First post in a new forum on Rowan Lubbock's book *Cultivating Socialism: Venezuela, ALBA, and the Politics of Food Sovereignty*, with the engagement started by @chrishesketh.bsky.social -- more to follow in subsequent weeks!!

Making War Safe for Capitalism is out in a week with @brisunipress.bsky.social! I'm honoured to share this endorsement from the fantastic Ukrainian scholar and sociologist Dr Volodymyr Ishchenko

Just received! Brett Heino’s new book on the spatial unconscious in literature. Brimming with original insights. Book launch soon at Gleebooks for those in Sydney 👇🏽 gleebooks.com.au/event/brett-... @stuartelden.bsky.social @danieljhartley.bsky.social

Fascinating little-known story of an Australian man who fought and died supporting Jakob Marengo's uprising against German colonial rule in Namibia in 1905: namibian-studies.com/index.php/JN...

Now out: Special Issue: Value Theory in the Country and the City Environment and Planning F Ten articles by Dallas Rogers @monicaclua.bsky.social @chrishesketh.bsky.social @davidaviles.bsky.social @abieler.bsky.social @davidjmadden.bsky.social @feministonmarx.bsky.social and many more!

“At a time when self-declared Nazis are using the internet to mobilise, new information systems are rapidly transforming the nature of work and traditional models of communication are crumbling, properly resourced sociology departments are what the public desperately needs”.

A fantastic opportunity to discuss economy and space in the literary work of David Ireland with Brett Heino @gleebooks.bsky.social on 31 October. Register here👇🏽 gleebooks.com.au/event/brett-...

“Cold War II” (Fred Halliday) or a “structural Cold War” (Robert W. Cox) or a “Cold War of the mind” (Ken Booth) or the Cold War “annexation of the social sciences” (Pınar Bilgin and yours truly) that has never disappeared? Come and find out at the next AIPEN 2026 with @shaharhameiri.bsky.social

Books finished on this trip #EISABologna2025

Turbocharging the sex trafficking trade @sarameger.bsky.social @drmeljohnston.bsky.social

Coming out now in hardcopy edited by yours truly with Dallas Rogers and Cameron McAuliffe in Environment and Planning F on *Value Theory in the Country and the City*

What a brilliant read this was with its focus, from the Vermont landscape to the wider American west of the twentieth-century, on the inequality and dispossession of capitalism. The hell scape appears “crimson as the landscape seen through the red cellophane strip on cigarette packs”.

The two articles are summarised here: www.ppesydney.net/all-that-has... The writing of this, among many things in my life, was inspired by @ultha.bsky.social

"Whilst many of the reflections that follow this preface will touch on Political Economy’s colourful past, we should not neglect its value to us in the present and its importance to our nation in the future" -- Anthony Albanese, as one of the voices of former Political Economy students 👇

Politicising Commodification: book review of Erne et al (CUP, 2024) see andreasbieler.blogspot.com/2025/07/poli... @morton.bsky.social

University life as grant grubbing, less ivory tower more pyramid scheme, site of super-exploitation and management bullying - perfect material for a novelistic descent into the demonium of academia today 1/2

Announcing the 2025 Wheelwright Lecture in Political Economy at the University of Sydney - Raewyn Connell: "Should we abolish universities?" www.ppesydney.net/2025-wheelwr...

Edited by Frank Stilwell, the latest issue of Journal of Australian Political Economy celebrates 50 years of Political Economy at the University of Sydney as a discipline. More events later in the year!

Come and join all of us and the Chair of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, @garethbryant.bsky.social as host of the 18th Annual E.L. 'Ted' Wheelwright Memorial Lecture that will be given by Raewyn Connell | 10 September 2025 | Sign up for the free lecture in the link below

Handing over the hosting of @iliasalami.bsky.social from USyd - thanks to @garethbryant.bsky.social - to UQ - thanks to @shaharhameiri.bsky.social and @drmeljohnston.bsky.social with this piece of his on state capitalism as your catch up reading.

Sorting out, as Marx put it, this “shitty rent business”, has been a long and winding road. Out soon with @plutopress.bsky.social is Matthew Costa's new book, which is set to vivify new rounds of debate on rent theory. @j0eb0gan.bsky.social

Revisiting, this week, this piece in Socialist Register 2024, written with @abieler.bsky.social, following various conversations on the geopolitics of war (and peace) and global capitalism @therealelliotde.bsky.social @shaharhameiri.bsky.social @tomchodor.bsky.social @chrishesketh.bsky.social

Looking forward to dialoguing today with @iliasalami.bsky.social on raced finance in IPE. Here’s a contribution to the debate on the “dialectical tensions” that exist in raced finance; or with @abieler.bsky.social what we call the dialectical matrix of class, gender, race—beyond a “trinity formula”

“Hothousing for development: Sorting out the mixed economy” with @davidaviles.bsky.social is now out in Volume 57 Issue 5, of @economyandspace.bsky.social and Open Access 👇🏽

