Bob Jessop

This piece is a tribute to Michael’s innovative and influential idea of “public sociology” and how this can be enhanced to address the attention economy and the post-truth Trump era. Theoretically, he distinguished Marx from Polanyi and attempted to synthesize and extend their work, especially on the three waves of marketization, when examining capitalism, commodification, exploitation, and inequalities. Michael, Marx, and...

The significance of the COVID-19 pandemic is still unfolding. Until the virus is controlled, if not eliminated, we will not fully know which responses worked well. But it is already clear that some countries have been more successful in controlling cases and reducing excess deaths from any cause. It is also clear that the pandemic has produced a new rationale for state intervention oriented to mutual aid as well as supporting private...

Marx did not write a comprehensive critique of the state as an organ of class domination and the exercise of state power as a political process. Moreover, although his project was as much political as theoretical, he provided no extended or coherent analyses of topics such as political parties as an organizational form; nations, nationalism and national states; revolutionary strategy and tactics (including the scope for a parliamentary road to socialism);...

John Urry’s unexpected death shocked his family, friends and colleagues. He and I first formed a bond as postgraduate students in Cambridge University in 1967-1970, sharing supervisors and interests, interacting thereafter in the Conference of Socialist Economists as well as in sociology conclaves, and becoming colleagues again in 1990 when I was appointed to a chair in sociology at Lancaster University. John Urry earned a double first in Economics...