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If the title and subtitle of this book were reversed, one would probably get a more accurately weighted- albeit less catchy - heading for it. This is very much a book of American history, with a central focus on its spearheading 'the making of global capitalism'. Very good so far, but the 'global capitalism' bit is very much subsidiary to the 'political economy of American empire' bit.

This is a great compliment to John Smith's "Imperialism in the 21st C." If Smith's is a thorough investigation of economic measures and the role value-theory in the practice of imperialism, Suwandi's is a sociological look 'on the ground' at how it all plays out: issues of control and domination across global lines and factory floors; labour and capital polarized both vertically and spatially - distance as tyranny.

This book opens with a discussion of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, the collapse of an eight-story garment factory that killed over a thousand workers in Bangladesh. In the US this week, two similar incidents are headline news. The lesson is that the past and present of the imperialized world just is the future and present of the imperial one. No solidarity without international solidarity.

If anyone’s ever wondered what it could really mean to say that ‘there is no ethical consumption under capitalism’ - this book is the answer. Not only does labor and life in the global South undergird the way of life of the global North, but nearly everything about how we measure value obscures and distorts this fact. The reflux, when it comes - in fact it’s already here - will be (ever more) devastating.

This is seriously fantastic. The best part being it's unapologetic anti-capitalism. The problem isn't debt, it isn't finance, it isn't bad economic management, it isn't a lack of 'effective demand', it isn't greedy capitalists, it isn't a lack of liquidity - it's capitalism and it's inability to reproduce itself. Profit is a limit - it holds us back. We can be so much more.

The 'after' in 'after US Hegemony, Globalization, and Empire' doesn't refer to a period of time - it refers to doing away with *discources* of US hegemony and so on. I.e. US hegemony has always been more illusion than fact, propped up by pillars perpetually in crisis. So too with globalization and empire: these are *reactions* and projections, not principles. More to come.

It's underselling this to say that it is an update of, and extension to, Robert Brenner's 'Economics of Global Turbulence', and Michael Hudson's 'Super Imperialism', two classic works in their own right. But Desai's Geopolitical Economy is *at least* that, and then some.

Some really interesting perspectives here: (1) Finance is not some parasitic offshoot of capitalism that can be regulated away: finance and capitalism are a package deal; (2) London still deals with more international finance than the US - need to displace US-centric accounts of capitalist development; (3) States and industry are less in control than we think - they too fall prey to the exigencies of capital.

Reading this, I find myself reduced to the position of Socrates' dialog partners in the late Platonic texts: "Yes"; "That is surely correct"; "Undoubtedly"; "It cannot be otherwise"; "You are surely right, Monsier de Certeau".

If ethics responds to the question of how to live a good life, this is a book of ethics. Not that Jacobs puts it that way - her concerns are pedestrian, in best possible sense: of walking the city streets, buying from the local vendors, bumping into strangers: of intense, vivacious living. A reminder nonetheless that ethics is always ethics in-common, of living-with. Space, design, and time: ethical categories.

Eons ago I did an ethnography of my local city park for a project - this would have been exceptionally useful.

Definitely jumped into the deep end with this one. Thought it might be a quick pre-lim to D's Mitra-Varuna (in and out, twenty minute adventure!), but it's more of a hyper specific side-quest. Still, when I'm not frantically Googling characters and Gods from Zoroastrian and Vedic ancient texts, this is pretty cool. M-V is definitely the more encompassing text.

Summa: "The invasion of the 'New World' produced the first geologic subjects of the Anthropocene, and they were indigenous and black".

"What defenders of capitalism are afraid of is not planning, but its democratization". Ooooh.

Previously, I lauded this as a model of unwitting Deleuzian analysis. Here's another for the list: Benjamin. Recall the immortal line: "All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war". Well, the 'Seeing' in 'Seeing Like a State' is not accidental. This is a treatise on State aesthetics, and the substitution of politics for it. And the war? One waged on State subjects.

This is like the most Deleuzian non-Deleuzian book ever written. You couldn't find a better set of descriptions - in everything but name - of all the major distinctions in A Thousand Plateaus: major and minor, striated and smooth, nomads against the state... It's all here. Helps that this is also an absorbing read on its own accord.

Why bother with 'Stone Age Economics'? Because:

"The world's most primitive people have few posessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization".

This is awesome. It's like a non-human history of early humans. Scott's protagonists are the elements - fire, water, soil, plants, and plagues - with humans largely being buffetted around and following the trail of our ecological leads. But for all that, there's a whole 'politics of the elements' at work here nonetheless, one very much still operative in the present day.