Elmar Altvater (24 August 1938 – 1 May 2018) was a German

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

. He was professor of political science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...

, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continued to work at the institute, and published articles and books.

Biography

As a student, Altvater studied economics and sociology in Munich, and attained a doctorate with a dissertation on "Environmental Problems in the Soviet Union". At the Otto-Suhr-Institut, he was active in socialist research groups, working with among others Klaus Busch, Wolfgang Schoeller and Frank Seelow, and he gained fame as one of Germany's most important Marxist philosophers, who strongly influenced the political and economic theory of the 1968 generation of radicals. His analysis, centered on the logic of

capital accumulation Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form ...

crisis in state interventions is key to the Marxist theory of state-derivationism. Altvater argues that the state performs four general maintenance functions particular capitalists cannot undertake: providing an initial legal system with property and contract law, regulating the class struggle between workers and owners of capital, enforcing terms of international trade and market expansion through military presence, and providing infrastructure. In 1970, he co-founded the German journal '' PROKLA - Journal for Critical Social Science''http://www.prokla.de/, the Publication, in German of which he remained an editor. In 1971, he became university professor in political economy at the Otto-Suhr-Institut. Apart from questions of development theory, the debt crisis, and the regulation of markets, he remains preoccupied with the effects of capitalist economies on the environment. Altvater was a noted critic of the

political economy Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...

and author of numerous writings on

globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...

and critiques of

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

. A standard work is his book ''The Limits of Globalization'' (1996), written with his companion Birgit Mahnkopf.http://d-nb.info/gnd/115428844, listings in the German National Library,

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The German National Library (DNB; ) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to collect, permanently archive, comprehens ...

Altvater supported the German Greens for some time, but after the 1999 military intervention in Kosovo (which as a member of the governing coalition the party had to support) increasingly maintained a critical distance. He was a member of the

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...

Commission of Inquiry ''The World Economy - Challenges and Answers (1999–2002)''. Altvater was a supporter of ATTAC (he was a member of its Scientific Advisory Board) and the

World Social Forum The World Social Forum (WSF, ) is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, first held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemonic globalization. The Worl ...

. Altvater has employed the term " Capitalocene", which is used by environmentalists as an alternative to the

Anthropocene ''Anthropocene'' is a term that has been used to refer to the period of time during which human impact on the environment, humanity has become a planetary force of change. It appears in scientific and social discourse, especially with respect to ...

Primary literature

* 1969: * 1969: * 1979: (with Jürgen Hoffmann and

Willi Semmler Willi Semmler is a German born American economist who currently teaches at The New School in New York. Academic career Willi Semmler studied at the University of Munich, Technische Universität Berlin and Free University of Berlin. He has a P ...

) * 1983: (with Kurt Hübner and Michael Stanger) * 1987: * 1991: . (translated into English as ''The Future of the Market: An Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature after the Collapse of 'Actually Existing Socialism (Verso). English * 1991: ''The Poverty of Nations: A Guide to the Debt Crisis-From Argentina to Zaire'', by Kurt Hubner (Author), Jochen Lorentzen (Author), Elmar Altvater (Author, Editor), Raul Rojas (Editor), (St. Martin's Press) * 1992: . Münster * 1994: * 1996: (with Birgit Mahnkopf) . * 1999: "Restructuring the space of democracy: the effects of capitalist globalization and the ecological crisis on the form and substance of democracy" in ''Global Ethics and Environment'', Editor Nicholas Low * 2002: (with Birgit Mahnkopf): . * 2005: . Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. * 2007 Elmar Altvater & Birgit Mahnkopf, . * 2008 Elmar Altvater & Achim Brunnengräber (eds.), . * 2010 Elmar Altvater, .

References

External links

Website dedicated to Elmar Altvater
* Altvater old homepage at the Free University Berli

* New homepage at the F

* Elmar Altvater (1972)
"Notes on Some Problems of State Interventionism"
* Overview of his life and work (in Germa

Birgit Mahnkopf: In memory of the life and work of Elmar Altvater
{{DEFAULTSORT:Altvater, Elmar 1938 births 2018 deaths People from Kamen People from the Province of Westphalia Alliance 90/The Greens politicians Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative politicians Die Linke politicians Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund members Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin Marxist theorists German Marxists Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts