Contemporary Authors

• The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy Monthly Review Press (New York, NY), 2008
• Peak Oil, Climate Change, and the Limits to China's Economic Growth Routledge (New York, NY), 2014
• China and the Twenty-First-Century Crisis Pluto Press (London, England), 2016

1. China and the twenty-first-century crisis https://lccn.loc.gov/2015303415 Li, Minqi, author. China and the twenty-first-century crisis / Minqi Li London : PlutoPress, 2016.©2016 221 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm HC427.95 .L5525 2016 ISBN: 9780745335377 (Hardback)9780745335384 (Paperback)0745335381 (Paperback) (PDF eBook) (Kindle eBook) (EPUB eBook)0745335373 (Hardback) 2. Peak oil, climate change, and the limits to China's economic growth https://lccn.loc.gov/2013031851 Li, Minqi. Peak oil, climate change, and the limits to China's economic growth / Minqi Li. New York : Routledge, 2014. xv, 192 pages ; 23 cm HD9502.C62 L5245 2014 ISBN: 9780415637541 (hardback) 3. The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy https://lccn.loc.gov/2008031316 Li, Minqi. The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy / Minqi Li. New York : Monthly Review Press, c2008. xix, 208 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. HB501 .L436 2008 ISBN: 9781583671832 (alk. paper)1583671838 (alk. paper)9781583671825 (pbk. : alk. paper)158367182X (pbk. : alk. paper)

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Minqi

  Li Minqi
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  This is a Chinese name; the family name is Li.
  Minqi Li
  Li Minqi on Subversive Festival.jpg
  Li Minqi speaking on Subversive Festival (2009)
  Born 1969
  Nationality China
  Fields Political Economy
  Marxism
  World Systems Theory
  Chinese Economy.
  Institutions University of Massachusetts Amherst
  York University
  University of Utah
  Alma mater Beijing University
  University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Known for Chinese New Left
  World-systems approach
  Influences Karl Marx
  Mao Zedong
  Giovanni Arrighi
  Immanuel Wallerstein
  Joseph Ball
  Hongzhi Zhang
  Friedrich Engels
  Minqi Li (born 1969) is a Chinese political economist, world-systems analyst, and historical social scientist, currently an associate professor of Economics at the University of Utah. Li is known as an advocate of the Chinese New Left and a Marxian economist.[1]

  Contents [hide]
  1 Biography
  2 Works
  3 See also
  4 References
  Biography[edit]
  Li was a student at the Economic Management Department of Beijing University during the period 1987–90. There he studied and became convinced of neoliberal 'Chicago School' economics. He engaged in many protests of the existing economic system, and engaged in much activism after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

  Li was arrested after advocating free market principles in 1990, and made a vast switch to become a Marxist after extensive reading of the works of Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and others while a political prisoner until his release in 1992.[2] Li spent the next two years traveling in China, debating with remaining liberal dissident activists and conducting his own research into political,economic, and social development in modern China, using fake identification to visit provincial and city libraries. His view became one opposed to the mainstream, being that Mao Zedong's influence was a "revolutionary legacy rather than a historical burden for future socialist revolutionaries."[3]

  In 1994, he authored the book Capitalist Development and Class Struggle in China,[4] which consisted of an analysis of the economic development of China in the Maoist era and the 1980s, as well as a Marxist analysis of the 1989 “democratic movement”, arguing that it was not a popular democratic movement and was abandoned by the liberal intellectuals, led to the physical and ideological slaughter of the urban working class, and led to a victory of the bureaucratic capitalists. He attempted to show that this paved the way for China's transition to Capitalism. He criticized neoliberal economics and its relation to economic rationality, inherent contradictions between democracy and capitalism, and the social and material conditions that had led to China's rise with a conclusion focusing on a criticism of state-capitalism and advocating democratic socialism.[5]

  After firmly completing a political and intellectual break with the mainstream Chinese liberal tradition and their political counterparts, he established himself as a revolutionary Marxist. Li arrived in the United States on December 25, 1994 and became a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Since then, he has been among the foremost promoters of the Chinese "New Left."[6]

  Li went on to author many Marxist articles for Monthly Review in this period, notably "After Neoliberalism: Empire, Social Democracy, or Socialism?".[7]

