Walden Bello

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an efflorescence of ideas on how to reorganize society along more progressive lines from the left. In webinars spanning the globe, people have been treated to a dazzling array of alternatives, including a reinvigorated left-wing Keynesianism, degrowth, deglobalization, ecofeminism, food sovereignty, emancipatory Marxism, and Buen Vivir or “Living Well.” ...

With the victory of the Nazi counterrevolution, Joseph Goebbels famously said, “The year 1789 is hereby erased from history.” Along the same lines, could one argue that the rising fascist movements in the US, Europe, and elsewhere seek to erase 1989 from history? 1789 heralded the French Revolution. Similarly, for Francis Fukayama and others, 1989 marked the apogee of liberal democracy. In what Fukayama termed “the end of...

Walden Bello is a Filipino sociologist of immense international stature as a scholar and public intellectual. He has published major books on development and politics, including The Anti-Development State (2004), Food Wars (2009) and most recently Capitalism’s Last Stand? Deglobalization in the Age of Austerity (2013). Apart from being professor at the University of the Philippines, he directed the US-based...

For most of my life, I have been both a sociologist and an activist. After obtaining a PhD in sociology from Princeton in 1975, I plunged into full-time activism, first as part of the movement to overthrow the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, then as a militant in the international movement against corporate-driven globalization. I returned to academic life in 1994, spending the next 15 years as a professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines...