Author: Dimitris V. Peponis

Edited by Sotiris Mitralexis & Stefanos Reppas

published in Greek in TOPOS Books’ mέta series

What kind of world will we live in? What era is dawning before us?

We are living through the sunset of a world order and the dawn of a new macro-historical cycle.

Taking the war in Ukraine and the crisis of the pandemic as its starting point, the book outlines the shaping of a new global order and discusses the completion of three different and partly overlapping historical cycles: the post-Cold War order (1991-), the post-war world (1945-) and a great era of human history (19th century-), the ‘Age of the Great Deviation’. By the middle of the 21st century, and with 2037 as a landmark year, the three historical cycles that have defined the metamorphoses of order during the last two centuries will have been completed: the Great Deviation will expire.

From history to political geography, from the completion of the American hegemonic period to the return of Asia, from technology to demography, and from modernity to postsecularism, this book attempts a long-range dissection of developments, with the aim of providing a tool for understanding the world-historical changes taking place on the cusp of the end of an era and the beginning of a new macro-historical cycle.

A tool for understanding our world; a dangerous book | Introduction by Sotiris Mitralexis

This book by Dimitris V. Peponis outlines ‘the end of the great deviation’ and ‘the shaping of the new global order’; it begins apropos of ‘the Ukraine war and the pandemic crisis’, but the end thatit describes and analyses is not quite that recent in nature – since the foundational coordinates of the era that emerges after this end and its succeeding state are not dictated by the usual, ‘journalistic’ rules of current affairs. Essentially, the book deals with the closure, completion and eclipse of three distinct yet partly overlapping historical cycles:

Although the title of the book predisposes its readers for a study in international politics with elements of history or, as we have learned to call it, ‘international relations’, we are used to referring in such terms to discourses and analyses of a more topical nature[1] or, if you like, of a journalistic nature – even if they seem quite scholarly in nature. What we have here is a project claiming a more comprehensive, a deeper tracing of the coordinates of the world in which we live and, by implication, of the world that is gradually yet quite discernibly emerging: it is a ‘broader’ tool for understanding our world.

Before addressing theUkraine war, the book gives from its opening pages a preview of the ‘bigger picture’, a brief outline of the elements and, as we said, the coordinates ofan emerging world. It proceeds to study a precondition forunderstanding the nature and stakes of what apparently began in 2022 on the European continent with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, that is to say, a reflection on the world wars that preceded it in the 20th century: the Great War (WWI) and its sequel (WWII), the distortions in their historiography, their vital fronts and their unresolved nature. Subsequently, the book studies the causes and stakes of the Ukraine war and continues with the dissection of the central issues of the wider field, which largely transcends the territory of Ukraine per se: issues of political geography, the nature of war, peace and deterrence, the position and state of the European Union, strategic dilemmas, ‘West’ and ‘East’, ‘North’ and ‘South’, the uses of historiography, future possibilities. The first part of the book deals with these and is followed, in the second part, by a more comprehensive exploration of the conclusion of the period of American hegemony in world affairs. The third part returns to elements and patterns of the previous ones, yet from a different perspective – illuminating, among other things, elements of political geography, demographics, ideologies, and macrostructures beyond the news cycle. The book concludes with a selective reading of the developments during the COVID-19 pandemic and especially during the lockdowns and the use of technology in that context as a further indication of the beginning of a new historical cycle, concomitant to the previous readings from a different perspective and starting point. In a way, the book as a whole is an expanded version of the note with which it closes: a chronology that a scholar and researcher of our times might write from a possible and distant future.

Instead of ‘choosing sides’ in all kinds of dichotomies and dilemmas of our time, the book presupposes the demonstration of the false nature ofthese dichotomies and dilemmas: ‘West and East’ or ‘the West and the Rest’, ‘liberals versus illiberals’, ‘democracies versus autocracies’, ‘progress’ versus ‘conservatism’, ‘future’ versus ‘past’, at least in the way we have come to understand them in the context of certain historiographical schematisations. It undermines the very backbone of the dichotomies with which we have learned, or been taught, to structure our thinking, leading us to conclusions in our absence, as if by an autopilot. Since, as we say at mέta, the old tools are broken; the old rules simply do not apply anymore. In this respect, this is a dangerous book.

