Elmar Alvater
| Elmar Altvater | |
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| Employer | Otto-Suhr-Institut |
Elmar Altvater (born 24 August 1938 in Kamen, Province of Westphalia) was Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Free University of Berlin, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continues to work at the Institute, and to publish 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 is 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 (1996), written with his companion Birgit Mahnkopf.
Altvater supported the German Greens for some time, but after the 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 Commission of Inquiry The World Economy - Challenges and Answers (1999–2002). Nowadays he is a supporter of ATTAC (he is a member of its Scientific Advisory Board) and the World Social Forum.
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