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Description
The project of applying general systems theory to social sciences is crucial in today’s crisis when social and ecological systems clash. This book concretely demonstrates the necessity of a Marxist approach to this challenge, notably in asserting agency (struggle) as against determinism. It similarly shows how Marxism
can be reinvigorated from a systems perspective.

Drawing on his experience in both international systems and low-input agriculture, Biel explores the interaction of social and physical systems, using the conceptual tools of thermodynamics and information. He reveals the early twenty-first century as a period when capitalism starts parasitizing on the chaos it itself creates, notably in the link between the two sides of imperialism: militarism (the war on terror’) and speculative finance capital.
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Publication date: February 23, 2013

Table of Contents
List of Figures
Introduction

1. Understanding the Limits and Decay of the Capitalist Mode of Production
2. Capitalism as an Adaptive System
3. The ‘Systemic Turn’ in Capitalist Political Economy
4. The Era of Feedback from Entropy
5. Militarism and State Terrorism as a Response to Crisis
6. Organisation of the Twenty-first Century International System
7. Contradictions in the Contemporary Phase of Imperialist Governance, and the Forces for Change within it

References
Index

Reviews

Series

Part of the Studies in Critical Social Sciences series.