This book is published on the initiative of mέta, the Athens-based Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation. Dimitris V. Peponis has been collaborating with the mέta’s research sector since 2021, and the main fruit of this collaboration is the present book, co-edited by yours truly and Stefanos Reppas –whom I’d like to emphatically thank from these pages. Already from its title, mέta, the Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation signals the objective of engaging with an era measured in centuries (the two plus centuries of capitalism, in this case) and with that which succeeds it, yet is still pending; by referring to postcapitalism, i.e. to what comes after capitalism, mέta joins a discussion on a period that rather escapes the limits, scope and horizon of daily discourses on the political, as far as its scope is concerned. In particular, the introductory text of mέta’s research sector states that

‘It has been noted that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, invoking the need for serious reflection on the end of the existing order and a transition to a postcapitalist way of life. Yet the future of the world economy is but one of the aspects of postcapitalism. After all, capitalism itself might be prima facie an economic system, but it has evolved into a comprehensive political, cultural, anthropological and international order. Postcapitalism, however it might evolve, is not merely the modification of an economic system; it will prove to be a new political, cultural, anthropological, civilisational paradigm —  a new era indeed. A dystopian one, a utopian one, or anything in between. And the turbulences of the gradual transition are to be witnessed by all. The oligarchic decline of liberal democracy engenders countless variations of authoritarian tendencies; the supply chain of tributes for the global minotaur are increasingly interrupted; novel desiderata for emancipation are articulated; the chasms between megacities and provinces nurture silent, cold civil wars; the emergence of a non-Anglophone, non-Atlantic, non-liberal, non-bipartisan state as the planet’s largest economy is just around the corner, overturning a two-centuries-old order; the changes in global demography and geopolitics are vertiginous; climate change is threatening our very existence. Transformations of gigantic proportions radically reshape the world before our very eyes.’

The analyses, concepts and frameworks of the present work by Dimitris V. Peponis do not necessarily follow the specific iteration ofthe broader view referred to in the above rather indicative diagnosis, they chart their own path, focusing primarily on the causes and conditions of the colossal changes in international politics and beyond; however, it will probably become obvious to the reader that the present work is an essential, arguably irreplaceable, precondition for any analysis claiming a range such as the one above. In this context, the editors express our certainty that the reader holds in their hands a truly valuable book: a tool for understanding our world which, if anything, has been missing from the public sphere and debate – and whose crucial nature will unfold and reveal itself in time, beyond the spinning magic mirrors of current affairs.

Sotiris Mitralexis

PhD in Political Science and International Relations

mέta’s research director


[1] A potentially useful note: although this book is not about monitoring current events but about the bigger picture, it is worth clarifying that it was completed at the end of November 2022, i.e. that it takes into account the events that took place up to that time.

Vassilis Asimakopoulos, Sissy Velissariou, Yannis Mavris, Chrysanthos Tassis

Testimony: Dimitris Livieratos

Intervention: Yanis Varoufakis

Edited by Kostas Raptis & Sotiris Mitralexis

published in Greek in TOPOS Books’ mέta series

18 October 2021 marked exactly forty years since PASOK’s first electoral victory. The “Change” of 1981 was the event that marked the Third Greek Republic like few others.

The limits, contradictions, integration and subsequent degeneration of PASOK (a journey that was less short than that of SYRIZA) and ultimately its actual death in the era of the memoranda do not negate the need to reflect on the post-metapolitefsi period as a whole, to reflect on the timeliness of the claims for national independence, popular sovereignty and social justice and, of course, to confront, in today’s very different circumstances, the question of claiming the socialist transformation that was posed at the beginning of the post-independence period by an ever-expanding section of Greek society.

In this book, Vassilis Asimakopoulos, Sissy Velissariou, Yannis Mavris and Chrysanthos Tassis – together with the testimony of Dimitris Livieratos and the intervention of Yannis Varoufakis – attempt an anatomy of the past with an eye to today and tomorrow.

