Far from being anomalous phenomena, the expansion of authoritarian forms of government, the normalization of war and the progressive loss of democratic guarantees are expressions of a profound transformation of the global capitalist order, which seeks to manage crises through force, fear and dispossession. Financialization, technological power and reactionary populisms combine to govern the social, racial and geopolitical fractures of a world where the old imperial center is crumbling.
The ecological crisis and the crisis of social reproduction reveal the magnitude of an offensive that puts at risk the material and affective foundations of life: the commodification of care, the precarization of work and the destruction of ecosystems are part of the same process of reconfiguration of power and decomposition of common life.
But where capital extends its dominion, spaces for reappropriation and collective creation also open up. On the margins of institutions, in territories and in the everyday fabric of life, practices emerge that challenge the logic of profit and rehearse other forms of existence.
To address these challenges, the XX Critical Economy Conference proposes three round tables that analyze the central dimensions of this capital offensive and the resistances that emerge against it: the crisis of social reproduction, energy transitions in dispute, and the authoritarian reconfiguration of global capitalism.
Feminism has generated fundamental analytical and political tools for developing an accurate diagnosis of how this neoliberal capitalist system, in alliance with other systems of domination (colonialist, heteropatriarchal), reproduces power relations and shapes an economic and sociopolitical scenario that serves its interests. Beyond conjunctural and structural analysis, feminisms create spaces for encounter, exchange, and resistance, capable of proposing and building alternatives to this biocidal model.
The dispossession of common goods, the expulsion of peoples from their territories, and the specific subjugation of women and sexually dissident groups are manifestations of this trend that endangers the social reproduction of the human species and our ability to survive on the planet.
Social reproduction is understood as the generation, maintenance, and continuity of life in homes, neighborhoods, communities, and towns, with special emphasis on the care we require because we are vulnerable, interdependent, and eco-dependent. To understand the reproduction of the workforce and the dynamics of capitalist accumulation, it is necessary to look at both the sphere of production and that of reproduction, as well as the relationship between the two. In turn, this allows us to think about policies that activate the solidarities of a heterogeneous and fragmented working class and to advance in the construction of a commonality with the capacity to defend life at risk.
Speakers: To address these issues of social reproduction, care, and the struggles for life in the face of capital, we will hear from two key voices in Latin American feminist critical thinking and political economy: Raquel Gutiérrez and Flora Partenio, whose intellectual and political trajectories have been central to understanding the dynamics of dispossession, forms of community organization, and struggles for the sustainability of life in a context of civilizational crisis.
For decades, our economies have been structured around a fossil energy matrix. Key sectors such as transport, heating, the petrochemical industry, plastics production or agribusiness maintain a deep dependence on fossil fuels that goes far beyond electrical consumption. Remaining within the planet’s biophysical limits therefore requires profound social, economic and political transformations; improvements in technical efficiency or green innovation solutions, by themselves, are clearly insufficient.
In this context, the energy transition appears as a necessary condition to abandon the fossil regime, but also as a conflictive process of reorganization of the relationships between nature, capital and power. The so-called “green growth” can lead to a reconfiguration of global extractivism, driven by the growing demand for strategic minerals —lithium, cobalt, copper or rare earths— essential for renewable infrastructures. However, it is in dispute whether this dynamic will reproduce the logics of exploitation typical of the fossil era or whether, on the contrary, it can open the door to new forms of metabolic regulation, international cooperation and redistribution of energy power.
Far from being a linear or harmonic process, the transition unfolds in a scenario crossed by geopolitical, social and territorial conflicts. Access to new sources of energy, lands and materials redefines the maps of ecological conflict, while mitigation and climate adaptation policies in urban contexts can generate both opportunities for transformation and new forms of exclusion and inequality. The energy transition is thus configured as an open field of dispute: between reproduction and overcoming of the fossil regime, between renewed extractivism and real possibilities for structural change.
Speaker: To unravel the contradictions of the energy transition, new forms of green extractivism and alternatives for climate justice from the Global South, we will have Daniel Chavez, whose extensive experience in the analysis of energy policies, socio-environmental conflicts and struggles for the democratization of natural resources makes him an essential voice for thinking about truly just and emancipatory transitions.
The international economic order is being reconfigured. At the geopolitical level, a multipolar order is consolidated with new alliances and the crumbling of old agreements. Far from the neoliberal ‘pax mercatoria’, policies of aggression, distrust and isolation emerge: military race, trade protectionism, walls against migration and the rise of reactionary populisms with neo-fascist overtones.
Financialization, initially observed in high-income countries, is expanding geographically. Financial markets and institutional investors increasingly determine the rhythms of investment, distributive dynamics and forms of crisis in the periphery.
Alongside financial capital emerges an oligopolistic technological capital with evident structural power. As owner of the main opinion platforms and with infrastructure in strategic spheres (international payments, military intelligence), it acquires invaluable political influence. The relationship between capital and politics reflects an obscene complicity where both spheres become indistinguishable. The State is reconfigured: public welfare mechanisms are reduced while the subjection of regulatory institutions to the criteria of capital is strengthened.
Are we facing a new offensive of capital? Are these structural changes disguised as conjuncture or manifestations of the evolution of capitalism? Is the framework of ‘neoliberalism’ still useful? Is financialization at the base of these transformations? To what extent are reactionary and neo-fascist phenomena the result of the evolution of global capitalism?
Speakers: To analyze these transformations of the global capitalist order, authoritarian drifts and new configurations of economic and political power, we bring together two international references of critical political economy: Angela Wigger and Alfredo Saad Filho. Wigger provides a historical materialist perspective on the transformations of the European competition regime and neoliberal consolidation in EU institutions, while Saad Filho offers a deep analysis of the implementation of neoliberalism in Latin America, financialization and structural inequalities in peripheral economies. Together they form an indispensable dialogue between the dynamics of the center and periphery of global capitalism.