Through a century of forced trade, war, and colonial pressure, 19th-century China was pulled into the orbit of European capitalism, marking a seismic shift from a China-centered world to one dominated by Western powers. This book interrogates this coerced transformation, showing how the collapse of China's imperial order and integration into the capitalist world system laid the groundwork for its eventual capitalist transition. It unpacks a pivotal chapter in global power struggles and China's modern trajectory.

What does it mean when the world becomes "capitalized"—and who benefits? This study traces a stark transformation in the global distribution of capital income since 2000. While global capital income inequality declined (Gini falling from 97% to 94%) and more people, especially in China and Russia, gained access to property income, the vast bulk of humanity—around four-fifths—still receive nothing or only trivial sums from capital.

Marx’s insights into capitalism’s contradictions remain crucial for understanding today’s crises. This piece revisits Marx’s core ideas, breaking them down to reveal how individual capitalist pursuits exacerbate systemic instability, as competition drives labor productivity up while profitability falls. The author critiques neoliberalism’s ideological grip, which sustains these tensions, and pushes for reclaiming Marx’s tools to navigate—and challenge—a destructive economic system, all while linking theory to action.

Capitalism is a self-perpetuating system of exploitation that commodifies everything, prioritizing profit over human life and the planet. This dialogue argues that since its origins in the 1500s, capitalism has driven global inequality, environmental destruction, and premature death, with imperialism and financial capitalism intensifying these harms. In regions like the Arab world, capitalist imperialism uses war, debt, and austerity to extract resources and suppress resistance.

Exploring the historical and contemporary dynamics of proletarianization and peasantry in Mozambique, this talk critiques both the colonial forced labor systems and the post-independence shift to neoliberal extractivism under IMF-led structural adjustments. With two-thirds of the population still tied to small-scale agriculture amid rising inequality, the speaker unpacks how land struggles remain central to class conflict, yet organized movements fail to represent the rural poor, day laborers, and women.

Cheating is capitalism's engine, argues this paper. Examining imperialism’s power plays, neoliberal game theory, and financial history, the author argues that deception isn’t an aberration but a normalized tool of economic dominance. The rhetoric of cheating fuels reactionary politics, falsely blaming marginalized groups while shielding the wealthy elites who rig the game. To challenge both capitalism and the far-right ideologies it bolsters, we must confront how cheating drives and justifies inequality.

Mercantilist Europe championed innovation, luxury, and industrial growth, driven by an "increasing returns" mindset, while Confucian China's agrarian, anti-luxury, "decreasing returns" policies stifled innovation. This sharp contrast in political economies underpinned the Great Divergence, as Europe's statecraft nurtured expansion and progress, while China's clung to static traditions. This paper reframes economic ideology as a key driver of global inequality’s origins.

Crises like Covid-19 and the Great Recession expose how outdated tools fail to grasp poverty’s real dynamics. Income volatility and shared resources muddy the measurement, while poverty’s role as both risk and structural barrier deepens inequalities in emergencies. By embracing sociology’s nuanced lens, this article shows how researchers can rethink how we track and tackle poverty, turning systemic failures into actionable solutions for fairer policies that endure future crises.

Trade creates winners and losers, and policymakers have long debated how to compensate those left behind. Analyzing surveys of European legislators and the public, this study finds that while elites and voters diverge on trade remedies—with elites favoring spending and the public preferring tax cuts or protectionism—the bigger story lies in shared divides over which policies work best. Ideology drives elite decisions more than public attitudes, exposing cracks in the consensus behind the liberal trade order.

Amid a global trade war, immigrant workers at critical logistics chokepoints in San Diego wield immense potential power but face systemic barriers to organizing. Precarious citizenship status and the gig-like structure of trucking jobs sap associational and institutional power, but shared transnational ties and community networks offer rare stability. The key, this study suggests, lies in forging alliances with immigrant rights groups to amplify their disruptive leverage and challenge exploitative systems.