The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation presents Vasilis Lianos’s mέta Working Paper entitled Automation and Artificial Intelligence in the possible transition to a postcapitalist society. The paper is accessible here.

DOI: 10.55405/mwp17en

Abstract

Throughout history, technology and its evolution have significantly impacted the
societal modes of production and organisation. The highest rise in technological
evolution has been observed under the capitalist system. Technology has not, as of
yet, proved to be capitalism’s demise. However, some believe that advances in Artificial Intelligence and automation render them radically different technologies to
those of the past and will mean capitalism’s demise and the dawn of a new, postcapitalist era. This paper will assess this claim by looking at historical evidence and
contemporary theoretical and empirical work to argue that, while it is possible that
such technologies are radically different to those of the past and might bring about
the fall of the capitalist system, such claims cannot yet be substantiated due to the
early stage of the aforementioned technologies’ development.

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Vasilis Lianos is a graduate student studying for the MSc Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. He first completed the MA in Global Political Economy at Leiden University and the BSc in Politics and International Relations at the University of London. He likes to delve into the topic of a postcapitalist society in the hope that it might, one day, come to pass

published in Greek in TOPOS Books’ mέta series

Life under capitalism. Rampant debilitating denial for the many next to vile enrichment of the few. Material deprivation, denial, and denigration. Dignity defiled. Michael Albert’s book No Bosses advocates for the conception and then organization of a new economy. The vision offered is called participatory economics. It elevates self-management, equity, solidarity, diversity, and sustainability. It eliminates elitist, arrogant, dismissive, authoritarian, exploitation, competition, and homogenization. No Bosses proposes a built and natural productive commons, self-management by all who work, income for how long, how hard, and the onerousness of conditions of socially valued work, jobs that give all economic actors comparable means and inclination to participate in decisions that affect them, and a process called participatory planning in which caring behavior and solidarity are the currency of collective and individual success.

A member of mέta’s Advisory Board, Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as staff of Z Magazine`s web system: ZCom. Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. Albert is the author of 21 books. Most recently these include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (Zero Books, 2021), Fanfare for the Future (ZBooks), Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press) and Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso). Many of Albert`s articles are stored in ZCom and can be accessed there along with hundreds of other Z Magazine and ZNet articles essays, interviews, etc.

Statement by Michael Albert:

I boundlessly celebrate the publication of a Greek translation of “No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World” by Topos Books in collaboration with the wonderful Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation, mέta. Greece, like so many other places, including my U.S., not only confronts a very dangerous economic, political, and ecological future, but also a potentially equitable, self managing, and green one. Moreover, Greece’s population, I think like people everywhere, is steadily realising as much. So “No Bosses” in Greek is timely. Like any book’s author, I of course want the ideas conveyed by “No Bosses” to reach widely, be critically assessed and refined, and be shared. But with a book presenting a postcapitalist vision, this desire is really the whole point. Emerging from past practice and seeking to aid future practice, a book like this has merit only insofar as it facilitates and promotes further thoughtful strategic activism today and into the future. That is what mέta stands for and so too the book “No Bosses”. I hope it proves useful in Greece, as I hope it proves useful wherever folks seek to move beyond capitalism. 

– Michael Albert

published in Greek in TOPOS Books’ mέta series

This book presents the new Precariat – the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, on zero hours contracts, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives. The delivery driver who brings your packages, the uber driver who gets you to work, the security guard at the mall, the carer looking after our elderly…these are The Precariat.

Guy Standing investigates this new and growing group, finding a frustrated and angry new underclass who are often ignored by politicians and economists. The rise of zero hours contracts, encouraged by fat cat corporations as risk-free employment, and by silicon valley as a way of outsourcing costs and responsibility, has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. At the same time, in its experience of lockdown, the western world is realizing the true value of these nurses, carers and key workers.

The answer? The return of income security and meaningful work – the principles 20th century capitalism was built on. By making the fears and desires of the Precariat central to economic thinking, Standing shows how concepts like Basic Income are not just desirable but inevitable, and plots the way to a better future.

