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Critique
Journal of Socialist Theory
Volume 51, 2023 - Issue 4
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Research Articles

The dialectics of radical social change and global capitalist order: evidence from the ‘Arab Spring’

Pages 565-586 | Published online: 11 Mar 2024
 

Abstract

Today, the capitalist statist system has engulfed the planet as a whole. There are fundamental ecological, economical and socio-political contradictions and antagonisms. At each frontier, the apparatuses of big money and capital have hit a threshold. In the process the two driving forces of life, human-activity and nature, are exploited and exhausted to a catastrophic end. Despite this, the collective labour, thought and desire to regulate or cease the system is at odds with the power and the persistent subjective and objective violence of this structure. A precursory look at the composition of the collective consciousness and condition of humanity demonstrates this. It seems the political spirit of our world, directed by or corrupted by property owners and hoarders of power, is split between a sharp antagonistic duality.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues and friends who have generously taken the time to read, examine, and comment on this paper or the ideas reflected in it. In no particular order: Dr Alejandra Gaitan-Barrera, Jose Francisco Gaitan Neme, Dr Jonathan Symons, Dr Noah Bassil, Karim Pourhamzavi, Dr Lloyd Cox, Ihab Shalbak, and Ziryan Aziz. I would also like to thank all the students and members of the Marxist Praxis Group whose commitment, passion and labour for radical change and transformation is a key source of hope and drive for me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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7 William I. Robinson, Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

8 Robinson, Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity, 9.

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10 Engels, Dialectics of Nature.

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12 Engels, Dialectics of Nature.

13 Karl Marx, Capital. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature (London: Wordsworth Editions, 2013).

14 Marx, Capital. Harvey in Alex Anievas and Kreem Nisanioglu, How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (London: Pluto Press, 2015), p. 48.

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68 Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (London: University Minnesota Press, 2003), p. xxxvi.

69 Robinson, Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Govand Khalid Azeez

Dr Govand Khalid Azeez is a Lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is a philosopher who specialises in political theory (history of political ideas, theories of subjectivity), political economy (focusing on Marxist conceptualisations of class) and the politics and strategies of social transformation. Email: [email protected]

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