UK ramps up threat to rewrite Brexit deal with EU
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of claiming that social science is neutral, apolitical. inally, in his use of concepts de eloped in the metropolitan core to understand the world from the margins, min was a creati e thinker. He called himself a creati e ar ist and emphasised that he would start from, rather than stop at, arl ar . Starting from ar prioritises class struggle, e ploitation and une en capitalist de elopment min e tended these concepts to analyse imperialism, une ual e change, and polarising tendencies between core and periphery. i en this historical approach to political economy, it was logical for min to e tend ar s theory of alue to better understand imperialism. n ccumulation on a orld Scale , he showed that the mechanisms through which alue continued to flow from the periphery to the core, reproducing an international di ision of labour and geographically une en distribution of wealth, came from colonisation and its structures. min drew on the neo- ar ist economists aul aran and aul Swee y s seminal book onopoly apital in his conceptualisation of imperialist rent . mperialist rent, for min, deri ed from e tra surplus alue. n other words, more alue could be e tracted from the workers through production in the periphery generating an additional rent for the capitalist, when compared with workers in the centre doing similar obs. min argued that, while low-paid workers in the periphery are no less producti e than their counterparts in the centre, the alue they create is less rewarded and this is what creates such an imperialist rent. ndy Higginbottom and other scholars ha e since e tended min s insight, applying the concept to demonstrate how ritish and Spanish multinationals were able to take ad antage of the commodity boom see also aria y eke Sty e s work on he nformal mpire of ondon . olonialism shaped postcolonial economies such that the accumulation took place in especially une en or une ual ways. n ne ual e elopment , min distinguished between two different kinds of accumulation, one he called autocentric accumulation , which took place in the core and promoted the e panded reproduction of capital. he periphery, in contrast, was characterised by what he called e - tra erted accumulation , a type that did not lend itself to capital reproduction. He argued that une en de elopment e ol ed historically creating e ploitati e structures, which manifested themsel es in contemporary times as une ual e change. his in turn led to continued polarisation and increased ine uality. ne ual e change in min was an attempt to e plain factor price non-e ualisation globally, where factor price refers to the remuneration to labour or other primary non-produced factors. his means that labour, raw materials and land are cheaper in the periphery. He called the under aluation of labour in the periphery super-e - ploitation . or min, une ual e change was the outcome of monopoly capital s e tension to the periphery to search for super-profits or imperialist rent . min changed the terms of the debates on une ual e - change. ntil his work, the orthodo y among economists was that workers in the periphery are simply less producti e than those in the centre. t is important to note that the idea of une ual e change and of super -e ploitation remains contro ersial among ar ists. n as apital , ar himself discusses the futility of comparisons between different degrees of e - ploitation in different nations, and the significant methodological problems that arise. any ar ists argue that the neo- ar - ists such as min focused e cessi ely on market relations at the e pense of e ploitation of labour. n addition to participating in these theoretical debates, min was among the first to attempt to measure une ual e change empirically. any ha e followed in his footsteps since, such as ason Hickel, ylan Sulli an and Hu aifa oomkawala, whose research in found that the lobal orth appropriated around trillion from the lobal South between and constant S dollars . ploring a range of different methods for calculating une ual e - change, Hickel et al find that, regardless of the method, the intensity of e ploitation and the scale of une ual e change has been increasing significantly since the s and s. min also de oted a significant amount of time to thinking about ways to change an un ust system. He was hea ily in ol ed in acti ism, and de eloped some theoretical concepts to effect political change. he most wellknown is min s idea of delinking on which he published a book. elinking owards a olycentric orld pro ides an assessment of possible ways forward for a so ereign state in the periphery. n elinking , min argues that the specific conditions that allowed for the ad ancement of capitalism in estern urope in the th century are not possible to reproduce elsewhere. So, he proposed a new model of industrialisation shaped by the renewal of non-capitalist forms of peasant agriculture, which he thought would imply delinking from the imperati es of globalised capitalism. t is important to note that delinking is often widely misunderstood to mean autarky, or a system of self-sufficiency and limited trade. ut this is a misrepresentation. elinking does not re uire cutting all ties to the rest of the global economy, but rather the refusal to submit national-de elopment strategies to the imperati es of globalisation. t aims to compel a political economy suited to its needs, rather than simply going along with ha ing to unilaterally ad ust to the needs of the global system. o this goal of greater so ereignty, a county would de elop its own producti e systems and prioritise the needs of the people rather than the demands on international capital. n my inter iew with him before he died, min emphasised the importance of the specific political economic reality of any gi en country to understand and situate the possibilities for delinking. t that time, with an odd amount of precision, min estimated that if you can reach per cent delinking, you ll ha e done a great ob . He pointed out that a strong country that is, for historical reasons, relati ely stable and with a certain amount of military and economic power will ha e more le erage to delink. So, while hina may be able to achie e per cent delinking, a small country such as Senegal will struggle to achie e the same amount of independence. elinking entails re ecting calls to ad ust to a country s comparati e ad antage and other forms of catering to foreign interests. his is, of course, easier said than done. min noted that it would both re uire strong domestic support for such a national pro ect and strong SouthSouth cooperation as an alternati e to the e ploitati e economic relations between the core and the periphery. ther aspects of delinking would in ol e in estments in long-term pro ects, such as infrastructure, with the goal of impro ing the uality of li ing for most people in the country, rather than ma imising short-term consumption or profit. Se eral scholars ha e more recently studied historical de elopment tra ectories in relation to the uestion of delinking. or e ample, in rancesco acheda and oberto adalini applied the considerations to try to understand hina s de elopment tra ectory, while in rancisco re applied it to understand economic de elopment in ast sia. Howe er, as the world grows more interconnected, possibilities for delinking become more challenging. e are at a moment now that it has become fashionable for uni ersities in the lobal orth to e - press a desire to decolonise the uni ersity . hile many scholars are rushing to Said s rientalism to understand how to do so, min s work and commitment to a South-centric social science may offer a more radical approach. ollowing Said, much of the commitment to decolonise the social sciences has been limited to challenging racist tropes and urocentric portrayals in the curriculum and in academic discourse. his is important in a moment where curricula ha e become increasingly narrow, urocentric and with a se ere lack of di ersity, especially in economics. So, what would an minian perspecti e add to the debates about decolonising economics beyond Said s contribution irst, min s attention to how colonial legacies ha e shaped the economic and social structures of the world economy in a ariety of ways opened the door for a wealth of scholarship on colonial legacies, imperialism and une ual e change. n the perspecti e of decolonising the uni ersities, then, min might bring in the need to promote South-centric understandings of the world, as well as alternati e understandings of capitalism. his matters because scholarship that takes a critical approach to capitalism has largely been marginalised from economics curricula worldwide. hen min defended his h thesis at Sciences o in aris in , it was a time when it was possible to obtain a doctorate in economics by e tending ar ist concepts at elite institutions. ust a few years earlier, in , aran, a ar ist economist, had been promoted to full professor at Stanford ni ersity in alifornia, shortly after Swee y, another ar ist economist, retired from Har ard ni ersity in assachusetts in . n that moment, radical scholars across the world were putting forward new and competing e planations for the polarising tendencies of capitalism. here was a particular interest in re-interpreting ar from a perspecti e of the
Samir Amin’s work on eurocentrism serves as a crucial reminder that colonisation was about material resources, and decolonisation, thus, cannot be accomplished through changes in epistemology alone.
postcolonial world, from scholars in ndia to ra il. t was also a time when the andung conference a gathering in ndonesia in of representati es from newly independent sian and frican countries to build alliances around economic de elopment and decolonisation offered optimism for those who opposed colonialism and neocolonialism. he mid- th-century debates about urocentrism e ol ed from real material struggles against colonial and neocolonial relations, which stand in contrast to the contemporary field of economics, where analysis has been reduced to what can be studied within the framework of neoclassical economics and with certain accepted econometric methods. rom an minian perspecti e, decolonising the uni ersity would need to make space for the kinds of radical scholarship which critically scrutinises the role of the capitalist system itself in producing global ine ualities and in ustices that was possible in the mid- th century. Second, min can help us see the ideological foundations of mainstream economics, as well as social science theorising at large. n this, he gi es us the necessary starting point to challenge a field that remains urocentric. hird, we may also learn important lessons from min when it comes to strategy. He did not engage much with elite uni ersities in the core. He was a pan- fricanist and a citi en of the de eloping world, and he focused his life on building up political and intellectual institutions in frica. his contrasts with many initiati es from uni ersities in the core that try to incorporate scholars from the periphery into their often urocentric institutions, rather than supporting Southern institutions and epistemologies. inally, min always tied his work to real material struggles the need to oppose urocentric social science was important because it would e pose the colonial dimension of the global economic system. his is important in the conte t of calls to decolonise the uni ersity often being carried out in isolation from broader social struggles related to decolonisation. min s work, thus, ser es as a crucial reminder that colonisation was about material resources, and decolonisation, thus, cannot be accomplished through changes in epistemology alone.