John Smith, Author of ‘Imperialism In The Twenty-First Century', Speaking At Ard Fheis Éirígí 2022

While John Smith Phd is currently working full time as an author and researcher, he has previously worked as a bus driver, an oil rig worker, a university lecturer and a telecommunications engineer. In 2012, his book 'The GDP Illusion', highlighted how apparently neutral economic data systematically underestimated the wealth that was generated by low-paid workers in the global south and conversely overestimated the wealth generated by the corporations/countries of the global north that profited from the labour of those workers. Smith's 2015 publication 'Imperialism In The Twenty-First Century: Globalisation, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis' received widespread praise for its ground-breaking research and analysis. In it Smith examines the relationship between the main capitalist economies and the rest of the world in a neo-liberal project of globalisation. The production processes for t-shirts, coffee and iPhones are all tracked and used to show how modern imperialism can control and exploit target countries through global finance and markets instead of the traditional means of invasion, conquest and occupation. Ard Fheis Éirígí 2022 took place in The Teachers Club in Dublin on Saturday, 26th February, 2022. #ÉirígíAF2022 | #WeOnlyWantTheEarth | #ForANewRepublic