  In 2001 Li's focus shifted to World Capitalist Systems, and the work of Immanuel Wallerstein in particular. Inspired by Wallerstein's arguments, he wrote a Chinese article, “Reading Wallerstein’s Capitalist World-Economy—And the China Question in the First Half of the 21st Century,” being the first economist to link the "rise of China" to the demise of capitalism. The article gained popularity among the New Left in China without his knowledge, and was published in Currents of Thought: China’s New Left and Its Influences which he found by surprise while browsing in a Chinese bookstore in Philadelphia.[8] In late 2001 he expanded his study of China in relation to World-Systems in a critique of Jiang Zemin's theory of Chinese social strata (a refutation of Marxist social relations from a Chinese perspective, arguing that China is moving towards a "middle-class society"), in his “China’s Class Structure from the World-System’s Perspective.” Li argued that China’s economic rise would in fact greatly destabilize the capitalist world-economy in various ways and contribute to its final demise. Building upon his previous two papers, he wrote “The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy: Historical Possibilities of the 21st Century.” [9] He then incorporated these and several other papers into his book "The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy" [4] in 2009, in which he argued, based upon an analysis of environmental data in relation to the Capitalist world economy, that the only way to avoid the inevitable collapse of civilization is to adopt a socialist world government by the middle of the 21st century.

  From 2003 to 2006, he taught graduate and undergraduate courses on political economy at York University in Toronto, Canada, and then went on to teach at the University of Utah, where he currently teaches.

  He later worked on translation of Ernest Mandel's "Power and Money" into Chinese with Meng Jie,[10] and was an analyst of Chinese issues in 2008 for The Real News.[11]

• The University of Utah - https://faculty.utah.edu/u0533475-MINQI_LI/biography/index.hml

  Professor, Economics Department
  Email minqi.li@economics.utah.edu
  Phone 801-581-7481
  My Main Website http://www.econ.utah.edu/~mli - opens new window
  More Contact Info
  Biography
  Education
  Bachelor of Arts, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
  Doctor of Philosophy, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS -
  Bachelor of Arts, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
  Doctor of Philosophy, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS -
  Honors & Awards
  Superior Research Award (College of Social and Behavioral Science). University of Utah, 2010
  Merits Award for Research (Faculty of Arts). York University, 2006
  Economics Department Award for Superior Teaching. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2002
  Wall Street Journal Student Achievement Award. University of Delaware, 1996
  Biography
  I received a PhD in economics from University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2002. Upon completion of my PhD, I became a visiting assistant professor at Franklin and Marshall College at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. From 2003 to 2006, I was an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science of York University in Toronto, Canada. I have been teaching at Department of Economics of University of Utah since 2006
  From 2006 to 2010, I published 1 peer reviewed book, 10 peer reviewed articles, 4 peer reviewed book chapters, 1 non-peer reviewed book, 4 non-peer reviewed articles, 2 non-peer reviewed book chapters, 4 working papers, 1 short article, and 2 book reviews. One of my books has been translated into Turkish. In addition, I gave13 conference presentations and 14 invited lectures or talks. In 2009, I was elected to be a member of the editorial board of Review of Radical Political Economics.
  In recent years, my research has focused on the following areas: (1) the long-term movement of investment profitability and its impact on economic performance; (2) global financial imbalances with a focus on the Chinese and the US economy; (3) energy and environmental issues. All three issues are connected by a common theme: long-term cyclical movements and secular trends of the current world system. Studies on these issues contribute to better understanding of the historical evolution of the current world system and its possible future trajectories.
  Affiliations
  Political Economy Research Institute of University of Massachusetts Amherst (PERI), Research Scholar, 2003 - present
  In the Media
  Interview by CCTV-America, on China’s Nuclear Energy, June 16, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1W7KhC5TJ0 . 06/16/2015.
  Interview by E-International Relations, April 2015. http://www.e-ir.info/2015/04/07/interview-minqi-li/ . 04/07/2015.
  Interview by Marxist Thought, A Greek quarterly journal, April 2015. 04/2015.
  Interview by Real News Network, on US-China climate deal, November 12, 2014. 11/12/2014.
  Interview by Vice News, on China’s Climate Pledge, November 12, 2014. https://news.vice.com/article/heres-why-chinas-climate-pledge-might-not-be-such-a-great-leap-forward. 11/12/2014.
  Interview by Joel Kovel, Eco-Socialist Horizons (radio program), on China, Climate Change, and Ecological Crisis, November 9, 2014. 11/09/2014.
  Interview by Padraic O'Brien, Community Radio of Guelph, Ontario, on China and global capitalism, February 24, 2014. 02/24/2014.
  Interview with Paul Jay, www.therealnews.com on Why the Chinese Economy Is Slowing Down, January 31, 2013. 01/31/2013. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_con... - opens new window
  Interview with Paul Jay, www.therealnews.com on the Chinese economy and workers’ movement, August 11, 2010. 08/11/2010.
  Interview with Paul Jay, www.therealnews.com on climate change, December 7, 2009. 12/07/2009.
  Interview with Paul Jay, www.therealnews.com, November 20, 2009. 2009.
  Interview with Alan Sekula, Film Producer, for a documentary on maritime space in the global economy, Los Angeles, May 4, 2009. 2009.
  Interview with Jerko Bakutin, Novi List, Zagreb Croatia, May 15, 2009. 2009.
  Interview with Radiotelevisione Italiana on “The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy,” June 5, 2009. 2009.
  Interview with Global Times (English Edition of the Chinese Newspaper Huanqiu Shibao), “Rethink privatizing China’s SOEs,” August 4, 2009. 2009.
  Interview with Paul Jay, www.therealnews.com, September 26, 2009. 2009.
  Interview with Eleftherotypia (Greek National Newspaper), November 13, 2009. 2009.
  Languages
  Chinese, fluent.
  Geographical Regions of Interest
  Eastern Asia
  United States of America