A member of mέta’s Advisory Board, Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, and an honorary professor at the University of Sydney. An economist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge, he is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and member of the Progressive Economy Forum. In 2016-19, he was adviser to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell.

He was professor in SOAS, Bath and Monash Universities, and Director of the ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme. He has been a consultant for many international bodies, was Research Director for President Mandela’s Labour Market Policy Commission, and has implemented several basic income pilots. His books include The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, published in 23 languages (fourth edition, 2021); The Corruption of Capitalism (third edition, 2021)Basic Income: And how we can make it happen (2017); and Plunder of the Commons (2019). In 2020, he collaborated with Massive Attack in a video based on his book, Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now (2020).  

Book launch in Athens, Greece:

Discussion with Yanis Varoufakis and Q&A with the audience:

The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation, mέta, presents Michael Albert’s mέta Working Paper entitled Clarifying the ‘Edges’ of Participatory Economics: An Anti-Blueprint ‘Blueprint’, and an Anti-Sectarian ‘Instruction’ (accessible here), an addendum to the “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” series under “Allocation.”

DOI: 10.55405/mwp15en

mέta Working Papers’ series “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” publishes solicited policy papers on aspects of how would a non-dystopian postcapitalism look like. The series focuses on three ‘pillars’:

Production | Allocation | Decision Making

i.e., how could/would postcapitalist production be like (and who would own the means of production), what shape would the allocation of goods take (and which alternatives to the market economy may be explored), and what would be the main tenets of postcapitalist decision making and democracy.

In this paper, Michael Albert revisits certain aspects of PARECON (‘participatory economics’) as a viable postcapitalist model.

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(Earlier additions to the “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” series include Professor Robin Hahnel’s paper on Participatory Planning, Michael Albert’s paper on Postcapitalist Decision Making and on Postcapitalist Work: Balanced Jobs and Equitable Remuneration, and Professor Stephen R. Shalom paper Decision-Making in a Good Society: The Case for Nested Councils.)

Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as staff of Z Magazine’s web system: ZCom. He is a member of mέta’s Advisory Board. Albert’s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. Albert is the author of 21 books. Most recently these include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (Zero Books, 2021), Fanfare for the Future (ZBooks), Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press) and Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso).

The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation, mέta, presents Alexandria Shaner’s & Michael Albert’s mέta Working Paper entitled Participatory Economics Overview: What, Why, How (accessible here), part of the “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” series under “Allocation.”

DOI: 10.55405/mwp14en

mέta Working Papers’ series “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” publishes solicited policy papers on aspects of how would a non-dystopian postcapitalism look like. The series focuses on three ‘pillars’:

Production | Allocation | Decision Making

i.e., how could/would postcapitalist production be like (and who would own the means of production), what shape would the allocation of goods take (and which alternatives to the market economy may be explored), and what would be the main tenets of postcapitalist decision making and democracy.

In this paper, Alexandria Shaner & Michael Albert provide an overview of PARECON (‘participatory economics’) as a viable postcapitalist model.

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(Earlier additions to the “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” series include Professor Robin Hahnel’s paper on Participatory Planning, Michael Albert’s papers on Postcapitalist Decision Making, on Postcapitalist Work: Balanced Jobs and Equitable Remuneration and on Postcapitalist Allocation: Participatory Planning, and Professor Stephen R. Shalom paper Decision-Making in a Good Society: The Case for Nested Councils.)

Alexandria Shaner is a sailor, writer, organizer, and activist. Based in the southern Caribbean, she is an in-structor at the School for Social and Cultural Change and active with RealUtopia.org and The Climate Reality Project.

Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as staff of Z Magazine’s web system: ZCom. He is a member of mέta’s Advisory Board. Albert’s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. Albert is the author of 21 books. Most recently these include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (Zero Books, 2021), Fanfare for the Future (ZBooks), Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press) and Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso).

The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation presents Paul Tyson’s mέta Working Paper entitled Orchestrated Irrationality: Why It Exists and How It Might Be Resisted. The paper is accessible here.

