Fighting the beast of the apocalypse: three fundamental reasons for a critical political economy approach to global political economy

Critical political economy (CPE) has a long-standing pre-disciplinary tradition that can also be understood as a post-disciplinary or a trans-disciplinary approach. The central argument of this article is that CPE represents a proper basis for global political economy (GPE). This is for three fundamental reasons: first, CPE’s purpose and perspective but also its ethical foundations, and its siding with the exploited and the oppressed make it extremely useful for the study of the GPE. While CPE is based on the tradition of Marx, it also allows for integrating insights from other approaches, disciplines and fields. Second, the dialectical methodology of CPE that starts with the analysis of concrete reality that provides the basis to systematically integrate different perspectives without falling into the trap of tracing causality to simplified and reified abstract concepts in GPE. Third, building the analysis on a materialist ground is essential for GPE. The merits of a materialist foundation become particularly obvious in view of the global ecological crisis and highlight important contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. It is concluded that rooting GPE in a tradition of CPE understood along these lines is crucial for a proper understanding and for systematically reflecting the challenges of today and tomorrow and emancipatory progressive strategies and struggles.