What a superb book

From my research on the Monument to the Revolution, here are four postage stamps. My assumption was that there was just one, the far right one from 1934. But here are more. My favorite is the far left one on the XVI International Congress of Planning & Housing (1938). More here👇🏽 shorturl.at/VdYt6

Straight on to my reading list for ECOP3613 Global Capitalism: Uneven Development

Like all workplaces, universities are sites of power and contestation, where managers have an imperative to exercise control over the labour process. How can we understand the new modalities of fear shaping today's war on education? Here @damiencahill.bsky.social surveys the terrain

This table is largely from Mike Davis *Ecology of Fear* from @versobooks.bsky.social But I’ve put together a thumbnail comparison on the last two lines with 1) the cost of the 2025 Palisades Fire and 2) the 2020 Black Summer in Australia. Look at the magnitude of territory and death.

Four linked questions about the wonderful book *The Restless Dead* by @criveragarza.bsky.social. Drawing inspiration from her text: 1) What other authors might be disappropriationist at heart, which have passed through Latin America but without having been born there? 1/3 @isanchezprado.bsky.social

US troop deployments at the border with Mexico have tripled to 7,600 and include every branch of the military – as the number of attempted illegal crossings has plummeted and an additional 3,000 border patrol agents have been authorised, offering $10,000 signing and retention bonuses.

Short summary available here

Very excited to give this talk in Sydney in early August, presenting new research (conducted with @vincentguermond.bsky.social and @alibhagat.bsky.social) on race and finance.

Returning to the University of Sydney in August is @iliasalami.bsky.social speaking on 'Towards an International Political Economy of Raced Finance' - details below!! 👇 @ppesydney.bsky.social @garethbryant.bsky.social

How to reflect on the political economy of pornography? Lucy Carozza and @drmeljohnston.bsky.social draw insights from a reading of Andrea Dworkin’s classic text on men possessing women

Three Revolutions by Simon Hall review – how Russia, China and Cuba changed forever @georgelawson.bsky.social

Up to No.9 in the @ppesydney.bsky.social all time Top Ten posts is Sirma Altun on Henri Lefebvre and The Production of Space @stuartelden.bsky.social

The changing faces of Nacional Financiera (Nafin): 1) originally located on Calle Venustiano Carranza, No.25, in the Centro Histórico with the building designed by architects Manuel Ortiz Monasterio and Luís Avila, inaugurated in 1944. Pictured in El Tiempo (1945). You can still visit it today! 1/4

Book No.10 in the @manchesterup.bsky.social series Progress in Political Economy (PPE) by team @alfnilsen.bsky.social on nascent forms of inter-imperial rivalry and emerging powers in the global South @abieler.bsky.social @monicaclua.bsky.social @angelawigger.bsky.social @garethbryant.bsky.social

Wonderful to stumble across this lecture video recording of my time at the Havens Center hosted by Erik Olin Wright - sorely missed - talking about the book *Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis* that was in draft form at the time with co-author @abieler.bsky.social 1/2

Published this week: Proposals for a Caring Economy, essays that articulate an economy that situates care at the forefront, edited by @mw-m.bsky.social: www.upress.umn.edu/978151791847...

“the lesson taught by all revolutions [is] … that the petty-bourgeois democrats are incapable of holding power, and always serve merely as a screen for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and a stepping stone to its undivided power”.

Mario Tronti’s *Workers and Capital* gets added to the reviews from the Past & Present Reading Group. Check out the repository on all 33 classic books 👇🏽

Moving beyond the ornamental assertion of class and patriarchy as relational, @drmeljohnston.bsky.social delivers a BIG contribution to current debates on capitalist patriarchy with this latest article in @ripejournal.bsky.social @feministonmarx.bsky.social @abieler.bsky.social

"China could adopt a course of controlled linkage with the world economy, following an autonomous route towards an autonomous advanced industrial status" -- Robert W. Cox, 'Production Relations and the Third World' (1980)

'neither efficiency nor productivity were ever, in the long run, achieved by the manipulation of people, by limiting their rights, by defrauding them of their own initiatives, by denying to them participation in the control of their own affairs' (E.P. Thompson) #HigherEd

Although poor in quality, this postcard captures what would become the offices of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) that was a clandestine detention centre during the “dirty war” of state terror in Mexico (the low-rise edifice on the right) on Plaza de la República #20.

Congratulations to team @alfnilsen.bsky.social for this latest contribution to the @ppesydney.bsky.social Book Series with @manchesterup.bsky.social

Just as Mario Tronti wanted to engage with Marx in his own time, how do we approach Operai e capitale (Workers and Capital) on the basis of capitalism today? Great new @ppesydney.bsky.social post from Laisrian Flynn @versobooks.bsky.social @mkonings.bsky.social @harrycleaver.bsky.social

Most surprising - a stamp from Bulgaria featuring the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico issued to celebrate the 1986 World Cup! More on this beauty and beast of a monument in an open access article in Journal of Latin American Studies 👇 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...