PROKLA. Journal of Critical Social Science
PROKLA - Journal of Critical Social Science is a German peer-reviewed journal that has been working on topics from the fields of political economy, political science, social history and sociology since 1971. The focus is on social power relations, polarizations in the international system and the social relations with nature. The issues are put together according to thematic focuses.
All the contributions to this issue make clear that legal struggles constitute a crucial arena in which the multiple crises of late capitalism are contested. At the same time, they show that a defining feature of the current conjuncture is that this arena itself has become contested. For the emancipatory potential of law to be addressed at all through legal struggles, law must remain generally available as a terrain of contestation and accessible independently of socio-spatially unequal resources. This very principle is explicitly at stake in the current struggles over law. Yet the inequalities identified in the articles – in access to law, in the structural relations underpinning law, and in its implementation – also threaten law’s emancipatory potential as a repository of the historical achievements inscribed within it.
Copyright (c) 2026 PROKLA. Journal of Critical Social Science
Conspiracy-Ideological Struggles Over Law: The Example of »Citizens of the Reich«
The article examines legal struggles of so-called Citizens of the Reich. Adherents reject the legitimacy of the existing legal order as conspiracy-driven and advance own lay interpretations of law, which are rooted in right-wing political ideologies. We show how they draw on the symbolic power of modern law to construct what they understand as a privileged legal legitimacy position. They thus reframe their political visions as questions of truth. With this, the article identifies a new – conspiracy-driven – form of legal struggles and contributes to the scholarship on right-wing engagements with and through law.
This article takes the right-wing authoritarian shifts in migration and border policies since 2015 and the intensifying »border-authoritarianism nexus« as a starting point for broadening the understanding of legal struggles. Against the backdrop of discursive and migration-political tightening and executive breaches of law, we develop a perspective centered on an engaged, collaborative ethnographic research practice. The legal-anthropological approach sees itself as an integral part of social and legal infrastructures for the freedom of movement and aims to preserve and expand the spaces of possibility for the mobilization of law, collective care, and counter-hegemonic knowledge production.
In this article, we develop an everyday-centred perspective on legal struggles that focusses on the gap between legal norms and legal reality, thereby expanding existing debates in the sociology of law. Drawing on everyday conflicts over labour law in Germany, we argue that legal enforcement is not merely a downstream implementation step. Instead, it constitutes an independent and fundamental line of conflict in legal struggles that has been insufficiently addressed in previous research. By focusing on struggles over legal violations and enforcement, we bring into view infrapolitical strategies that occur outside the juridical arena, yet operate in the shadow of the law.
Criminalization, Administrative Control, and the Contradictory Role of Law in the European Border Regime
This article examines the growing shift in state interventions against civil search and rescue (SAR) organizations in the Mediterranean from criminal law to administrative law. Based on an analysis of 86 criminal and administrative proceedings against SAR organizations between 2017 and 2025, it argues that this transformation of state criminalization strategies is the result of ongoing legal struggles, whose trajectory is shaped by the different institutional selectivities of criminal and administrative law.
The Case Lliuya v. RWE and the Struggle for Global Climate Justice
The struggle for habitable environments is increasingly being waged in the courts. In a lawsuit against RWE, Peruvian citizen Saúl Lliuya argued that the energy company is liable for protection against climate-related damage. The Higher Regional Court of Hamm dismissed the lawsuit but noted in its ruling that major emitters can be held liable. The case highlights the distinctive features and effects of climate lawsuits: first, they are self-referential legal proceedings, and second, also struggles over knowledge. Third, the global conflict over responsibility for the socio-ecological crisis is played out through the legal system. Using this case study, we discuss the influence of climate litigation on the capitalist commodification of nature.
At the Gates: On the Potentials and Limits of Activist Court Watching of Femicide Trials
Criminal law has always been a contradictory arena for feminist struggles. Based on a case study of an activist court watch of a femicide trial, this article analyzes the potentials and limits of this political practice, situated at the margins of the juridical field. It shows that, due to its specific position between the juridical field and civil society, activist court watching holds potentials that challenge criminal law. However, this in-between position also prevents those involved in this practice from completely escaping the contradictions inherent in criminal law.