• E-International Relations - http://www.e-ir.info/2015/04/07/interview-minqi-li/

  Interview – Minqi Li
  E-INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, APR 7 2015, 553 VIEWS
  Interview – Minqi Li
  Interview – Minqi Li
  Minqi Li studied at Beijing University between 1987 and 1990, and participated in the 1989 student democratic movement. Between 1990 and 1992, he was a political prisoner. He came to the United States in 1994 and received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2002. From 2003 to 2006, he taught political science at York University, Canada, and since July 2006, he has taught economics at the University of Utah. His current research interests include the long-term movement of the profit rate in the capitalist world-economy, the structural contradictions of neoliberalism and global financial imbalances, global environmental crisis, and the historical limit to capitalism. His recent books include The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy (Pluto Press / Monthly Review Press, 2009) and Peak Oil, Climate Change, and the Limits to China’s Economic Growth (Routledge, 2014). His new book, China and the 21st Century Crisis, will be published by Pluto Press in 2015.

  Where do you see the most exciting research and debates occurring in your field?

  This is an interesting question. It may not be exaggerating to say that since the late 20th century, there have been no major theoretical advances in either neoclassical economics or Marxian political economy, as the two fields are traditionally defined. However, in my own research, I have benefited substantially from the world system literature and the ecological limits to growth perspective.

  The most important question confronting all serious intellectual thinkers today has to do with how to understand our existing social system in the current historical conjuncture. Is the capitalist world system in a structural crisis? Can the various economic, social, geopolitical, and ecological contradictions be resolved within the system’s own framework? Or will the system have to be replaced by one or several new systems?

  How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

  I was a participant in the 1989 student democratic movement in China. The 1989 movement was a complicated historical event. Although it reflected to some degree the genuine desires for political and economic democracy on the part of the working class, the movement was clearly led by “liberal intellectuals” who were strongly anti-socialist and believed in free market capitalism uncritically. In fact, I was an economics student in Beijing University at the time and embraced the neoliberal economic model.

  My political views began to shift to the left as I realized that a genuine popular democratic movement could not succeed without the mobilization of the working class, and there was an obvious contradiction between a political program, which called on the working class to support democracy, and the neoliberal economic program, which demanded privatization and massive layoff of state sector workers.

  Since the turn of the century, the Chinese working class has been gradually radicalized, and a significant intellectual and social left has emerged in China. The overwhelming majority of the Chinese left today consider themselves as “Maoists” of one sort or another, reflecting the historical legacy of the Maoist revolution. In recent years, I have been actively involved in the Chinese leftist activities.

  Both crises of capitalism and claims that they are symptoms of its demise have come and gone over the decades. What makes the current conjuncture qualitatively different?

  An inexperienced doctor may provide a wrong diagnosis and prematurely announce that a patient is beyond treatment. But the recognition of the doctor’s mistake, even several times over, should not lead one to conclude that some human being can live forever.

  Capitalism is a social system. That means it has certain essential characteristics and follows certain laws of motion. For capitalism to operate with these essential characteristics and basic laws of motion, it depends on certain historical conditions. But underlying historical conditions tend to change in the long run. Within certain limits, capitalism may adapt to the changing underlying conditions. But beyond certain limits, the underlying conditions begin to diverge so much from the range that is compatible with the basic operations of the capitalist system that the system can no longer reproduce itself. Then a bifurcation will occur leading to the system’s demise. I think this is essentially the same as Immanuel Wallerstein’s argument that the capitalist world system is now in a “structural crisis” (by “structural crisis”, Wallerstein means the final, insoluble crisis).

