People have been criticizing capitalism almost as long as there’s been a capitalism to criticize—but the financial crisis of 2008 put economic injustices in the global age into sharp relief. Can capitalism be fixed, perhaps with the kind of redistributive policies proposed by Thomas Piketty? Or is capitalism inherently unfair and in need of fundamental rethinking? If so, does the global wave of protests point to alternatives? Or are the recent demonstrations from Occupy to Plaza del Sol and Euromaidan too isolated and dissimilar to have a collective impact?

Work in progress:

Protest in Putin’s Russia by Mischa Gabowitsch, a thoroughly revised and updated English edition of his study published in German in 2013, came out with Polity Press in November 2016. With colleagues at the University of Bremen’s Research Centre for East European Studies he continues to maintain the PEPS database, a collection of visual materials and slogans from the Russian protest movement. At the Einsteim Forum, a new lecture series titled Solidarity in Danger, which starts in April 2017, will look at to the ways in which national populisms in different countries are threatening social cohesion, but also examine the new solidarities that are emerging in the face of that threat.