Cfp: 19th Annual Forum of the World Association for Political Economy

The Wealth of Nations in the Multipolar Age

5-7 August 2026

University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom

Adam Smith’s contradictions are of significance because they contain problems which it is true he does not solve, but which he reveals by contradicting himself. His correct instinct in this connection is best shown by the fact that his successors take opposing stands based on one aspect of his teaching or the other.

-Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value I, 151.

The World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) is pleased to announce its annual forum on the theme “The Wealth of Nations in the Multipolar Age”, marking the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. We meet at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, where the first Chinese translator of the Smith’s works and first principal of Beijing University, Yan Fu, studied.

We invite scholars, researchers, activists, and practitioners to submit their papers for consideration.

The neoclassical and neoliberal appropriation of Smith is simplistic at best and false at worst. Marx, in contrast, rightly regarded Smith as one of his most important intellectual forbears, whose ideas he both valued and criticized in arriving at his own critique of political economy.

Marx considered Smith to be among those investigating ‘the real internal framework [Zusammenhang] of bourgeois relations of production’ — in particular, through his concept of the division of labour, at once advancing the productive capacities of human labour and stunting the human personality, and his belief that labour was ‘the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities’.

Indeed, the centrality of these and other themes of Smith’s work to Marx’s indicates that many of them point beyond capitalism itself.

The Wealth of Nations also addressed, as the curtain rose on the modern capitalist world, the central issue of what makes nations rich or poor. It has formed the running thread of the study of political and geopolitical economy. Today it is central to discussions of the multipolar and pluripolar world, as socialist and other anti-imperialist countries challenge capitalist domination through the increasingly successful pursuit of development, combined with a rejection of the imperial domination that was formative of, and remains fundamental to, capitalism’s very existence.

As in previous years, we will run a geopolitical economy stream to strengthen understanding of what Marx called the ‘relations of producing nations’ of the age of capital, and of the transition away from capitalism.

We commemorate Smith’s The Wealth of Nations this year by inviting submissions that add to existing scholarship on Smith, particularly those that develop the radical and developmental aspects of his thought in the spirit of Marxism, those that investigate his relation to Marx and other critical thinkers since and especially those that which investigate how reconsideration of Smith’s work may contribute to understanding the political and geopolitical economy of the twenty-first century of decaying capitalism, and to advancing socialism in what Marx termed the ‘relations of producing nations’ in the age of multi- and pluripolarity.

We welcome papers that address theoretical, empirical, or policy-oriented dimensions of the intimately related questions on the themes discussed above and listed below

• Adam Smith’s significance for modern thought.
• The relation of Marx and his successors with Smith
• The geopolitical economy of the age of capital
• The political economy of development
• Advancing productive powers in a multipolar world
• Modern Forces of Production, Artificial Intelligence, Noonomy, and the Creative Economy
• The negative effects of the dollar as a world currency and of USD-backed stablecoins
• The significance and impact of China’s recent policy initiatives (such as the Global Governance Initiative)
• The role of socialism in the political and geopolitical economy of capitalism
• The emerging role of organisations and structures such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
• The role of regional blocs and institutions in shaping multipolar governance.
• The ecological challenge and resource politics in a multipolar world.
• Shifts in labour relations and production systems under multipolarity.
• International production networks
• Livelihoods world-wide and the "Death Line" for the American People
• Contemporary forms of Hegemonism, Imperialism, Colonialism, and Racism
• Upholding Integrity and Innovating Marxist Political Economy Through International Cooperation
• Studies on the International Schools of Innovative Marxism
• Macroeconomic modelling