Political economy seminar: Corporate Rule and its Contestation

This conference argues neoliberalism is a utopian vision that has served to mask and distract from its function of embedding corporate rights and expanding the economic power of major corporations.

Dr Terry Hathaway (University of York) - Selling Corporate Rule: Neoliberalism as Corporate Power.

This paper argues that neoliberalism is a utopian vision that has served to mask and distract from its function of embedding corporate rights and expanding the economic power of major corporations; neoliberalism is, in effect, structural discursive power of corporations that shields their actions from effective political scrutiny and from public attention. This argument is demonstrated by showing the narrative fiction and the corporate reality of key components of the domestic neoliberal vision - lower taxes, deregulation, non-intervention, and competitive markets. 

Dr David Bailey (University of Birmingham) - From global justice to anti-austerity: tendencies in global left politics.

Left politics tend to be defined in terms of the attempt to challenge inequality. Yet the degree to which inequality is contested, and the form that these challenges take, have both been the subject of considerable and ongoing discussion and disagreement, resulting in sometimes sharply contrasting strategies for action. This talk, drawing on a recent book, Protest Movements and Parties of the Left, describes the historical trajectory of these debates, focusing especially on the way in which the Global Justice Movement saw the consolidation of a broad commitment to 'prefigurative' politics, which has subsequently seeped into many of the strategies of global left actors today, albeit in a somewhat contradictory manner. It is through such an account, it will be argued, that we can understand some of the more interesting developments in contemporary global left politics.

Discussant: Dr Jörg Wiegratz, School of Politics and International Studies

 

This event is open to all. No registration is required.