A Bieler
Biographic Data
| ID | 28347 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Bieler |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Bieler |
| SIGNATURE | BIELER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nottingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4475-4213 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 380 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 64 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1960 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Divisions in the core of global capitalism? Italian labour and ‘free trade’
Historically, the global labour movement has been divided over ‘free trade’. Many unions in the Global North, especially in export-oriented sectors, supported such agreements to secure markets and jobs, while unions in the Global South opposed them, having experienced job losses and deindustrialisation. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) changed the situation, prompting unions in both Europe and North America to oppose it. …
Dissecting the Polycrisis, Charting the Conceptual Terrain of Enquiry 1
‘Polycrisis’ is generally defined as a cluster of distinct, yet interrelated crises which reinforce each other. There is, however, little consensus on its constituent parts. Helleiner, when assessing economic globalization’s polycrisis, includes the US-Chinese trade war, a global health crisis around Covid-19, an international security crisis due to the Ukraine war, an environmental crisis and a crisis of democracy. Re the EU, Nicoli and Zeitlin …
Critical Political Economy of the European Polycrisis
Contains fulltext : 325187.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)
The dialectical matrix of class, gender, race
Is gender oppression a structurally necessary feature of capitalism? Is discrimination based on race in-built into the reproduction of racial capitalism? By assessing wider contributions within and between Marxism Feminism and Black Marxism, this paper seeks to address the multiple oppressions of class, patriarchy, and race. Intersectional and dual-systems theorising establishes an analytical differentiation of patriarchy and capitalism, or capit…
Confronting multiple global crises
A Vital Frontier
Water Grabbing, Capitalist Accumulation and Resistance
The purpose of this article is to reflect on how we can conceptualise the multiple types of struggles over water. Through a historical materialist engagement with social reproduction theorists, post-colonial interventions and eco-socialism, we argue that capitalist reproduction not only depends on the exploitation of wage labour but also the expropriation of nature and people along different forms of oppression. By focusing on historical processe…
Labour conflicts in the Global South
This article reflects on the insights generated by the contributions to the special issue on labour conflicts in the Global South. We emphasize first the need to go beyond Eurocentric industrial relations concepts forged in the historically specific circumstances of post-World War II industrialized countries. This also includes going beyond the fetishism of regarding trade unions as the privileged agents of workers’ interests. As the various empi…
Labour conflicts in the Global South
This article provides an introduction to the special issue on labour conflicts in the Global South. We will first conceptualize the internal relations between structure and agency on the basis of a historical materialist approach in order to assess the strategies of workers within a rapidly changing global capitalism. Second, in order to avoid economic reductionism we will conceptualize the internal relations between class, gender and race to acc…
Gate-opening political economy
Is capitalism structurally indifferent to gender
The contributions of Ellen Meiksins Wood to social property relations arguments have facilitated an enhanced understanding of the historical specificity of capitalism and its structuring conditions. Yet such arguments also have some questionable assumptions when it comes to theorising gender and so-called 'extra-economic' identities, most noticeably regarding capitalism as indifferent to gender relations. This article delves into such issues by d…
Interlocuções Com a Revolução Passiva
Este artigo se engaja criticamente com os debates sobre o desenvolvimento desigual e combinado e particularmente a falta de atenção dada nesta literatura às considerações da diversidade espacial na expansão externa do capitalismo, bem como as questões de eurocentrismo. Por meio de interlocuções com Antonio Gramsci sobre sua teorização da formação do Estado e da modernidade capitalista e a noção de revolução passiva, extraímos a relação interna en…
Ronaldo Munck (2018) Rethinking Global Labour after Neoliberalism
EU Aggregate Demand As a Way out of Crisis? Engaging the Post‐Keynesian Critique
Post‐Keynesians have delivered an important advance in providing explanations of the Eurozone crisis, not the least in demonstrating how the formation of the European integration project lacked the means to manage effectively the macroeconomic imbalances between core and peripheral spaces across the region. Through a critical engagement with such descriptions, this article argues that to account more adequately for the formation of the asymmetric…
Agency and the Power Resources Approach
Commodification and ‘the commons
In response to the Eurozone crisis, austerity and restructuring has been imposed on the European Union’s peripheral member states in order to receive financial bailout loans. In addition to cuts in funding for essential public services, cuts in public sector employment and the further liberalisation of labour markets, this has also included pressure towards the privatisation of state assets. Yet, workers have not simply accepted these restructuri…
Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis
Interlocutions with passive revolution
This article critically engages with debates on uneven and combined development and particularly the lack of attention given in this literature to accounts of spatial diversity in capitalism's outward expansion as well as issues of Eurocentrism. Through interlocutions with Antonio Gramsci on his theorising of state formation and capitalist modernity and the notion of passive revolution, we draw out the internal relationship between the structurin…
Exploitation and Resistance
This article compares the electronics sector in the area of Shenzhen, based on cheap labour assembling goods for export, with the IT sector in the area of Shanghai, relying on a more skilled workforce manufacturing high value-added goods. It is asked in what way these rather different locations within the global political economy condition the form and contents of resistance in these two sectors. The article concludes that industrial relations ar…
Chinese Labour in the Global Economy
This Introduction outlines the main purpose of this special issue volume: to analyse new forms of resistance by Chinese workers against conditions of super-exploitation. After an assessment of the new international division of labour, we provide an overview of Chinese production in the global economy, followed by an introduction of the contributions to this volume
What Future for Chinese Labour and Transnational Solidarity
In this article we argue that class struggle is central to the future of Chinese workers and the improvement of their situation. Technological upgrading in itself will not automatically result in better working conditions. Moreover, we point out that Chinese workers have a number of old and new sources of power to draw on. What is, however, most problematic in this respect is the role of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, operating as an o…
Gramsci and ‘the International’
Situated within a historical materialist understanding of social transformation and deploying many insights from Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break with mainstream International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) approaches emerged in the early 1980s in the work of Robert Cox.1 This provided a key inspiration for the emergence of what became known, along with a few other names, as an identifiable ‘neo-Gramscian’ literature of …
Social Europe and the Eurozone Crisis
The European Union (EU) is often favourably contrasted with the United States when assessments of social justice and distribution of wealth are made. In contrast to the vast inequality and widespread social deprivation in US society, European countries are characterized by expansive welfare systems. There are differences, of course, with Nordic countries having more developed systems. Nonetheless even in countries such as the UK, considered to ha…
Austerity and Resistance
Axis of Evil or Access to Diesel
This article examines how the Iraq War was a space in the ongoing geographical extension of global capitalism linked to us foreign policy. Was it simply the decision by a unitary, hegemonic actor in the inter-state system overriding concerns from other states? Was it an imperialist move to secure the ‘global oil spigot’? Alternatively, did the use of military force reflect the interests and emergence of a transnational state apparatus? We argue t…
The Deficits of Discourse in IPE
This article engages with the debate on how the role of ideas can be conceptualized within International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) and how this is related to the discursive production of meanings embedded in the economy. It is argued that although constructivist and poststructuralist approaches can conceptualize the structural relevance of ideas, thereby improving on neorealist and liberal institutionalist approache…
Globalisation, the State and Class Struggle
This article explores common commitments between competing historical materialist perspectives within International Political Economy (IPE). It does so by engaging with the approach of Open Marxism that has emerged as the basis of a radical rethinking of theories of the state, the dialectic of subject-object and theory-practice, as well as commitments to emancipating the social world. Despite these contributions, though, there has been a sonorous…
A critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change
Situated within a historical materialist problematic of social transformation that deploys many of the insights of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break emerged, in the 1980s, in the work of Robert Cox from mainstream International Relations (IR) approaches to hegemony. This article provides a comprehensive 'state-of-the-discipline' overview of this critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change. It does so by…
The Gordian Knot of Agency—Structure in International Relations
The agent-structure debate has proceeded in International Relations for some time now. Within an initial `first wave' of debate, this revolved around proposing various `solutions' to the problem of how to appreciate the mutually constitutive relationship between agency and structure. The ensuing debate was then characterized by an apparent intellectual cul-de-sac. There were always `two stories to tell' about agency and structure — one an explana…
The struggle over EU enlargement
This article argues with the help of a neo-Gramscian perspective that neo-liberal restructuring is the social purpose underlying Austria's and Sweden's accession to the EU in 1995 as well as future enlargements towards Central and Eastern Europe. The way in which enlargement has come about has differed, however. On the one hand, class struggle occurred mainly at the Austrian and Swedish national level. While a historical bloc in favour of EU memb…
European Integration and the Transnational Restructuring of Social Relations
Informed by a neo-Gramscian perspective able to conceptualize transnational class formation, this article assesses whether European trade union organizations have developed into independent supranational actors, or whether they are merely secretariats in charge of organizing the co-operation of their national member associations. The first hypothesis is that those trade unions which organize workers in transnational production sectors, are likely…
Questioning Cognitivism and Constructivism in IR Theory
In recent years, it has been highlighted in international relations theory that mainstream approaches neglect the role of ideas in relation to the formation of interests and international cooperation. This article critically discusses the renewed emphasis on ideas. ‘Cognitive’ and ‘constructivist’ approaches are outlined as the two main strands in the debate and a neo-Gramscian position within it is sketched. Importantly, a neo-Gramscian position…
Labour, New Social Movements and the Resistance to Neoliberal Restructuring in Europe
The purpose of this article is to analyse one of the very first European-level instances of trade union and social movement interaction in defence of the public sector, namely, the Coalition for Green and Social Procurement, an alliance of European trade unions and green and social non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and its campaign for an amendment of the new public procurement directives from 2000 to 2003. It will be examined to what extent…
Interlocutions with passive revolution
This article critically engages with debates on uneven and combined development and particularly the lack of attention given in this literature to accounts of spatial diversity in capitalism's outward expansion as well as issues of Eurocentrism. Through interlocutions with Antonio Gramsci on his theorising of state formation and capitalist modernity and the notion of passive revolution, we draw out the internal relationship between the structurin…
Uneven and Combined Development and Unequal Exchange
With capitalist social relations emerging in a prior system of absolutist states in Europe, the outward expansion of capitalism through conditions of uneven and combined development became dependent on the existence of multiple political entities. States in turn are brought into relations of unequal exchange within the global economy. This article analyses the way in which current neoliberal ‘free trade’ policies are related to these fundamental …
Trade Unions, ‘Free Trade’, and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity
This article outlines how the expanded ‘free trade’ agenda since the completion of the GATT Uruguay Round in 1994 has further pushed neoliberal restructuring across the world. The second part introduces a discussion of workers' responses to ‘free trade’. While labour movements of the Global South have often experienced ‘free trade’ as resulting in deindustrialisation, Northern trade unions regard ‘free trade’ as a win–win strategy. How can transn…
The EU, Global Europe, and processes of uneven and combined development
In 2006, the European Union launched its new free trade strategy Global Europe with the explicit goal of increasing European competitiveness. This article explores the positions of trade unions and other social movements on Global Europe. Importantly, while Northern social movements and trade unions from the Global South reject Global Europe due to its impact of deindustrialisation on developing countries, European trade unions support it in so f…
Class Struggle over the EU Model of Capitalism
This essay provides a critical engagement with neo‐Gramscian perspectives on European integration, dealing with their core theoretical assumptions as well as empirical analyses of individual aspects of European integration. It is argued that by drawing on Gramsci's rejection of economic determinism, his thinking on the agency‐structure problem, as well as his work on how to conceptualise the role of ideas, neo‐Gramscian perspectives as a critical…
Another Europe is possible’? Labour and social movements at the European social forum
The first European Social Forum (ESF) held in Florence, Italy from 6 to 10 November 2002 brought together a diverse array of so-called ‘anti-capitalist’ movements including trade unions, new, radical unions and social movements to contest the agenda of neoliberalism as it is presented within and beyond processes of European integration. This article evaluates the ESF and the possibilities for cooperation between labour and social movements in for…
Swedish Trade Unions and Economic and Monetary Union
As in 1994 on the question of European Union (EU) membership, there is a split between transnational sector unions supporting European Monetary Union (EMU) and national production sector unions rejecting it. Interestingly, however, transnational production sector unions, as well as trade union confederations, no longer combine their support for membership with a strong emphasis on Europe-wide cooperation and the demand for further development of …
After 30 Years of Deadlock
This article is based on the understanding that in order to analyse labour's current inability to defend social standards and to shape the discussion of how to overcome the financial crisis, it is necessary to examine labour's wider role in the global economy during the last 30 years. It will be argued that because globalisation has severely weakened labour, new strategies and power resources have to be recovered in its struggle against neo-liber…
Labour, neo-liberalism and the conflict over economic and monetary union
Trade unions have generally been neglected in the discussion of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the related neo-liberal restructuring of European social relations of production. This article helps to fill this gap through a comparison of British and German unions' position on EMU and European co-operation. It is demonstrated that there is a split between British transnational production sector unions, which support EMU and Europe-wide co-op…
The enduring relevance of Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital
Labour and the Struggle over the Future European Model of Capitalism
