October 24th marks United Nations Day, commemorating the moment in 1945 when the UN officially came into being, following the ratification of its Charter by the majority of signatories, including t
The Nobel Prize for Institutions: A Critique of Acemoglu and Robinson’s Framework
Introduction On the same day the Nobel Committee announced its decision to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson for their work on institut
A Class Analysis of Russia’s Imperialism
First published at LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal In his interview “Political imperialism, Putin’s Russia, and the need for a global left alternative,” Ilya Matveev
Boris Kagarlitsky: China and Russia in the modern world-system — A dual challenge
This is one of those unique cases when I republish someone else’s article. But I feel compelled to do so. The article is written by my co-author Boris Kagarlitsky, currently serving a 5-year
The struggle for global hegemony (Re-reading Giovanni Arrighi)
Two-logic framework As Branko Milanovic has recently remarked, there are some famous books whose ideas have been so absorbed into social sciences that the books themselves are no longer read.
Reinvigorating Marx: A Critical Exploration of Value Theory in 21st-Century Capitalism
MARX’S VALUE THEORY IN A NEW ERA Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century Through the Prism of Value by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts aims to explain 21st-century capitalism through Ma
Foreign Direct Investment: The Opium for Development
A Marxist Take on Investment Hopes Last week I presented our research (with Boris Kagarlitsky) at the annual meeting of the Armenian Economic Association in Yerevan. The research takes the Marxist
Russia’s Delinking from the West: The Great Equalizer
In this post, I discuss the recent trend towards more income equality in Russia. Mainstream economics explain it by the country’s transition to war economy. I apply Marxist analysis to demonstrat
Dependency, Corruption and Prison
It is always a pleasant surprise when your research comes with unexpected results. Getting confirmation of your ideas is somewhat boring but unexpected results challenge you intellectually, prompti
Dependency Theory After 50 Years: Development, United Nations, War in Ukraine and the Global Fragmentation
This book by the prominent Argentinian economist Claudio Katz explores the contemporary relevance of the dependency theory: to what extent does it explain today’s world? Dependency theory: the fu