This article examines legal struggles in tenancy law in the context of increasingly unequal housing markets and growing housing insecurity. Drawing on ethnographic research on eviction proceedings, it argues that crucial conflicts are often decided before reaching the courtroom, particularly through unequal access to legal representation. Combining insights from legal mobilization studies and legal geography, the article conceptualizes access to justice as a resource structured by class and space. The case of tenancy law reveals how social inequalities undermine the promise of legal equality and shape the capacity to mobilize rights.
Ecological modernisation is a key arena of current geo-economic competition. After Chinese companies have emerged as global leaders in the solar industry and electric mobility, Chinese companies are now also taking a leading role in the hydrogen economy. In this article, I examine the development of China’s hydrogen economy and argue that geo-economic motives are not only a key driver of its development; China’s state-capitalist hydrogen strategy also has the potential to shape the geo-economic structure of the global hydrogen economy in the long term.
In response to geoeconomic tensions and the climate crisis, the EU has adopted a range of industrial policies, widely interpreted in the literature as marking a post-neoliberal turn. We challenge this reading through a critical examination of InvestEU, the central guarantee instrument designed to mobilise private investments by absorbing downside risks. We show that the programme's architecture does not transcend neoliberal logics but deepens them. This not only undermines the stated objectives of a green transformation but exposes a fundamental contradiction at the heart of EU open strategic autonomy.
In an attempt to analyse the intensifying global economic conflicts, the concept of geoeconomics has gained traction in recent years. Based on a genesis of the concept, we identify three building blocks of a critical geoeconomic perspective. These address continuities and breaks of geoeconomic strategies with the organizational forms of market-liberal capitalism; the material anchoring of unequal global economic relations as a result of geoeconomic competition; and the underlying capital interests and exploitative relationships. Finally, we develop starting points for a critique of geoeconomics, which remain largely marginalized in the current discourse.
The German debate on the new geoeconomics ignores the economic history of colonialism and imperialism and overlooks Marxist theories of imperialism from the past hundred years. The new narrative surrounding shifts in power within the global political economy is primarily grounded in a fictional account of the liberal economic world order of the 20th century. To understand the current crises and upheavals, critical social research would therefore be well advised to once again devote greater attention to the analytical and political-strategic potential of an updated analysis of imperialism.
Political Forms of Globalised Capitalism
In order to develop a historical-materialist theory of capitalist states, which adequately reflects the present historical situation it may be helpful to discuss conceptional problems of heretofore dominant conceptions. Their inadequacy in the face of the political forms of globalised capitalism may also have been caused by their neglection to consider colonial states as capitalist states. In order to determine the political forms of globalised capitalism it is suggested to consider the structural preconditions for any form of capitalist production.
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; color: black; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: 0pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: flat; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">How is the war against Ukraine transforming the state-society complex in Russia? This paper draws attention to the organic crisis of the ruling bloc encompassing three dimensions: crisis of capital accumulation, crisis of labour reproduction, and crisis of legitimacy. Unable to reproduce the power configuration by eliciting the consent of subordinate groups, the ruling bloc resolves to violence in an attempt to overcome the crisis. The paper reintegrates war in the study of capitalism by exploring the manifestations of violence as enterprise, labour, and ideology.
This article critiques the implicit functionalism of the thesis put forward by Brand et al., which argues that the failure to fulfill key state functions explains the lack of progress in moving away from fossil fuels within the framework of state decarbonization efforts. Furthermore, it challenges the thesis of the state’s delegitimization by examining the role of political parties. To answer the question of the limits of decarbonization, the analytical focus should be placed more strongly on the power resources and political – and in some cases structural – opportunities available to the leading social forces.
Geoeconomics as the End of Neoliberalism?
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; color: black; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: 0pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: flat; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">In this article, I engage with the debate on the »geoeconomic state« and challenge the view that it represents a fundamental break with neoliberalism and the competition state. Drawing on the US-China conflict, I argue that geoeconomic policies are aimed at securing technological leadership and improving market access amid intensifying global competition. To support this argument, I historicize US-China relations and analyze the US’ geoeconomic responses, highlighting continuities and shifts in the relationship between state and economy. From this perspective, geoeconomic policy can be understood as a reconfiguration of neoliberal globalization within the framework of the competition state.
