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Questioning Globalized Militarism

Nuclear and Military Production and Critical EconomicTheory

Peter Custers

Foreword by Samir Amin

January 2007

6.25 x 9.5 inches

(xx+ 432 ) 452 pages

ISBN : 978-81-89487-20-5

INR 695
INR 695.00
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978-81-89487-19-5

In this wide-ranging study Peter Custers seeks to highlight the importance of the production and consumption of arms as a form of social waste within the capitalist world order. The study encompasses critical economic theory, historical studies of the rise of capitalism, conceptualizations of international trade, and analyses of the inequities spawned by globalized militarism. Drawing especially on Volume 2 of Marx's Capital, the author creatively develops some of Marx's classical themes. The individual circuit of capital outlined in that work is utilized by Custers to demonstrate the generation of various types of waste at each step in the military-nuclear and civilian–nuclear production chains. He also proposes the new concept of negative use-value to highlight the adverse consequences, for human beings and the environment, of products that are churned out by the military–nuclear complex. Particularly insightful is the thesis he advances in opposition to the view that the capitalist system in its earlier phases operated as a market system governed by 'internal' exchanges. Custers produces historical evidence to demonstrate that this system always incorporated a vital 'external' agent, namely, the capitalist state, which has played a significant role in capitalism's evolution at crucial junctures.

Peter Custers

Peter Custers is a campaigner and writer with many publications to his credit. He is engaged in theoretical research alongside a commitment to social struggles and campaigns in Bangladesh and Western Europe. His website: www.petercusters.nl

Samir Amin

Samir Amin (1931–2018) is a reputed author of numerous books. He was an active and committed intellectual associated with liberation movements of Asia and Africa during the Bandung era (1955–1980), and was Director of the Third World Forum and Chairperson of the World Forum for Alternatives.