Advanced Diploma in Political Economy

The training program for Diploma students involves introducing the analytical categories of Marxist theory for the concrete historical confrontation of the theoretical and practical problems presented by the unfolding of the global capitalist economy in crisis, and particularly in the forms it assumes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, the economic question is at the center of global attention. Since the Great Recession of 2009, but especially with the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and the war in Europe since February 2022, processes that accelerated trends toward economic recession with rising inflation. Faced with this global crisis, a diagnosis and proposal are being developed to overcome the set of problems facing humanity. Therefore, it is necessary to review some central axes of the debate in contemporary political economy and its critique. First, the discussion between ECONOMICS and POLITICAL ECONOMY will be introduced, as well as between the latter and its CRITIQUE. It is a logical and historical question, one that involves debating common categories in theory and politics that address issues such as the causes of recessions, inflationary processes, or the worsening of social inequality in income and wealth. The diploma program, therefore, proposes moving from historical categories to the analysis of everyday life; this implies discussing the civilizational crisis in its multiple dimensions.

Since the last major crisis and recession (2007/09), and especially with the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic (2020) and the war in Ukraine (2022), which deepened the global crisis, the economic question has taken center stage in the world's attention. From the various schools of economic thought—liberal, orthodox, monetarist, neoclassical, and from neo-Keynesian or post-Keynesian critiques—diagnoses and proposals (orthodox or reformist) are being discussed, which, despite their nuances, collectively support the need for a "restart" of global capitalist economic expansion. Therefore, from Marx's critique of political economy, it is necessary to rethink the central axes of the current debate: What are the causes of the recessions affecting our economies? What is the magnitude of the ongoing economic crisis? How are the trends of capitalist accumulation imposed on dependent economies? What role do inflationary processes play? What role does the State play in the current context of economic crisis? What is the burden of public debt? How have the pandemic and the war exacerbated social inequalities? Why is there such insistence on reactionary labor, tax, and pension reforms? What are the alternatives from the perspective of the working classes? This diploma program aims to introduce the foundations of a critique of contemporary political economy. That is, it seeks to recover the categories of analysis (logical and historical) for theoretical and political debate in the face of the civilizational crisis, in its multiple dimensions and scope, that humanity is confronting.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES 

that the participants of the Diploma:

• They appropriate the dialectical method, the essential theoretical categories contained in Karl Marx's Capital, such as value and surplus value, with special emphasis on the historical character of the origin of the capital regime. 
• They will become familiar with the contributions of Marx and Engels to the development of the critical theory of the capitalist social order and will be able to update those foundational aspects and categories in a historical sense. 

The Diploma program aims to update the debate on relations of exploitation and domination and the plundering of natural resources, revisiting the classical school's maxim of the labor theory of value and the nature of accumulated labor as expressed in capital, with an emphasis on Marx's theory of value. Our overall purpose is to review the historical critique of capitalism from its origins to the present, re-evaluating the validity of Marx's thought and that of his followers as a critical conception of society and history.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

That students develop the ability to: 

• Identifying the structural regularities that account for expanded capitalist reproduction and its crises throughout history, their meanings in the adjustments of capitalist social relations, as a way of thinking about and discussing ongoing changes, especially in the area of ​​the relationship of exploitation: the relationship between capital and labor,
• To characterize the transformations of capitalism in its imperialist stage. The polarized expansion of imperialist development. The uneven development of socio-economic formations and the center-periphery dialectic in the 21st century.
• Understanding the historical development of Latin America and the Caribbean from the concept of Social Formation (variegated), contributing to the explanation and analysis of the State, society and their articulations in the region in historical and contemporary terms.
• To critically consider the phenomenon of the double oppression of women at the intersection of patriarchy and capitalism and the historical responses of feminisms, reviewing and reconstructing a tradition of struggle with enormous presence in current debates on the issue of gender and diversity.
• To analyze the aggression of capitalism towards nature and humanity, and its manifestations such as climate change, environmental crisis, global warming, proliferation of epidemics, etc. And to evaluate the various forms that the contemporary ecological debate takes; 
• To critically reconstruct the historical experiences of transition from capitalism to socialism, from the socialism of Eastern Europe to current experiences in the name of socialism, and especially the expectations generated in Our America with the processes of change at the beginning of the 21st century.

The Higher Diploma in Political Economy is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students; teachers at all levels; activists and members of trade unions, social movements and political parties; public officials; members and managers of non-governmental organizations and professionals interested in the subject.

• Alejandra Ciriza (CONICET, Argentina) 
• Beatriz Rajland (Foundation for Social and Political Research, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• Claudio Katz (Institute of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) 
• Daniel Campione (Foundation for Social and Political Research, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• Enrique Elorza (UNSL, Argentina)
• Gabriela Roffinelli (Foundation for Social and Political Research, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• Germán Pinazo (Foundation for Social and Political Research, National University of General Sarmiento, Argentina)
• Jaime Estay (Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico)
• Jairo Estrada (National University of Colombia)
• José Puello Socarrás (Higher School of Public Administration, Colombia)
• Julio Gambina (Foundation for Social and Political Research, Argentina)
• Lucas Castiglioni (Foundation for Social and Political Research, University of the Center, Argentina)
• Marcelo Carcanholo (Fluminense Federal University, Brazil)
• Ricardo Antunes (Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Brazil)