The economic order of society is implicit, property and money being largely invisible, abstract principles.  The political order, though, has obvious physical institutions: the police, the politicians, the buildings, and so on.  So it is hard to connect economic realities to political ones.

Van der Pijl’s Global Rivalries from the Cold War to Iraq, one of the best books of last year’s crop, is about the politics end of the political economy equation.  1998’s Transnational Classes and International Relations was an overall summary of van der Pijl’s theories, but it was mostly about economics and economic theory.  This book is about politics, and again about how the spread of "capitalist discipline" across the world has intensified economic rivalries in the world.  It explains recent history in a unique and interesting way.

First off, I'm not a Democrat, and secondly, I'm not a "liberal" (whatever that means these days); think of me as a critical theorist, whose opinions attempt to incorporate everyday politics into the wider scope of time and space.  But, before we start bickering, I should be allowed to explain where I'm at, why I'm posting on DailyKos, and where we might come to an agreement.  My understanding of the world is distinctly covered by my reading of an academic thinker whose name is Kees van der Pijl, whose clarity of thought and concise understanding of the current moment in history ought to interest all on this board, though his actual writing is quite academic.