Questioning Globalized Militarism

Nuclear and Military Production and Critical EconomicTheory

Peter Custers

Foreword by : Samir Amin

9788189487205

Tulika Books 2007

Language: English

452 Pages

6.25 x 9.5 Inches

In Stock!

Price INR 695.0 Price USD 34.75

Book Club Price INR 521.25 USD 26.0625

About the Book

In this wide-ranging study Peter Custers seeks to highlight the importance of the production and consumption of arms as a form of social waste within the capitalist world order. The study encompasses critical economic theory, historical studies of the rise of capitalism, conceptualizations of international trade, and analyses of the inequities spawned by globalized militarism. Drawing especially on Volume 2 of Marx's Capital, the author creatively develops some of Marx's classical themes. The individual circuit of capital outlined in that work is utilized by Custers to demonstrate the generation of various types of waste at each step in the military-nuclear and civilian–nuclear production chains. He also proposes the new concept of negative use-value to highlight the adverse consequences, for human beings and the environment, of products that are churned out by the military–nuclear complex. Particularly insightful is the thesis he advances in opposition to the view that the capitalist system in its earlier phases operated as a market system governed by 'internal' exchanges. Custers produces historical evidence to demonstrate that this system always incorporated a vital 'external' agent, namely, the capitalist state, which has played a significant role in capitalism's evolution at crucial junctures.

Peter Custers

Peter Custers is a campaigner and writer with many publications to his credit. He is engaged in theoretical research alongside a commitment to social struggles and campaigns in Bangladesh and Western Europe. His website: www.petercusters.nl

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Samir Amin
Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother (both medical doctors). He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalauréat. From 1947 to 1957 he studied in Paris, gaining a diploma in political science (1952) before graduating in statistics (1956) and economics (1957). In his autobiography Itinéraire Intellectuel (1990) he wrote that in order to spend a substantial amount of time in "militant action" he could devote only a minimum of time to preparing for his university exams.

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