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Purpose – This chapter engages critically with the ideas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) in order to examine their utility for the purposes of realizing more socially just and environmentally sustainable social and economic practices.

Methodology/approach – The chapter develops Marx's understanding of the twin pressures of class struggle and inter-capitalist competition in setting the limits of agency for corporate actors. It is thus theoretical and discursive in nature.

Findings – The findings of the chapter suggest that the scope for corporate agency in relation to responsibility/irresponsibility is severely limited by inter-capitalist competition and capitalist social relations. It therefore argues that those interested in social justice and environmental sustainability should focus on these structural pressures rather than theorizing corporate agency.

Social implications – The research suggests that the focus of academic and government attention should be on resolving the contradictions and exploitative social relations inherent in capitalism. Without this emphasis activism, corporate agency and government action will not eradicate the types of problem that advocates of CSR/CSI are concerned about.

Originality/value of paper – The value of the paper is that it contests and engages critically with the utility of the notion of CSR and the emergent concept of CSI. It asks proponents of these concepts to think seriously about the structural pressures and constraints within which business and policy makers act.

This paper analyses the stalling of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and its systemic and institutional consequences through a geopolitical economy approach that integrates the French school of international economic relations and Régulation Theory. These approaches put states and their economic roles at the fore, correcting dominant free trade approaches to world trade. The paper also avoids monocausal explanations for trade talk deadlocks and aims to provide a comprehensive approach on the co-evolution of world trade patterns and its institutions. In this approach, the DDA stalemate is traced to an institution-structure mismatch in how states articulate their accumulation strategies and institutions (competition, state regulation, adhesion to international regime) to the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime occasioned by the emergence of new trade powers. This has given rise to three distinct conflicts in how member states navigate between the main parameters of the multilateral trading system (non-discrimination, reciprocity and balance of power) and their national accumulation strategies: the erosion of non-discrimination and reciprocity; the failure to build an operational compromise between development and ‘globalization’, that is, between multilateral openness and new trade and power balances; and the difficulty in reaching a compromise between historical and emerging capitalisms. The outcome of these conflicts will determine the institutional configuration of the post-Doha WTO agenda.

Rosa Luxemburg is not an under-consumptionist stressing the tendency to stagnation, it is rather an under-investment perspective: the effective demand crisis results from the disequilibria determined by a vibrant capitalist accumulation, and stems from production rather than circulation. To show this, the chapter deals with three dimensions of Rosa Luxemburg's economic thought. First, how Luxemburg's approach in her 1913 book is related with some of her prior writings, especially Social Reform or Revolution? and the Introduction to Political Economy. Second, the re-reading that Luxemburg herself provided of her own argument in terms of a macro-monetary circuit model like the one we read in her Anti-Critique. Third and last, in which sense Marx's monetary labour theory of value was for her the essential starting point, which cannot be just set aside. This last point will be preceded by a détour, the critical consideration of some key papers by Kalecki on capitalism and reform, including his late paper with Kowalik on the ‘crucial reform’. The chapter concludes with some hints pointing towards an interpretation of capitalism and its recurring crises where exploitation and effective demand are both essential in accounting for the ascent and collapses of different forms of capitalism itself.

We aim to analyze the early trajectory of Argentine industry from the perspective of uneven and combined development. Argentine integration into the world market based on the export of agricultural goods had not neglected industrial development. At first, Argentine industry benefited from its late emergence and rapidly followed the path of leading countries’ manufactures. But initial advantage soon turned into a liability. The emergence of large-scale industry required expanded markets that were already occupied by older and stronger competitors. The 1930 crisis and the impact of the Second World War aggravated this problem. Attempts to remedy the situation – an export-led industrialization scheme and an internal-market-oriented economy – failed successively. We study this process through the analysis of Argentine industrial chambers’ journals, reports from the United States Department of Foreign Trade and Argentine official government documents. We find that the export-led industrialization project failed because of the weakness of Argentine industries and not because of economic nationalism. That was the outcome of the previous failure of liberal projects and of the international constraints imposed by the Second World War and its aftermath. During this later period of internal-market-oriented economy, the gap between Argentine and international productivity widened. This paper presents an innovative interpretation that transcends liberal and nationalistic explanations and serves as a case study of the implications of uneven and combined development.

A long period of capitalist crisis has amplified uneven and combined development in most aspects of political economy and political ecology in most parts of the world, with a resulting increase in the eco-social metabolism of profit-seeking firms and their state supporters. This is especially with the revival of extraction-oriented corporations, especially fossil fuel firms, which remain the world’s most profitable. What opportunities arise for as multi-faceted a critique of “extractivism” as the conditions demand? With ongoing paralysis of United Nations climate negotiators, to illustrate, the most critical question for several decades to come is whether citizen activism can forestall further fossil fuel combustion. In many settings, the extractive industries are critical targets of climate activists, for example, where divestment of stocks is one strategy, or refusing access to land for mining is another. Invoking climate justice principles requires investigating the broader socio-ecological and economic costs and benefits of capital accumulation associated with fossil fuel use, through forceful questioning both by immediate victims and by all those concerned about GreenHouse Gas emissions. Their solidarity with each other is vital to nurture and to that end, the most powerful anti-corporate tactic developed so far, indeed beginning in South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle, appears to be financial sanctions. The argumentation for invoking sanctions against the fossil fuel industry (and its enablers such as international shipping) is by itself insufficient. Also required is a solid activist tradition. There are, in 2014, two inter-related cases in which South African environmental justice activists have critiqued multi-billion dollar investments, and thus collided with the state, with two vast parastatal corporations and with their international financiers. Whether these collisions move beyond conflicting visions, and actually halt the fossil-intensive projects, is a matter that can only be worked out both through argumentation – for example, in the pages below – and through gaining the solidarity required to halt the financing of climate change.

From the moment that capital is no longer satisfied to remain commercial or interest-bearing capital, but begins a production process to exploit labor power, i.e., from the moment capital functions as a relation of production and as a relation of classes, immobilization of a part of the means of production (means of work and objects of work) as use-values becomes necessary, even though they by themselves produce no surplus value. Marx aptly refers to the capital thus immobilized as “constant capital.”

Purpose – This chapter introduces this volume's topics, purpose and key themes.

Methodology/approach – This chapter reviews literature and chapters and offers conceptual development.

Findings – The difficulties of CSR in theory and practice are mainly due to its incomplete conceptualisation because its inseparable counterpart CSI has been eventually neglected or ignored in the CSR theorising process. The CSI concept is as equally important as CSR. CSI offers a theoretical platform to avoid the vagueness, ambiguity, arbitrariness and mysticism of CSR. CSI deserves to be a serious subject of inquiry and demands more scholarly attention.

Practical/social implications – With the aid of the CSI concept, CSR becomes more realistic and effective, as it is now more focused, practical and operational. While CSI is clear-cut, CSR is clearly meant, at the very least, to do well by undoing CSI. It is easier to promote CSR by addressing CSI first. The concept of CSI may allow everyone, including business practitioners, to concentrate on resolving the most important and urgent issues of public concern. It also encourages people to address the root causes of CSI problems in a systematic way. Doing so undoubtedly expands and enriches the understanding of CSR.

Originality/value of chapter – The concept of CSI has been less developed in academic circles. While the contributors of this volume have made significant contributions to the understanding of CSI, this chapter adds fresh reasoning and explanations to the development of the CSI subject.

Aims to examine the issue of industrial strategy (IS), paying particular attention to the case of Britain. Sets out to assess the possibility and nature of an industrial strategy for Britain, in Europe, and within the global scene, taking into account the world we live in as we see it. Accordingly, the perspective is driven and shaped by a quest for a realistic, feasible and sustainable industrial strategy. In order to achieve these objectives, first examines the theoretical arguments behind much of British, and more generally, Western industrial policies. Following this, outlines and assesses British industrial policy post‐Second World War then compares and contrasts British industrial policy with that of Europe, the USA, Japan and the newly industrialized countries. Then examines recent developments in economics and management which may explain the “Far Eastern” miracle, and points to the possibility of a successful, narrowly self‐interested, IS for Europe and Britain, based on the lessons from (new) theory and international experience. To assess what is possible, develops a theoretical framework linking firms in their roles as consumers and/or electors. This hints at the possibilities and limits of feasible policies. All these ignore desirability which, in the author′s view, should be seen in terms of distributional considerations, themselves contributors to sustainability. Accordingly, discusses a desirable industrial strategy for Britain in Europe which accounts for distributional considerations, and goes on to examine its implications for the issue of North‐South convergence. Concludes by pointing to the limitations of the analysis and to directions for developments.

The paper examines recent debates on “Empire” and offers a feminist perspective. It asks: what are the gender dynamics of the new imperialism and its rival, Islamism? Drawing on world-system theory and feminist studies of international relations, this paper examines hegemonic masculinities in empire, war, and resistance; the cooptation of women's rights for neoliberal and expansionist purposes; the world-system's transition from U.S. hegemonic power to an alternative yet to be determined; and the role of global feminism in challenging Empire and shaping an alternative world.