Capitalism's Last Stand?

'Walden Bello's work has been consistently outstanding, highly informative and full of insight.' Noam Chomsky 'Walden Bello is the world's leading no-nonsense revolutionary.' Naomi Klein, author of 'This Changes Everything' and 'The Shock Doctrine' 'Deploying his wide-ranging knowledge of political economy and his experiences as a movement activist, Waldon Bello dissects conventional diagnoses and solutions to planetary crises, offering his own proposals for deglobalization. Magnificently lucid, this is a must-read for all interested in capitalism's threat to human survival.' Michael Burawoy, University of California at Berkeley 'Bello is a global resource, as unrelenting in his critique of global capitalism as he is indefatigable in his efforts to actualize an emancipatory alternative. Capitalism's Last Stand is panoramic in its intellectual vision, biting in its analysis of the multifaceted failures of our 21st century political economy, and firm in the conviction that we can replace it with something better.' Peter Evans, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley and Senior Research Fellow, Brown University 'In nine essays, Walden Bello draws a fine grained portrait of the tumult in the world economy and offers his wise suggestions for a way forward. His road to the future, deglobalization, emerges not out of wishful thinking but from both his analytical work and his political activism over the course of the past decades in Focus on the Global South and now in the parliament of the Philippines. Cataclysm stares the planet in the face: ideas such as that of Walden's might just be the tonic for a renewal of our hope.' Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.

Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines. He is currently also an adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton and at St Mary's University in Halifax, Canada; he has also been professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. He was founding director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) in Oakland, California. He is the author or co-author of seventeen books, including Dilemmas of Domination: the Unraveling of the American Empire (Zed Books, 2006) and Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy (Zed Books, 2004). He obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.

Introduction: Globalization's Debacle - Crisis and Opportunity Part I: The Destructive Dynamics of Finance Capital 1. Why and How Finance Became Dominant A Primer on the Wall Street Meltdown - Recovery Recedes, Convulsion Looms 2. The US: Cutting Edge of Crisis Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood - The Political Consequences of Stagnation - Lessons of the Obama Debacle 3. Europe's Tragic Spiral The Celtic Tiger Follows the Asian Tiger to Extinction - Greece: Same Tragedy, Different Scripts - Germany's Social Democrats and the European 4. Invulnerable Asia? Chain Gang Economics - China Lassoes its Neighbors - Will China Save the World from Depression Part II: Globalization in Crisis 5. Real Economy of the Global Economy Capital is a Fickle Lover - The Apple Connection - Labor Trafficking: Modern-Day Slave Trade - Destroying African Agriculture 6. Capitalism and the Environment Climate and Capitalism in Copenhagen - Can Capitalism Survive Climate Change? - Breaking the Climate Stalemate - Seven Billion ... and Rising 7. The End of Multilateralism? The Crisis of Multilateralism - The Dracula Round - U20: Will the Global Economy Resurface? Part III: Competing Alternatives 8. Keynesianism in the Breach Keynes: a Man for this Season? - The Coming Capitalist Consensus 9. Resistance and Transformation Elites versus Greens in the Global South - Defy the Creditors and Get Away with it - The Arab Revolutions and the Democratic Imagination - The World Social Forum at the Crossroads Conclusion: Deglobalization - An Idea Whose Time Has Come?