  In particular, the defining feature of capitalism has to do with its capacity to accumulate capital on increasingly larger scales. This is what really distinguishes capitalism from all pre-existing social systems. An obvious limit to this tendency towards “endless accumulation” has to do with the ecological constraints. Of course, a technology optimist will argue that we can have both infinite economic growth and ecological sustainability. I think there are fundamental reasons why ecological sustainability cannot be achieved under the condition of endless economic growth, or at least with an economic growth rate high enough to sustain economic and social stability required for capitalism, no matter how you measure “economic growth”. In any case, it is beyond dispute that, despite all the talks about “sustainable development” or “green growth”, the world continues to head relentlessly towards global ecological catastrophes. We know this as we observe that the global ecological deficit (the gap between ecological footprint and bio-capacity) continue to widen and the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases keeps rising year after year.

  Capitalist accumulation has transformed the world’s social structures. Marx called this “proletarianization.” Of course, the proletariat has not yet become the “grave diggers” of capitalism. But the modern working class has greater organizational capacity and more advanced political consciousness, in comparison with the historical labouring classes. This has allowed the modern working class to demand a greater share of the capitalist economic output over time. The stronger working class power was the underlying cause of the major economic and political instabilities the capitalist world system suffered during the 1960s and the 1970s.

  Neoliberalism has been the attempt of the system’s ruling elites to reverse the long-term historical tendency towards the strengthening of the working class power. Neoliberalism has partially “succeeded” in re-establishing favourable conditions of global capital accumulation largely by mobilizing the large cheap-labour force in China, politically made possible by China’s counter-revolution. But the Chinese working class will soon begin to demand more political and economic rights. China is now probably the only large economy where the workers’ wages have grown more rapidly than labour productivity (yes, the Chinese workers’ wages have been rising, and rapidly!). This reflects the growing power of the Chinese working class. At some point, this will precipitate the Chinese capitalist economy into a major crisis, because capitalism needs profit to function and higher wages reduce the profit rate. I don’t see another large geographical area to replace China as the next supplier of massive cheap-labour force. I don’t think India will be able to do it. In any case, the global ecological system cannot afford another “China” with a comparable level of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

  In your article One Hundred Million Jobs for the Chinese Workers!, you argue for a transformation in China’s economic model away from its current export orientation towards a focus on domestic consumption. In practice, who would be the social forces supporting this change, and what opposition or structural constraints would they need to overcome?

  In the article, I basically proposed a left-Keynesian economic policy that would help to alleviate some of the social and environmental costs of China’s current capitalist economic model.

  Over the past three years or so, China’s political conditions have been dramatically changed. The remaining left-leaning leadership (led by Bo Xilai, the former Party secretary of the Chongqing city) has been purged. The 3rd Plenum of the 18th Party Central Committee decided to “comprehensively deepen economic reform” by privatizing the remaining state owned enterprises in the key economic sectors. Under the current neoliberal leadership, there is no chance for any progressive economic policy to be adopted.

  However, in the future, when political conditions become appropriate, a democratic socialist government in China may adopt elements of the proposed policy as a transition strategy, which involves a large-scale public investment and employment program financed by taxes on capitalists, to absorb the underemployed labour force and undertake environmental improvement projects.

  Over the last decade, we have seen a rise in South-South cooperation, culminating in the creation of institutions such as the Bank of the South and the BRICs Bank. Is this a significant phenomenon and does it represent a challenge to the traditional international institutions?

  This is an interesting development. But for the moment, I do not see that institutions such as the BRICs Bank will significantly affect the basic dynamics of global finance. Although over the long run, it may contribute to the gradual erosion of the dollar hegemony. But I would not consider this to be among the most significant aspects of the current global capitalist contradictions.

  In The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy, you argue that global socialism is absolutely imperative to avert the catastrophes that climate change will cause. However, even without the drive for private profit, historic socialisms have also been very ecologically destructive. What factors will ensure that future socialisms are different?

