PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL CHANGE

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Peter Custers is a campaigner-theoretician, who has been politically engaged from the beginning of the 1970s. He gained firsthand experience in peasant organising while working as a journalist in Bangladesh during the country’s post-independence period, and has subsequently broadened his scope of work through an equally active engagement with peace and anti-militarist struggles in the Netherlands during the decade of the 1980s.
Even while embarking on theoretical research from the 1980s onwards, Custers over the last 20 years has continued his engagements in a variety of social struggles and international campaigns, both in South Asia and in Western Europe.

His innovative theoretical work is based on this double, South-North engagement, and is rooted in the conviction that struggles for the liberation of the oppressed are as relevant today, in the era of globalisation, as they have ever been, though they can only be successful if combined with a novel theoretical approach.
An approach which does justice to the contributions a variety of currents, especially dissident currents, have made to the socialist Left over time.

A central focus of his theoretical work is the thematic of arms’ production and arms’ exports. Although some of the most prominent 20th Century Marxist theoreticians did reflect on the role of arms’ production within the world capitalist system, it is Custers’ understanding that a comprehensive theory on arms’ production has never emerged, and that the development of such a theory is crucial, if we are to understand how imperialist powers, most notably the US, do structure their dominance over other nations on this planet.
Through extensive historical and theoretical research carried out since the late 1980s, Custers has constructed a theory on militarism, which addresses the different levels of accumulation, from the ‘microscopic’ to the global level, and which notably comprises several fields not theorized before, such as nuclear production and the exports of arms and armament systems.

Custers' theoretical work, moreover, is not only relevant for an understanding of militarism, but also aims at contributing towards theorising environmental problems.
Whereas classical theorising from a Marxian perspective at most covered "social" waste, i.e. the wastage of valuable economic resources towards militarist ends, Custers' theory seeks to forcefully address the question of non-commodity waste, including both solid, liquid and gaseous "by-products" of industrial production.
Within the framework of his theory, it is for instance possible, to analyse the destructive consequences of high-level waste in the nuclear production chain, but also to assess the negative environmental impacts from production of greenhouse gases.

It is Custers conviction, that the Left can only lead in overcoming the present planetary crisis, if it succeeds in developing an integrated perspective – in combining the analysis of human exploitation with a comprehensive analysis of environmental problems.
The writings listed on this website, however, are by no means limited to selections from Custers’ theoretical work.
Thus, this website also lists selections from his writings in support of and on, for instance:

• peasant struggles,
• feminism,
• human rights,
• Gramscian theory
• Bangladesh,
• genetically engineered food,
• Africa and globalisation,
• Religious tolerance
• internationalism.

The thematic arrangement shown on both the left and right of this page is intended to facilitate quick access to key writings.
Contents of the thematic pages will be listed chronologically, latest publications/activities at the top.
Latest updates of/additions to the publications on this site are marked: *

Main language will be English, unless otherwise stated.
The section In Print contains a list of major publications by Custers, with details on where they can be ordered.
Most articles/publications can be downloaded as .pdf files by clicking on the colored title of the document.

For questions, criticisms, comments or requests to (re)publish any of Custers’ writings, please communicate via the "contact" page of this site.