Based on a critical International Political Economy (IPE) perspective including a strategic-relational approach to the state, this article analyses Swedish and British trade unions' position on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and European co-operation. Importantly, unions in both countries support EMU membership, but transnational British labour is much more in favour of co-operation at the regional level than Swedish transnational labour. Whil…
Labour conflicts in the Global South
This article provides an introduction to the special issue on labour conflicts in the Global South. We will first conceptualize the internal relations between structure and agency on the basis of a historical materialist approach in order to assess the strategies of workers within a rapidly changing global capitalism. Second, in order to avoid economic reductionism we will conceptualize the internal relations between class, gender and race to acc…
EU Aggregate Demand As a Way out of Crisis? Engaging the Post‐Keynesian Critique
Post‐Keynesians have delivered an important advance in providing explanations of the Eurozone crisis, not the least in demonstrating how the formation of the European integration project lacked the means to manage effectively the macroeconomic imbalances between core and peripheral spaces across the region. Through a critical engagement with such descriptions, this article argues that to account more adequately for the formation of the asymmetric…
Commodification and ‘the commons
In response to the Eurozone crisis, austerity and restructuring has been imposed on the European Union’s peripheral member states in order to receive financial bailout loans. In addition to cuts in funding for essential public services, cuts in public sector employment and the further liberalisation of labour markets, this has also included pressure towards the privatisation of state assets. Yet, workers have not simply accepted these restructuri…
Axis of Evil or Access to Diesel
This article examines how the Iraq War was a space in the ongoing geographical extension of global capitalism linked to us foreign policy. Was it simply the decision by a unitary, hegemonic actor in the inter-state system overriding concerns from other states? Was it an imperialist move to secure the ‘global oil spigot’? Alternatively, did the use of military force reflect the interests and emergence of a transnational state apparatus? We argue t…
Workers of the World, Unite’? Globalisation and the Quest for Transnational Solidarity
As a result of the transnational organisation of production across borders and an increasing informalisation of work, trade unions find it ever more difficult to represent the interests of their members and broader society. This work assesses both the possibilities and obstacles for trade unions to build transnational, intra-, and inter-movement solidarity. The agency of labour is analysed against the background of structural change in the global…
Co-option or resistance? Trade unions and neoliberal restructuring in Europe
The purpose of this article is to engage critically with recent scholarship that accuses European trade unions of having been co-opted into neoliberal restructuring within the EU. The article first demonstrates, through a focus on British and German unions, that even if they have accepted economic and monetary union as such, trade unions still reject its underlying neoliberal rationale and demand changes to its operation. Then an analysis at the …
La pensee economique et sociale de Calvin
La pensée économique et sociale de Calvin
Austria's application to the European community
Globalization, Swedish Trade Unions and European Integration
The article argues that the Swedish trade unions were not instrumental in bringing about the Swedish Social Democratic Party's (SAP) decision to apply to the EC for membership on 26 October 1990, despite frequently made claims to the contrary. The trade unions were in fact rather surprised about the SAP turn-around. There had been a change in the position on EC membership within the labour movement after the SAP announcement, but it was anything …
Introduction
After two decades of relative stagnation, European integration experienced a dramatic revival in the mid-1980s. In 1985, the Commission published its famous White Paper, Completing the Internal Market, which proposed 300 (later reduced to 279) measures designed to facilitate progress towards the completion of the Internal Market by 1992 through the abolition of non-tariff barriers. The Single European Act (SEA) of 1987 not only spelt out the goal…
Questioning Cognitivism and Constructivism in IR Theory
In recent years, it has been highlighted in international relations theory that mainstream approaches neglect the role of ideas in relation to the formation of interests and international cooperation. This article critically discusses the renewed emphasis on ideas. ‘Cognitive’ and ‘constructivist’ approaches are outlined as the two main strands in the debate and a neo-Gramscian position within it is sketched. Importantly, a neo-Gramscian position…
The Gordian Knot of Agency—Structure in International Relations
The agent-structure debate has proceeded in International Relations for some time now. Within an initial `first wave' of debate, this revolved around proposing various `solutions' to the problem of how to appreciate the mutually constitutive relationship between agency and structure. The ensuing debate was then characterized by an apparent intellectual cul-de-sac. There were always `two stories to tell' about agency and structure — one an explana…
The struggle over EU enlargement
This article argues with the help of a neo-Gramscian perspective that neo-liberal restructuring is the social purpose underlying Austria's and Sweden's accession to the EU in 1995 as well as future enlargements towards Central and Eastern Europe. The way in which enlargement has come about has differed, however. On the one hand, class struggle occurred mainly at the Austrian and Swedish national level. While a historical bloc in favour of EU memb…