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; color: black; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: 1.0pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: flat; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: miter; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 400.0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">In light of increasing militarization worldwide, it is worth discussing the argument that geopolitical disputes have increasingly taken a back seat to conflicts of a geo-economic nature. This is illustrated here by the example of relations between China and the United States. The question arises as to what extent the cooperation, but also the intensified competition, between the two countries has been accompanied by rearmament measures, with the Taiwan issue always taking center stage from the Chinese perspective.
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Aptos; color: black; mso-font-kerning: 1.0pt; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: 1.0pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: flat; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: miter; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 400.0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">The concept of tech competition statehood proposed here examines transformations in state action in the face of U.S. and Chinese digital dominance from the perspective of those seeking to catch up. Rather than moving away from the regulatory creation of locational advantages, they rebalance the emphasis between inward- and outward-looking, economically and politically oriented competitiveness projects in strategically-selective ways. The EU and India, for example, are attempting to contain digital markets regionally, utilizing not only industrial policy and regulation but also strategic public procurement and the discursive legitimization of their own tech ambitions as morally superior.
A prevailing interpretation of the current era describes the profound transformation in the global economic landscape as the »age of geo-economics«. This is said to be characterised by intensifying inter-state competition, trade wars, sanctions regimes and investment controls, as well as a race for technological supremacy and control over value chains. In this context, the intertwining of security policy motives and economic strategies is receiving considerable attention. In this issue, we examine the current state of »geoeconomics« and take a critical look at the prevailing interpretation found not only in International Relations and Political Economy, but also in influential think tanks and foreign policy circles, in which geoeconomics – understood as the logic of global economic competition – is set against geopolitics – understood as the logic of war.
1917: Experience and memory. What remains of the Russian Revolution?
Copyright (c) 2018 PROKLA. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaften
On the shoulders of the EU project against the „Status Quo“
The article discusses the rise of authoritarian populism in the context of Turkeys neoliberalisation experience since 1980. For long time, populist politics in Turkey successfully claimed to be the voice of the suppressed against the ruling. In fact, they used an oppositional political language meanwhile processing the material interests of the hegemonic forces. Despite receiving considerable support, particularly from the European public, authoritarian populism fell into an deep crises throughout the recent years – the result is it radicalisation which is often mistakenly debated as the start of populism in Turkey.
The recent populist wave that swept Eastern Europe put an end to the illusionary victory of liberal democracy across the region. This applies especially to Poland, the country with the most impressive civil society movement, Solidarnosz, and the frontrunner of radical market reforms. Despite the best economic performance of all post-communist countries, the populist party Law and Justice (PiS) came to power for a second time in 2015, only to impose its reactionary national-catholic model on the media, the law system, and the public sector. The success of PiS cannot be explained by the immanent strength of its populist rhetoric but points to the wilful neglect of its liberal predecessors of regional heterogeneity, precarious working conditions, and sharpened inequalities. While the electorate supports the valid points of PiS’s socio-economic programme, it is not inclined to follow its internally divisive and externally confrontational anti-EU ideology.
Trevor Evans: The economic expansion in the US since 2009 and Donald Trump’s ambitions to ‘drain the swamp
The current economic situation in the United States can be seen as the result of three factors. The first is the long-term shift to a neo-liberal order. The second factor is the US business cycle. Periods of economic expansion in the 1980s, the 1990s and the early 2000s were each brought to an end by increasingly severe crises, the most recent of which in 2007-2009 came perilously close to causing a collapse of the US financial system. The most recent expansion, which began in mid-2009, has been unusually weak, and is already relatively long by comparison with other recent expansions.The third factor is the presidency of Donald Trump which began in January 2017. Despite a populist rhetoric and the dependence of his electoral victory on mobilising white working-class support, in government he has pursued an unashamed series of measures which primarily benefit the very richest sectors of US society.
What are the contemporary conditions of Western modern democracies that make a politics of fear so successful at this present moment? In this article, the author analyzes the relationship between politics and fear in order to move beyond a simple instrumentalization thesis. Focusing on two perspectives: the view of state sovereignty and the phenomenon of neurosis, the author argues that the contemporary Western modern politics of fear can be understood as an expression of a crisis of state sovereignty, which becomes apparent in the nation state as well as in a new mode of political subjectivation. It is a ghostly sovereignty that finds both a form and an addressee in a neurotic subject.
