The Union for Radical Political Economics is pleased to announce the

Rescheduled 2025 David Gordon Memorial Lecture

https://urpe.org/announcement/2020-david-gordon-memorial-lecture/

The 27th Annual David Gordon Memorial Lecture has been rescheduled and will be delivered via webinar, on Friday 28 March 2025, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern US time/4:00 p.m. London time.

Please register here: https://forms.gle/5Ybe9vAMoz37ReqW9

Imperialism in Marx, the Marxist Tradition, and Today

Speaker: Dr. Radhika Desai, University of Manitoba

Session Chair: Dr. Zhongjin Li, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Abstract: The centrality of imperialism to left discourse today is attested to by the proliferation of writing on the subject. This paper argues, however, that unless certain fundamental and long-standing misapprehensions about Marx’s analysis of capitalism—as contradictory value production—among Marxists themselves are addressed, the contributions of Marxism and its key figures, including Marx and Lenin, to the understanding of imperialism historically and at the complex conjuncture at which it stands today, cannot be appreciated. Building on the theoretical ground clearing I conducted in proposing geopolitical economy as a new, Marxist, approach to understanding the international relations of the era of capitalism, one in which the dialectic of imperialism and anti-imperialism is the central driver, I propose to outline how a proper Marxist understanding of imperialism may proceed.

The David Gordon Memorial Lecture is an invited lecture presented annually at the Allied Social Science Association meetings by an economist whose work follows in the tradition of David Gordon’s contributions (in 2025, in solidarity with the UNITE-HERE strike in San Francisco, the DGML has been rescheduled as a webinar). Not all David Gordon Memorial Lectures have been published in the RRPE, but those that have been are listed here.

Please register here: https://forms.gle/5Ybe9vAMoz37ReqW9