Thabo Huntgeburth

Thabo Huntgeburth is a PhD Student in Development Economics at SOAS - University of London.

In his PhD research, Thabo engages in a transdisciplinary approach to analyse labour processes that prefigure alternatives to a capitalist economic system. For this he complements the fundamental framework of Labour Regime Analysis to analyse the interplay of political institutions, ideological hegemony, and labour processes. To examine the functioning and developmental outcomes of non-capitalist production, he analyses cooperatives under ideal conditions and evaluates their outcomes in terms of eco-feminist development goals. Thus, his research aims to identify key variables to move beyond capitalist economic relations. 

Thabo’s research is based on training in philosophy and economics, specialising on the potentials of democracy. This is what motivated his Bachelor Thesis in 2019 at the University of Bayreuth in which he provided philosophical and economic arguments for workplace democracy. His interest in democratising society also motivated his Master Thesis at SOAS in 2021 in which he examined the political deficits of the EU Agricultural Policy Process with an enhanced Political Settlement framework. After that he argued in his Master Thesis at LSE in 2022 that a moral commitment to democracy calls for abandoning state punishment in favour of grassroots movements for transformative justice by combining theories of deliberative democracy with anarchist theory.

• Political Economy of institutions
• Worker-Managed cooperatives
• Alternatives to capitalism
• Philosophy of economics
• Democratic and Anarchist Theory