Thursday, September 24th, 2026 5 pm Eastern / 4pm Central / 2pm Pacific on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88234641011

See you at 2pm PST/5pm EST!

Event Description:

The failed regime change effort launched against Iran by the US and Israel is transforming the capitalist-world system right before our very eyes. Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuze and with it a significant portion of the world's oil and petro-chemical flows. This has sent shockwaves through the global economy and threatens to accelerate a critical financial crisis and potentially lead to famine in many parts of the world, due to a lack of fertilizers produced by the petro-chemicals extracted and produced by the monarchical states of the Persian Gulf. Further still, Iran has forever changed the nature of modern warfare. They have exposed the limits of US and Israeli military might, and severely weakened the threat of the US military “stick”, which is critically weakening the role of the US state as the hegemon of the capitalist world order. Meanwhile, China has been maneuvering in the background to save the world from a calamitous oil shock, kept Iran from completely isolated and starved into submission, and kept the engines of global commerce and finance moving, despite the numerous efforts of the Trump regime to redefine the terms of trade in the world through tariffs and sanctions., The question is, if the US is declining as the hegemon of the capitalist world system, what does this mean in practical terms and where are we headed as a result.

Join us in a timely discussion of these matters with Kali Akuno and Joe Guinan. In this discussion we are going to examine how the world is moving towards a poly-centric world order and what activists and communities can and should do to prepare for the challenges ahead.

Speaker Bio:

Joe Guinan is President of The Democracy Collaborative. His focus is on political economy, strategy, and economic system change, and he is co-author (with Martin O’Neill) of The Case for Community Wealth Building (Polity, 2020) and (with Christine Berry) of People Get Ready! Preparing for a Corbyn Government (O/R Books, 2019), which was named one of The Guardian’s best politics books of the year in 2019.

A former journalist, he was previously a program director at the Aspen Institute, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a consultant to the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. Born in England with dual Irish and British citizenship, he grew up in British labor movement circles and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford.

A researcher at The Democracy Collaborative at its inception at the University of Maryland, he has served in a number of capacities at the organization, including as vice president and as executive director of the Next System Project when it was launched in 2015.

He writes for an array of progressive outlets and is a frequently cited expert on the new economics in major news media. He sits on the Board of Directors of An Scoil Chois Claí, the Irish political education initiative based in Belfast, and lives in Washington, D.C.

The Storm on the Horizon: The War on Iran, the Oil Crisis, and the Shift to a Poly-Centric World Order

A discussion with Joe Guinan