many thanks for your message and comments on our article. Your points are interesting even if not unpredictable. We have discussed the politics of NIGD before, particularly in terms of our relationship to capitalism. A year ago (1 Feb) I responded to you as follows:

"I think you are after some kind of a statement about whether NIGD is in favour or against global capitalism. Upon returning from India, I re-read Marx's short text on India from 1853. Besides being simultaneously arrogant in making judgements yet, in some parts, very insightful about India, it ends at a call to assume cosmopolitan control over capitalist forces of production. One possible and plausible interpretation of Marx's somewhat vague programme is to think about it in terms of global democracy (he mentions something that could be called common governance). Global Keynesianism might well be fully compatible with that programme, to the extent that the point is also to enable and cultivate more democratic relations of production and exchange, in a pluralist fashion. Assuming that after the prevalence of capitalist social relations, there would still be markets, including world markets, global Keynesianism and democratic regulation would be a necessary counterpart to that kind of a pluralist system too (which would possibly allow for perhaps carefully confined capitalist relations too)."

This time Peter, I think you have an additional insight. It is indeed true that I sometimes avoid the term 'capitalism' -- and particularly the term 'socialism' -- "because of its past association with Marxism, Communism and strategies of insurrection, and its current use, in the archaic, schematic and reductionist manner, by Simplistic Workers Parties." I explain this in some detail in a *rejoinder to Branwen Gruffydd Jones otherwise excellent review of my book "After International Relations", in the Journal of Critical Realism. However, she maintained that "Patomäki refuses to contemplate the necessity of radical social transformation (in the sense of socialist transformation) in the struggle for human emancipation".

Towards the end of this rather long response, I argue that "in fact, 'after international relations' and 'after capitalism' are essentially connected. If we are interested in pluralizing and democratizing the control over means of production and world markets, while creating and sustaining decommodified contexts of social actitivity, we have to analyse and assess ways of building emancipatory world political spaces."

PS. At the moment, I am working on a book project I mention at the end of that rejoinder. A preliminary outcome of this project is entitled "The Long Downward Phase of the Capitalist World Economy and the Potential for Future Crises and Wars. Three Scenarios of Change of Global Governance". In September, I presented it in the Hague. If you, or anyone else, is interested, I can send it by e-mail (it should have been available also at the conference website [http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/papers], but there seems to be something wrong with the server at the moment).

*Heikki Patomäki (2003): "After International Relations, After Capitalism: A Rejoinder to Branwen Gruffyd Jones", Journal of Critical Realism, (1):2, pp.175-181.