Abstract

'Walden Bello is the world's leading no-nonsense revolutionary.' - Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine In this eye-opening and often scathing book, Walden Bello provides a forensic dissection of contemporary capitalism's multiple crises. Trenchant but constructive, Bello's analysis of the collapse of the global real economy, covering such issues as the Wall Street meltdown, the disintegration of the Greek economy, and the rise of China, emphasizes the ever more pressing need to engage in a radical process of deglobalization towards a decentralized, pluralistic world system. Only then will we be able to construct a fairer and more equitable society. A stirring call to arms for all those interested in global economic justice.
Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines. He is currently also an adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton and at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada; he has also been professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. He was founding director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) in Oakland, California. He is the author or co-author of seventeen books, including Dilemmas of Domination: the Unraveling of the American Empire (Zed Books, 2006) and Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy (Zed Books, 2004). He obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.
'Walden Bello's work has been consistently outstanding, highly informative and full of insight.' Noam Chomsky 'Walden Bello is the world's leading no-nonsense revolutionary.' Naomi Klein, author of 'This Changes Everything' and 'The Shock Doctrine' 'Deploying his wide-ranging knowledge of political economy and his experiences as a movement activist, Waldon Bello dissects conventional diagnoses and solutions to planetary crises, offering his own proposals for deglobalization. Magnificently lucid, this is a must-read for all interested in capitalism's threat to human survival.' Michael Burawoy, University of California at Berkeley 'Bello is a global resource, as unrelenting in his critique of global capitalism as he is indefatigable in his efforts to actualize an emancipatory alternative. Capitalism's Last Stand is panoramic in its intellectual vision, biting in its analysis of the multifaceted failures of our 21st century political economy, and firm in the conviction that we can replace it with something better.' Peter Evans, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley and Senior Research Fellow, Brown University 'In nine essays, Walden Bello draws a fine grained portrait of the tumult in the world economy and offers his wise suggestions for a way forward. His road to the future, deglobalization, emerges not out of wishful thinking but from both his analytical work and his political activism over the course of the past decades in Focus on the Global South and now in the parliament of the Philippines. Cataclysm stares the planet in the face: ideas such as that of Walden's might just be the tonic for a renewal of our hope.' Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.