  The former Soviet Union and some Eastern European socialist states had a miserable record of environmental protection. But this needs to be put in the context that these states remained a part of the capitalist world system and therefore were compelled to pursue capital accumulation in order to match the western capitalist powers in industrial and military capacity. In the Soviet case, it was compelled to prioritise the “heavy industries” or the typical industries that emerged out of the “second industrial revolution” (oil, steel, machinery industries). Given the geopolitical conditions, it was inconceivable for the Soviet Union to specialize in consumer goods exports as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan did. This has not fundamentally changed in today’s “post-communist” Russia, except that Russia has been de-industrialized.

  The basic contradiction between capitalism and environment has to do with the incessant drive for capital accumulation, which arises because market competition forces each capitalist and capitalist state to use the surplus value under its control to expand in order to prevail in the competition. Within the capitalist world system, some states that are advantageously placed within the system (such as the “core states”) may enjoy higher environmental “efficiency” than other states. But from the long-term historical perspective, there is no doubt that the modern environmental crisis has emerged during the historical era of global capitalism, and has deteriorated on a global scale as the global capitalist economy grows exponentially.

  Within capitalism, there is no way to get around this contradiction (though it may be temporarily alleviated or moved around geographically as the core capitalist states relocate their pollution-intensive industries to other geographical areas) as, by definition, there is not a mechanism for the society as a whole to decide how the society’s surplus product should be used, whether it should be used for capital accumulation, public consumption, environmental improvement, or reduction of the general population’s working time. Only with socialist planning can the society as a whole collectively decide to use the surplus product for ecological sustainability.

  Of course, socialist planning, even under democratic conditions, can still make wrong decisions. But under capitalism or any other market-dominated economic system, the mechanism for the society to collectively decide how to use the surplus product is simply not available. For those who still think it is possible to have capitalism and market economy while achieving ecological sustainability, they need to be reminded that the main virtue of market is supposed to be about competition (and the pursuit of self-interest). If we cannot eliminate competition between individuals, between businesses, and between states, how can we prevent these players from pursuing economic expansion on increasingly larger scales?

  In Climate Change, Limits to Growth and the Imperative for Socialism, you highlight how the economic collapse suffered by the Russian economy in the 1990s would have to be repeated worldwide more than three times over to stabilize our climate at reasonable levels. Given the drastic fall in living standards experienced during this economic collapse, can an even larger fall in emissions be achieved now without such detrimental human costs?

  The magnitude of emission reduction depends on the climate stabilization targets. Unfortunately, for all practical purposes, I think it is no longer possible to limit long-term global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius relative to the pre-industrial time.

  It is still conceivable that the world may achieve climate stabilization with a long-term global warming no more than three degrees Celsius relative to the pre-industrial time. If global warming rises above three degrees, then in addition to the destruction of Amazon rainforest and a global sea level rise by more than 25 meters, we may end up with runaway global warming that destroys the foundation of human civilization.

  To limit global warming to no more than three degrees (which may not be sufficiently safe to guard against the possibility of runaway global warming), global emissions need to peak before 2040 (with an average annual growth rate of emissions no more than 1 percent between now and 2040) and need to fall by about two-thirds between 2040 and the end of the century (with an average annual decline rate of about 1.5 percent).

  By comparison, since 2000, the global economy has grown at an average annual rate of about 3.5 percent, the so-called “emission intensity” (the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP) has declined at an average annual rate of about 1 percent, so that the carbon dioxide emissions have grown at an average annual rate of about 2.5 percent (3.5 percent – 1 percent = 2.5 percent).

  During the historical period 1913-1950 (a period that included two world wars and the Great Depression), the global economy actually achieved an average annual growth rate of near 2 percent. Thus, an average growth rate of 2 percent (over a prolonged period of time) may be the minimum threshold required for global capitalist stability. If the long-term global economic growth rate is lowered to 2 percent and the emission intensity keeps falling by 1 percent-a-year, then we will still end up with an emissions growth rate of 1 percent-a-year.

  Because of the infrastructure inertia (every year we can only replace a small fraction of the existing capital infrastructure), I think it will be very difficult for the world to push the emission intensity reduction rate above 2 percent-a-year for a prolonged period of time (a 2 percent annual reduction of emission intensity reduction roughly corresponds to a scenario where about a half of the new electric power plants are emissions-free).

  Suppose, the annual emission intensity reduction rate can be raised to 2 percent, and the economic growth rate is kept at 2 percent, then at best we can achieve zero growth in global carbon dioxide emissions. On the other hand, to achieve a 1.5 percent annual reduction of emissions (not “emission intensity”), global economic growth rate will have to be limited to no more than 0.5 percent. Thus, it is unlikely that a reasonable scenario of climate stabilization (one that is consistent with the long-term sustainability of human civilization) can be made compatible with the global capitalist system.

