Elmar Altvater was Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Free University of Berlin, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continued to work at the Institute, and published articles and books. 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 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 of which he remains 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 "political economy" and author of numerous writings on globalization and critiques of capitalism. A standard work is his book The Limits of Globalization, written with his companion Birgit Mahnkopf. Altvater supported the German Greens for some time, but after the military intervention in Kosovo increasingly maintained a critical distance. He was a member of the BundestagCommission of InquiryThe World Economy - Challenges and Answers . Altvater was a supporter of ATTAC and the World Social Forum. Altvater has coined the term "Capitalocene", which is used by environmentalists as an alternative to the Anthropocene.
Primary literature
1969: Die Weltwährungskrise.
1969: Gesellschaftliche Produktion und ökonomische Rationalität - Externe Effekte und zentrale Planung im Wirtschaftssystem des Sozialismus.
1979: Vom Wirtschaftswunder zur Wirtschaftskrise, Berlin.
1983: Alternative Wirtschaftspolitik jenseits des Keynesianismus - Wirtschaftspolitische Optionen der Gewerkschaften in Westeuropa.
1987: Sachzwang Weltmarkt. Verschuldungskrise, blockierte Industrialisierung, ökologische Gefährdung - der Fall Brasilien.
1991: Die Zukunft des Marktes. Ein Essay über die Regulation von Geld und Natur nach dem Scheitern des "real existierenden Sozialismus".. English
1991: The Poverty of Nations: A Guide to the Debt Crisis-From Argentina to Zaire, by Kurt Hubner, Jochen Lorentzen, Elmar Altvater, Raul Rojas,
1992: Der Preis des Wohlstands oder Umweltplünderung und neue Weltordnung. Münster
1994: Tschernobyl und Sonnenbrand oder: Vom Sinn physikalischer Kategorien in den Sozialwissenschaften. Replik auf die Kritik von Wolfgang Hein, in: Peripherie, Nr. 54, S. 101-112
1996: Grenzen der Globalisierung. Ökonomie, Ökologie und Politik in der Weltgesellschaft.
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: : Globalisierung der Unsicherheit – Arbeit im Schatten, schmutziges Geld und informelle Politik.
2005: Das Ende des Kapitalismus, wie wir ihn kennen. Eine radikale Kapitalismuskritik. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
2007 Elmar Altvater & Birgit Mahnkopf, Konkurrenz für das Empire. Die Zukunft der Europäischen Union in der globalisierten Welt.
2008 Elmar Altvater & Achim Brunnengräber, Ablasshandel gegen Klimawandel? Marktbasierte Instrumente in der globalen Klimapolitik und ihre Alternativen.
2010 Elmar Altvater, Der große Krach, oder die Jahrhundertkrise von Wirtschaft und Finanzen, von Politik und Natur.
