This volume of Research in Political Economy is devoted to themes related to various ‘trajectories of declining and destructive capitalism’, within the framework of contemporary Marxism. To discuss these themes, we brought together 15 texts, written by 20 social scientists from 10 countries. These authors are, for some, internationally renowned and experienced personalities and, for others, young researchers starting their careers, but all working in their own way to strengthen Marxism in order to apply its powerful methods to the interpretation and, above all, the transformation of the world. Their contributions deal with 12 economies, covering five continents: Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Senegal, South Africa, Lebanon, Iran, India, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Chile in the current period or very near past – plus two other countries, China and Cuba, in their more distant past preceding their respective socialist revolutions. In addition, the cases of Palestine and Israel, but also of Ukraine, are addressed in a final postscript written by Paul Zarembka.
Presentation
Rémy Herrera
Republican China as a Unity of Opposites: An Analysis of the Essence of Semi–colonialism and Semi–Feudalism from 1911 to 1949
Maxence Poulin and Chen Zhang
China and Marxist Political Economy Confronting World Capitalism: Revisiting the 'Social Nature' Debate of the 1930s-1940s
Dic Lo and Shaozhi Zhong
Gender and Class Liberation: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Yan’An Period
Ying Yue
A Brief Account of the Destruction of Pre–revolutionary Cuba by the Capitalist System
Rémy Herrera
The Archimedean Lever of the Federal Republic of Germany: Ordo–Liberalism and Social Market Economy
André Gilles Latournald
Along the British Road to Oligarchy: Deaths of Dispair and Moments of Danger
Thierry Labica
Mitterrandian Reformism, or the Great Transformation of Declining French Capitalism
Zhiming Long and Rémy Herrera
The Spanish Financial–Real Estate Capitalism and Its Socio-Political Implications
Juan Pablo Mateo
Senegal: The Descent into the Abyss with the IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs
Demba Moussa Dembele
Post–Apartheid South Africa: A Neoliberal Disaster Made and in the Making
Seeraj Mohamed and Ben Fine
A Broken History: Contemporary Lebanon (1958-2018) – How the Lure for Profit Destroyed a Nation
Frédéric Farah and Jérôme Maucourant
The Crisis of Legitimacy in Iran and the Ongoing Struggle for Freedom
Farhang Morady
The Ugly Underbelly of “Emergence”: Indian Capitalism in the Era of Globalization
Surajit Mazumdar
Papua New Guinea, in the Trap of Australian Imperialism
Poeura Tetoe and Rémy Herrera
The Long–lasting Battle of Chile
Marcelo Dias Carcanholo and Hugo Figueira de Souza Corrêa
The Israeli Genocide of Palestianians, the Ukraine War, and Dangers Ahead
Paul Zarembka
About the Contributors
Index
261 pages, 2025