  (The above refers to global average long-term trends. It does not rule out the possibilities that individual countries or the world as a whole in individual years may achieve unusually large reductions of emission intensity or absolute reductions of emissions.)

  When applying the world systems categories of ‘core’, ‘semi-periphery’, and ‘periphery’, a large number of countries with significant differences and unique histories are grouped together. Do you think the insights produced justify the generalization this entails?

  In both physical science and social science, any theoretical concept will have to deal with the tension between generalization and individual particularities. The justification of a theoretical concept lies with its capacity to capture the long-term and structural forces that operate through a certain set of individual objects, forces that are not revealed or are disguised when we treat each object individually and separately.

  The concepts such as “core”, “semi-periphery”, and “periphery” help to illustrate the historical distribution of world surplus value and how the concentration of a large portion of the world surplus value in the core countries has provided one of the necessary conditions required for global capital accumulation.

  As global capitalism expands, the semi-peripheral countries, and eventually some peripheral countries, have been mobilized to participate in effective capital accumulation. Such mobilization has tended to increase the global labour and environmental costs as a growing proportion of the global population participates in resources-intensive material consumption. It also tends to reduce the share of the world surplus value that was historically available to the core countries.

  As the structural forces of the core, semi-periphery, and periphery begin to operate differently from how they had operated from the 16th century to the 20th century, we may approach the end of capitalism as a historical system.

  During your career, you have worked within departments of both economics and political science. Given the many insightful works of political economy that have been produced historically, what is your opinion on the separation of these two disciplines in academia?

  I enjoyed my teaching and research at the Department of Political Science, York University. However, I have been trained as an economist and am not in a position to describe myself as a political scientist.

  Modern neoclassical economics (the mainstream economics) considers itself to be the “science” about resources allocation, reconciling unlimited human wants with scarcity. In an ideal free market world, all individuals engage in voluntary exchange that produces the “Pareto Optimum” (the official definition of “efficiency”). By comparison, political science explicitly addresses the question of power, especially the power relations between the state and various social groups and between different states.

  Both the mainstream economics and political science take the existing capitalist system for granted, as the highest stage of human development. On the other hand, Marxist political economy studies “social relations of production” and the capitalist “social formation” as but one particular stage in the human historical development. It is neither the last nor the most advanced that the human beings can ever accomplish.

  What is the most important advice you could give to young scholars of economics, politics, and international relations?

  I don’t know if I can offer the “most important advice”. I would confess that my intellectual world has been organized by “orthodox” Marxism. Methodologically, I follow “dialectical materialism”, which is different from the Anglo-American empiricism in many important ways.

  “Dialectics” is by no means an obvious word. On the one hand, it is based on the understanding that “the world (the universe) is universally connected”, or every part of the world is in one way or the other connected to every other part. But connection leads to interaction and interaction leads to movement. So another fundamental proposition of dialectical materialism is that the world and every part of it are in permanent movement. In other words, everything (every physical and social system and every component of these systems) always tends to change.

  Therefore, do not take anything for granted. I mean anything, including “capitalism.” The important task for a serious social thinker is to understand the conditions of social change (to interpret the world), and then to be a part of it (to change the world).