Neo-Gramscianische Perspektiven
Globalisation, the State and Class Struggle
This article explores common commitments between competing historical materialist perspectives within International Political Economy (IPE). It does so by engaging with the approach of Open Marxism that has emerged as the basis of a radical rethinking of theories of the state, the dialectic of subject-object and theory-practice, as well as commitments to emancipating the social world. Despite these contributions, though, there has been a sonorous…
Swedish Trade Unions and Economic and Monetary Union
As in 1994 on the question of European Union (EU) membership, there is a split between transnational sector unions supporting European Monetary Union (EMU) and national production sector unions rejecting it. Interestingly, however, transnational production sector unions, as well as trade union confederations, no longer combine their support for membership with a strong emphasis on Europe-wide cooperation and the demand for further development of …
Labour, neo-liberalism and the conflict over economic and monetary union
Trade unions have generally been neglected in the discussion of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the related neo-liberal restructuring of European social relations of production. This article helps to fill this gap through a comparison of British and German unions' position on EMU and European co-operation. It is demonstrated that there is a split between British transnational production sector unions, which support EMU and Europe-wide co-op…
Another Europe is possible’? Labour and social movements at the European social forum
The first European Social Forum (ESF) held in Florence, Italy from 6 to 10 November 2002 brought together a diverse array of so-called ‘anti-capitalist’ movements including trade unions, new, radical unions and social movements to contest the agenda of neoliberalism as it is presented within and beyond processes of European integration. This article evaluates the ESF and the possibilities for cooperation between labour and social movements in for…
Unthinking Materialism
A critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change
Situated within a historical materialist problematic of social transformation that deploys many of the insights of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break emerged, in the 1980s, in the work of Robert Cox from mainstream International Relations (IR) approaches to hegemony. This article provides a comprehensive 'state-of-the-discipline' overview of this critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change. It does so by…
Introduction
Class Struggle over the EU Model of Capitalism
This essay provides a critical engagement with neo‐Gramscian perspectives on European integration, dealing with their core theoretical assumptions as well as empirical analyses of individual aspects of European integration. It is argued that by drawing on Gramsci's rejection of economic determinism, his thinking on the agency‐structure problem, as well as his work on how to conceptualise the role of ideas, neo‐Gramscian perspectives as a critical…
European Integration and the Transnational Restructuring of Social Relations
Informed by a neo-Gramscian perspective able to conceptualize transnational class formation, this article assesses whether European trade union organizations have developed into independent supranational actors, or whether they are merely secretariats in charge of organizing the co-operation of their national member associations. The first hypothesis is that those trade unions which organize workers in transnational production sectors, are likely…
A Critical Theory Route to Hegemony, World Order and Historical Change
Situated within a historical materialist problematic of social transformation and deploying many insights from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break with mainstream International Relations (IR) approaches emerged by the 1980s in the work of Robert Cox. In contrast to mainstream routes to hegemony in IR, which develop a static theory of politics, an abstract ahistorical conception of the state and an appeal to universal validity (e.…
Global Restructuring, State, Capital and Labour
This book provides a critical engagement between contending historical materialist approaches that have played a crucial role in shaping post-positivist International Relations theory. It analyzes glo
Labor History Symposium
Enlarging the Euro Area
Co-option or resistance? Trade unions and neoliberal restructuring in Europe
The purpose of this article is to engage critically with recent scholarship that accuses European trade unions of having been co-opted into neoliberal restructuring within the EU. The article first demonstrates, through a focus on British and German unions, that even if they have accepted economic and monetary union as such, trade unions still reject its underlying neoliberal rationale and demand changes to its operation. Then an analysis at the …
Labour and the Struggle over the Future European Model of Capitalism
Based on a critical International Political Economy (IPE) perspective including a strategic-relational approach to the state, this article analyses Swedish and British trade unions' position on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and European co-operation. Importantly, unions in both countries support EMU membership, but transnational British labour is much more in favour of co-operation at the regional level than Swedish transnational labour. Whil…
Empire by Alejandro Colás
Political science (55 works) · Law (44 works) · Economics (42 works) · Politics (36 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Political economy (30 works) · Law (28 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (28 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (24 works) · Elite Sociology and Global Capitalism (19 works)