About

Radhika Desai’s wide-ranging work covers party politics, political and geopolitical economy, political and economic theory, nationalism, fascism, British, US and Indian politics. Geopolitical economy, the approach to the international relations of the capitalist world she proposed in her 2013 work, Geopolitical Economy, is rooted in Marx’s analysis of capitalist production as contradictory value production, places the economic role of states centrally and, through an original interpretation of the idea of uneven and combined development as the dialectic of imperialism and anti-imperialism, combines Marx’s analysis of capitalism with those of ‘late development’ and the developmental state as the key to explaining the dynamic of international relations of the modern capitalist world. 

Currently, she is working on several books including ‘Hindutva and the Political Economy of Indian Capitalism’ and ‘Marx as a Monetary Theorist’. 

Her numerous articles have appeared in Capital and Class, Economic and Political Weekly,  International Critical Thought, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly, World Review of Political Economy and other journals and in edited collections on parties, political economy, culture and nationalism. 

She is regularly invited as a speaker and to conferences around the world, including to Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and Venezuela. 

In process:

• The Making of the Indian Capitalist Class, MS in preparation.
• Marx as a Monetary Theorist, MS in preparation

Published:

• Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2023)
• Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013)
• Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) 
• Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994). 

• Japan’s Secular Stagnation (2023, with Nobuharu Yokokawa and Makoto Itoh)
• Beyond the Global Crisis: Noonomy, Creativity, Geopolitical Economy (2022, with S.D. Bodrunov and Alan Freeman)
• International Economic Governance in a Multipolar World (2022) 
• Karl Polanyi and Twenty-first Century Capitalism (2020, with Kari Polanyi Levitt)
• Revolutions (2021, with Henry Heller)
• Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, a special issue of International Critical Thought (2016)
• Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy (2015)
• Analytical Gains in Geopolitical Economy (2015)
• Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy (2015)
• Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism (2010)
• Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009). 

• Distinguished Achievement Award of World Political Economy of the 21st Century for ‘Consumption Demand in Marx and in the Current Crisis’, Research in Political Economy, Volume 26, 2010, pp. 101-41, 2012.
• Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the British Labour Party, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1994, pp. vi + 217. Book-of-the-Month New Statesman and Society, London, 1995
• President, Society for Socialist Studies, 2016-2022
• Vice President, World Association for Political Economy
• Deputy Editor, World Marxist Review