The AfD, the working class and the left - no problem?
The AfD, the working class and the left – no problem? The question of how to explain the success of the AfD in Germany and which counter-strategies are appropriate is controversially discussed within the social left. In Germany, two camps have emerged which seem to be irreconcilably opposed. Either the rise of the AfD is explained by the social left’s neglect of social issues and the working class, or it is understood as an expression of racism and prosperity chauvinism in the middle of society or in the entire population. Thomas Sablowski and Günter Thien criticize this viewpoint.
Dennis Eversberg: A conflict within the empire. Three theses on the relation between authoritarian nationalism and the imperial mode of living. The article analyses the success of authoritarian nationalist party „Alternative für Deutschland“ (AfD). Firstly, it is argued that voting for the AfD was not a ‘displaced’ form of reaction to actual or feared experiences of economic disadvantage or relegation. In fact, the AfD’s voter voted for the party because they support its authoritarian nationalist ideas. Secondly, authoritarian nationalism’s character as a vertical class alliance between parts of the elites on the one and segments of the middle and lower classes on the other hand is highlighted – an alliance that wants to reverse the transformation from post-war organized capitalism to the contemporary flexible capitalist regime. Thirdly, it is argued that the current conflict between “progressive neoliberalism” (Fraser) and authoritarian nationalism takes place on the firm ground of a shared consensus about the imperial mode of living. It is a conflict about the modernization of this mode of living and about how to best defend it. A critique of the global injustices it causes and perpetuates, or credible demands for overcoming it, can only be articulated from a globally solidary position that rejects this bipolar discursive constellation altogether.
Corporate Social Responsibility – vom Reputationsmanagement zum politischen Projekt
Luise Görges, Ulf Kadritzke: Corporate Social Responsibility – from Reputation Management to the Strategic Advance of Corporate Power. This history of CSR exemplifies the advancement of corporate power in the process of capitalist globalization. Initially started in response to reports on the violation of human rights, the transnational corporations (TNCs) managed to design the CSR concept as a voluntary and highly selective commitment to bridge the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of corporate conduct. With the worldwide rise of the neoliberal paradigm in economic and social policy, these CSR-concepts were combined into a capital-dominated CSR-complex. The article tries to reconstruct the scientific, political and ideological roots of the concept and the steps transforming the corporate CSR-movement into a successful ‘industry’. But the company-driven CSR is consistently confronted with actors and actions of a new social movement (including NGOs as well as unions). These organizations of civil society steadily uncover the social consequences of corporate global strategies. The so far asymmetric balance of power may nevertheless give NGOs and their allies– backed by the new media – a chance to lay open corporate misconduct and demonstrate the main ‘performance’ of global corporate power: the deepening of class polarization and ecological instability.
In the past decade, there has been a wave of acquisitions in the German automotive supplier industry by private equity. The financial investors seemed to reorganize the sector but this process was abruptly halted because of the world economic crisis from 2008. A number of companies high above average owned by private equity fell into insolvency and, overall, the power structures in the value chain of the industry remained stable. This is illustrated by means of empirical data of 163 corporate takeovers. The example illustrates that the financial market capitalism is not able to establish a stable production regime yet.
In 2010 the German constitutional court obligated legislative and government to revaluate the rate of welfare payments. Hence a window of opportunity opened for poor people’s movement activists to initiate a broad debate on scarce benefits in the German workfare regime of „Hartz IV” and to promote significantly higher benefits. We discuss the crucial factors of their campaign’s failure such as the weakness of the hardly existing movement of the unemployed, the interests of parties and administration, and the important politico-economic function of „Hartz IV”.
Finanzdominierte Akkumulation und die Krise in Europa
The present crisis in Europe is just one form of a multiple crisis of the social formation dominated by the capitalist mode of production. More specifically it is a crisis of the financedominated regime of accumulation which developed as a response to the crisis of Fordism since the 1980s. In this article, first we analyze the contradictions of the finance-dominated regime of accumulation and the contradictions of the crisis management of the ruling classes.