DOI: 10.55405/mwp13en

Abstract

Orchestrated irrationality in our public discourse is produced by technologically enhanced and commercially purposed atomization and tribalism. Public discourse now leans away from a humane, free, and reasoned political rationality and towards self-interested, calculative, herd conformism. The bulls and bears of consumer society have largely displaced the civic logic of the liberal democratic pursuit of the common good. The power interests that govern global consumerism are enhanced by subordinating the common good ends of genuinely political life to the self-interested and profit driven dynamics of the market. Orchestrated irrationality in our public discourse makes politics into a meaningless theatre of incommensurate tribal interest narratives, which is a convenient distraction from the collaborative consolidation of market power and state control. This orchestrated irrationality can only be combatted by seeking to de-atomize citizens and de-tribalize the public square in order to recover the priority of political life over market and authoritari-an power in our public discourse. That is, a post-capitalist civilization that is ori-ented to a genuinely political and universally moral rationality must replace the present global order. Once we can identify the problem and the direction of cure for orchestrated irrationality, we can then take steps towards a different civilisational life-world.

Dr Paul Tyson is an interdisciplinary scholar working across sociology, theology and philosophy. He is an honorary senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia, and a member of mέta’s Advisory Board.

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The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation, mέta, presents Savvina Chowdhury’s mέta Working Paper entitled The Organisation of Social Reproduction in a Postcapitalist Participatory Economy (accessible here), part of the “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” series under “Decision Making.”

DOI: 10.55405/mwp12en

mέta Working Papers’ series “Towards (a Better) Postcapitalism: A Handy How-To Guide” publishes solicited policy papers on aspects of how would a non-dystopian postcapitalism look like. The series focuses on three ‘pillars’:

Production | Allocation | Decision Making

i.e., how could/would postcapitalist production be like (and who would own the means of production), what shape would the allocation of goods take (and which alternatives to the market economy may be explored), and what would be the main tenets of postcapitalist decision making and democracy.

In this paper, Savvina Chowdhury addresses the first pillar: postcapitalist production.

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Savvina Chowdhury, PhD, teaches feminist political economy at the Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington. She is currently working with youth at a juvenile detention centre and is interested in popular education. Savvina also works with Economics for Everyone, a community-based group that holds free, monthly popular education workshops in downtown Olympia, inviting dialogue and discussion on the historical and contemporary crises of capitalism.

The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation presents Sotiris Mitralexis‘ mέta Working Paper entitled Deepening Greece’s Divisions: Religion, COVID, Politics, and Science. The paper is accessible here.

DOI: 10.55405/mwp11en

Abstract

Instead of being a time of unity and solidarity, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a time of disunity, a time for deepening Greece’s divisions after a decade of crisis — on a spectrum ranging from politics to religion, and more importantly on the public discourse on religion. The present article offers a perspective on recent developments — by (a) looking into how the Greek government weaponized science in the public square, by (b) examining the stance of the Orthodox Church of Greece, by (c) indicatively surveying ‘COVID-19 and religion’ developments that would not be covered by the latter, and last but not least by (d) discussing the discrepancy between these two areas of inquiry in an attempt to explain it.

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Dr Sotiris Mitralexis is mέta’s Academic Director. Sotiris is Visiting Professor at IOCS Cambridge, Templeton Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and Research Fellow at the University of Winchester. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin, a doctorate in political science and international relations from the University of the Peloponnese, a doctorate in theology/religious studies from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and a degree in classics from the University of Athens. Sotiris has been Seeger Fellow at Princeton University, Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Visiting Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse, Cambridge, Visiting Fellow at the University of Erfurt, Teaching Fellow at the University of Athens and Bogazici University, as well as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Istanbul Sehir University. His publications include the monograph Ever-Moving Repose (Cascade, 2017) and, inter alia, the edited volumes Ludwig Wittgenstein Between Analytic Philosophy and Apophaticism (CSP, 2015), Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher (Cascade, 2017), Polis, Ontology, Ecclesial Event (James Clarke & Co, 2018), Between Being and Time (Fortress, 2019) and Slavoj Žižek and Christianity (Routledge, 2019), as well as books in Greek.

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