Minqi Li: The Rise of China and the Demise of the
Capitalist World-Economy
Jamie Morgan
Capital & Class.
34.2 (June 2010): p279.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309816810365636
COPYRIGHT 2010 Conference of Socialist Economists
http://www.cseweb.org.uk
Full Text: 
Minqi Li The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy, Pluto Press: London, 2008; 208 pp.: 9780745327723, 19.99
[pounds sterling] (pbk)
I liked this book despite myself. That sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it is more a criticism of my own preconceptions when I became
aware that it was a book based on world-systems theory. World-systems theory (WST) has been out of vogue for some time, partly for good
reasons--a point to which I will return. This, however, is a fresh and provocative work. But it is not a book about China in the sense that many
would-be readers might anticipate. If you are looking for a detailed history and political economy of China, look elsewhere. This is a book about
the broader significance of China. Li begins from the position that the 'rise of China' need not be viewed in terms of adjustments within the
current world economy. This would be a restricted vision that took the system as given; either in terms of the simplistic binary of China as 'threat
to the West' versus China as a potentially positive stabilising political and economic force; or through the further question that cuts across these:
is China the next hegemon, and if so, what kind of hegemon is it? Li's thesis is rather one of historical and implicitly dialectical dynamics in
which the rise of China can be viewed as a key element in the final death throes of the current capitalist system. For Li, Chinas rise is indicative
of an emerging structural crisis, and is liable to play an important constitutive role in the form it will take.
The theoretical architecture for Li's case is provided by WST. The core idea of WST is that the current capitalist world system is historically
unique in the sense that production is based on profit that in turn, and as an extension of the struggle for survival of each capitalist unit, creates a
focus on the accumulation of capital as a systemic necessity. This is facilitated by a multi-state system that prevents any given state power from
decisively reducing the capacity to accumulate, but is also disciplined by a hegemonic state. The system is perpetuated by the continual extension
of exploitation of resources and lower costs by capitalists across geographical locations, constituting a mutable hierarchy of states, from a core to
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a periphery (pp. 13-15, 113-25). It is also perpetuated in the shorter term by a given hegemon able to provide historically specific, system-wide
solutions to system-level problems based on its superior military, productive, financial and technological position; and in the longer term, by the
progressive replacement (through crisis and struggle) of each hegemon by a larger one matching the increasing complexity and scale of the
system as a whole. In WST, then, the current capitalist world system extends from Dutch hegemony in the 17th century to the us hegemony of the
20th century.
Li's argument rests on three claims. First, that the possible alternative hegemonic candidates are simply underprepared for the role--particularly
China, which suffers from a combination of internal problems and external dependencies of a kind familiar to anyone who has read the more
critical accounts of the 'rise of China'. Second, that even if a state, and China in particular, were better prepared, the system has become too large
and complex for any given hegemon to have the resources with which to discipline it. Any new single power able to do so would not be a state
but rather an empire (or world government of one kind or another), and this would be a different kind of system because it would change the basis
on which accumulation either was facilitated or occurred (based on ideas of what growth is for, and what human need is). Third, that even if a
large and sufficiently capable state existed in a multi-state system, system-level problems are no longer of the kind that can simply be solved
through the discipline of a hegemon without fundamental changes being made to the system itself. There are no longer any new areas of low-cost
labour and exploitable resources that can be drawn into the system to maintain the growth of accumulation in the ways this has been managed
before. The current periphery, semiperiphery and core class dynamics are thus liable to be based on greater (class) struggle over current surpluses,
in turn creating socioeconomic and political crises across the hierarchy of states. At the same time, the fundamental problem that a multi-state
system bent to the needs of capital accumulation is a system that cannot decisively address the problem of the environment that lies at the heart of
both the sustainability of accumulation and of human well-being, means that a global resource and environmental crisis is coming. The rise of
China merely exacerbates this latter problem.
Elements of all three of Li's claims are highly plausible and share key conclusions with those of many others (see Patomaki, 2008). Since there is
not the space here to go into any detail regarding what makes the claims plausible, I simply recommend that anyone interested in the current
dynamics of global capital read this book (particularly pp. 82-92), for its insight into the way financialisation has extended and heightened the
problems of us hegemony (and its relation to China), and also particularly Chapter 6, which provides an insightful and frankly frightening
analysis of the relation between current growth, resource exploitation and the environment. I would add a few caveats, however, regarding the
way the book is read, particularly by students. Since the book is based on WST and contains no conceptual development or critique of its
theoretical source (merely a note that Wallerstein is overly optimistic in his analysis, see p. 179) it ought to be read in conjunction with other
works that provide that context. WST has numerous acknowledged but ultimately unreconciled problems: a concept of capitalism as a world
system that precedes the Industrial Revolution, and grey issues of modes and forces of production; a concept of class coherence and of classstate-hegemonic
relations that would benefit from a reading of the French Regulation School and of Nicos Poulantzas regarding fragmentation
and order; a conceptual tension in the notion of change within any given state's role in the hierarchy (notions of core, periphery and semiperiphery
are both highly deterministic/efficient/effective structurally, and also subject to transition); and an overly mechanistic approach to
concepts such as surplus value and the significance of capital--labour ratios that are problematic in terms of dosed-system approaches that are
more about model tractability than actuality.
In terms of Li's account in particular, I would also note that his analysis of the positive aspects of the pre-reform revolution era is part of the new
revisionism. It is a useful antidote to the slew of overly negative accounts of the period; but it is one that rests mainly on the implausibility of
many of the most extreme negative claims (the scale of famine, etc.), and on the immediate statistical results of Chinas moving out of years of
mismanagement and war deprivation in a way that only an authoritarian mobilising state with a genuine commitment to positive transformation
could. The issues in terms of its long-term significance and sustainability and the manner in which it was truncated by the reform period are
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glossed somewhat here. Moreover, in rehabilitating Moo it is not necessary to simply convert his image from that of demon to saint. Mao did not
become the leading figure in the CCP, the revolution and the PRC without being able to act clinically, decisively and cruelly, and without making
mistakes. To think of him otherwise is to take the human out of history, which is in many respects a broader problem of WST, despite its focus on
emancipatory historical dynamics. I don't wish to end on this note, however, since one does not need to accept all of Li's points on this matter (set
out in Chapter 2) to find the book as a whole a valuable one. This is a timely book, even if it is also in some respects dated.
DOI: 10.1177/0309816810365636
References
Patomaki H (2008) The Political Economy of Global Security: War, Future Crises and Changes in Global Governance. London: Routledge.
Reviewed by Jamie Morgan, University of Helsinki, Finland
Author biography
Jamie Morgan works for the Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research at the University of Helsinki. He has published on China,
Marxism and finance systems, and on various aspects of philosophy from mathematics to metaphysics. His most recent work is Private Equity
Finance: Rise and Repercussions (2008).
Morgan, Jamie
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Morgan, Jamie. "Minqi Li: The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy." Capital & Class, vol. 34, no. 2, 2010, p. 279+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA229896443&it=r&asid=9a45529e5f1e282dbd97897ebc58df69. Accessed 6 Apr.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A229896443

