Prof. Radhika Desai: On her latest book about capitalism, pandemic & war.

We interviewed Prof. Radhika Desai on her latest book “Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy.“ Her book is available open access, and free to download. Here is the link. In this video, we asked Prof. Desai what her book reveals about our understanding of capitalism. By building further on the Marxian understanding of capitalism as a process of contradictory value production and realization, she argues that the neoclassical framework of seeing the economy as a separate sphere, especially without contradictions, is incapable of explaining the realities that surround us. Her claim is that Marx has a lot more to offer, in terms of helping us understand our political economy better. We also asked her what her idea of neoliberalism is, to which she offered us four critical pillars to understand- a devaluation of production and an overvaluation of financial assets as a