The Origins of Geopolitical Economy in Marx’s Remarks on Carey and Bastiat

A presentation by Radhika Desai

Co-sponsored with GERG ( The Geopolitical Economy Research Group)

In recent years, geopolitical economy has become a term for the properly historical-materialist analysis of international affairs that can successfully comprehend the evolution of the capitalist world order down to the contemporary age of multi-polarity by placing the nation-state as centrally in the analysis of capitalism as class. This interpretation is embedded in Karl Marx’s thinking, though not fully developed there. Perhaps its clearest expression can be found in his fragmentary comments on the “Yankee” mercantilist economist, Henry Carey, in the final pages of the Grundrisse. In this lecture, I reflect on how geopolitical economy emerges from Marx’s ideas, specifically his comments in the section on Bastiat and Carey, though related points and comments pervade Marx’s writings.

RADHIKA DESAI is professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: “Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month, and editor or co-editor of Karl Polanyi for the Twenty-First Century, Revolutions (2020), Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, an issue of International ‘Critical Thought (2016), Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy (2015), Analytical Gains from Geopolitical Economy (2015), Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism (2010) and Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009). Currently she is working on several books: The Coming Crash of the Dollar Creditorcracy (with Michael Hudson), Marx as a Monetary Theorist and The Making of the Indian Capitalist Class.

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