribal and agricultural societies are non-monetary patriarchal societies: subsistence; sharing; gifts; tribute; slavery; serfdom; plunder.
Money is surplus production: politics; taxes; war; religion; bureaucracy; art; festivals; trade; luxuries.
Feudalism: the moral economy; just prices and just wages; divine law; taboo on usury; artisan guilds and merchant fraternities; apprenticeships; pilgrimages; the Caliphate; the Silk Route; the spice trade.
Capitalism is a phenomenon of the last 300 years of human history, i.e. one 466th of the total.
Christopher Columbus “discovers� America in 1492 and shifts the centre of the world to Western Europe: Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and England.
Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History.
Imperialism: looting; slave trade; monopolies; concessions; colonies; protectorates.
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy.
World systems theory: Baghdad -> Cairo -> Venice -> Cadiz -> Amsterdam -> London -> New York
“The world presents itself as a fantastic array of commodities� (Karl Marx)
The evolution of money: merchant capital -> industrial and financial capital.
The evolution of politics: warriors and priests -> bureaucrats and propagandists.
The evolution of labour: peasants in countryside -> workers in cities.
The world market creates the nation state – and vice versa.
Plassey 1757: the East India Company defeats the Nawab of Bengal;
New Delhi 1947: the Indian Republic ends the British empire;
London 2007: the GLA celebrates Indian independence.
Within this MySpace version of the electronic agora, cybernetic communism was mainstream and unexceptional. What had once been a revolutionary dream was now an enjoyable part of everyday life.