BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique, by Patrick Bond and Ana Garcia, eds.
| Author | Giselle Thompson |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020702016688393 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
International Journal
2016, Vol. 71(4) 659–671
!The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0020702016688393
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
Book Reviews
Patrick Bond and Ana Garcia, eds.
BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique
Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015. 300 pp., USD$19.95 (Paperback)
ISBN: 9781608465330
Reviewed by: Giselle Thompson, York University
There is no irony in the fact that BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique is largely
written by a cadre of interdisciplinary scholars who are associated with academic
institutions in the Global South. This observation evokes the sentiments of the
Antiguan-American author Jamaica Kincaid, who posits that ‘‘the bureaucracy’’
and ‘‘the Gross National Product’’ are inventions of Rostowian Western modernity
that were forcefully imposed on the Rest.
1
In this compilation of essays, editors
Patrick Bond and Ana Garcia, along with notable authors Leo Panitch, Canada
Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy, and Immanuel Wallerstein,
progenitor of world-systems analysis, present a critical response to the emerging
regional bloc known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and most
recently, South Africa).
In the introduction, Garcia and Bond suggest that in demanding a seat at the
‘‘international table’’, BRICS nations engage in ‘‘antagonistic cooperation’’, which
means ‘‘in practice, that [in] areas ranging from world finance to climate change to
super-exploitative relations with the periphery and even to soccer, the bloc aims not
to overturn tables at the proverbial temple, but to collaborate in holding them up’’
(1) – despite China’s and Russia’s occasional ‘‘inter-imperial’’ stances against the
West. According to the editors, the BRICS project is not antithetical to the existing
state of affairs in the West with regard to economic stabilization, generating the
capacity of a ‘‘lender of last resort’’, and steadying multilateral governance, espe-
cially with its ongoing demand for the US dollar.
Garcia and Bond’s central problematic, which sets the thematic tone for the
succeeding chapters, is the BRICS’ ‘‘extractive, high-carbon economic model’’ (3).
They argue that this model positions the bloc for mimicry of Western social, pol-
itical, and economic failings, thereby threatening to amplify the destructive quali-
ties of advanced capitalism in our time.
1. Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 36.
To continue reading
Request your trial