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Li, Minqi. The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist
world-economy
S.J. Gabriel
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
46.11 (July 2009): p2169.
COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text: 
46-6313
HB501
2008-31316 CIP
Li, Minqi. The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy. Monthly Review, 2008. 208p bibl index afp ISBN 9781583671832,
$75.00; ISBN 9781583671825 pbk, $16.95
As the title suggests, this work is only partly about China. Li (Univ. of Utah) analyzes China's path from the Maoist era to the post-Mao reforms
and argues that the latter wedded China to the global capitalist system and a neoliberal agenda to rescue capitalist profitability. He further argues
that the structural output of this neoliberal agenda, including the exhaustion of the planet's capacity to absorb pollutants generated by incessant
capital accumulation, is destined to generate a global economic and ecological crisis, q-his crisis, according to Li, will arise from the
incompatibility of the underlying dynamic of capitalism (capital accumulation and the primacy of profit over other social objectives) with
historical conditions shaped by that same capitalist dynamic. Specifically, Li argues that global economic and ecological crisis must necessarily
be an outcome of capitalism. The solution to the crisis will be the death of capitalism and the rise of a new economic system. This logic is classic
orthodox Marxism, except for the innovative way in which Li integrates ecological crisis into the narrative. This volume provides a provocative,
interesting contribution to current debates about economics and its ecological impact. Summing Up: Recommended. ** General readers, all levels
of undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and faculty.--S. J. Gabriel, Mount Holyoke College
Gabriel, S.J.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Gabriel, S.J. "Li, Minqi. The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries,
July 2009, p. 2169. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA266632984&it=r&asid=51c923efe7fe8b10efe9fedf27af7eec. Accessed 6 Apr. 2017.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A266632984

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The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist worldeconomy
Reference & Research Book News.
24.2 (May 2009):
COPYRIGHT 2009 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text: 
9781583671825
The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy.
Li, Minqi.
Monthly Review Press
2008
208 pages
$16.95
Paperback
HB501
Because the fundamental premise of capitalism is ever increasing capital accumulation, capitalism must always expand, and the expansion has
usually been geographical, explains Li (economics, U. of Utah). He argues that China was the last large territory to be integrated into the global
capitalist system, so when that process is complete, global capitalism, with no place to expand to, will rot and die. He draws on Marxism and
world systems theory, and considers as well the tension between an economic theory that posits eternal growth, and a planet with finite resources.
([c]2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy." Reference & Research Book News, May 2009. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA199021873&it=r&asid=ca7e3b98b606152e9de995db9b2c8e8d. Accessed 6 Apr.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A199021873

Morgan, Jamie. "Minqi Li: The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy." Capital & Class, vol. 34, no. 2, 2010, p. 279+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA229896443&it=r. Accessed 6 Apr. 2017. Gabriel, S.J. "Li, Minqi. The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 2009, p. 2169. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA266632984&it=r. Accessed 6 Apr. 2017. "The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy." Reference & Research Book News, May 2009. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA199021873&it=r. Accessed 6 Apr. 2017.

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