ISMAIL LAGARDIEN: The persistence of crusty communist imaginaries
The social change and transformation required have to embrace degrowth as a positive social development
There are a couple of concepts that continue to be bandied about and are being inserted into discussions about globalisation and the global political economy, that are becoming tiresome. “Deglobalisation” and “delinking” are circulating among anticapitalists — hard-core communists — very many of whom exist in insulated ideological communities where they have pride of place in their own information universes.
Most recently, a former distinguished professor snapped up and promoted the idea of deglobalisation from a publication by Harvard political economist Dani Rodrik, entitled “Has Globalization Gone Too Far”. In this sense deglobalisation suits the belief among copper-bottomed communists stuck in the 18th century, and those who promote a type of autarky and delinking. Remember how the Soviet Union was only marginally part of the global political economy, autarkic, and because it was essentially “delinked” its citizens were not allowed to leave the country without permission....
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