Abstract
This short book delves into some of the most important questions facing progressive and left activists: globalisation, financialisation and digitalisation. William I. Robinson has been here before. But his latest contribution deepens his consideration of the Green New Deal, splits in the ruling bloc of transnational capitalism, and alternative strategies to the crisis of global capitalism. The work offers an analysis of systemic contradictions, as well as posing challenging political questions.
Robinson begins by stating the crisis facing humanity goes beyond economics, it is civilisational and existential. But he is careful not to predict the imminent end of capitalism, as too many Marxists have done in past decades. Instead, Robinson situates his latest work as exploratory and open-ended. In doing so, he presents us with insights and problems that are essential in forging a revolutionary path forward.
The first chapter, ‘Can global capitalism endure?’ explains how the crisis is one of overaccumulation, but bound to state legitimacy and political hegemony. Robinson’s previous book, The Global Police State, investigated in detail how the ruling class has turned to repression as a form of accumulation and political rule. But he left little room for any alternative hegemonic project. In the present work he begins to investigate the reformist wing of the transnational capitalist class (TCC). Such reformism is a response to mass struggles from below. As he states, ‘agents of global capitalism are now attempting to purchase a new lease on life for the system through digital restructuring and through reforms [that may] unleash a new round of productive expansion that attenuates the crisis’ (p. 8). Robinson doesn’t see this as a long-term solution because the crisis is too deep and encompasses numerous systemic contradictions. But it does open a discussion on the conjunctional moment and how the Left should respond. The rest of the chapter is an excellent breakdown of the economic crisis, and the contradictions that global capitalism has no long-term capacity to solve.
Chapter II, ‘Global production, circulation, and appropriation of value’ may sound a bit daunting. But Robinson is able to present his exploration of global capitalism in a manner that is enlightening and easy to understand. Perhaps the most interesting part of this chapter is his open-ended inquiry into the nature and appropriation of value. Here Robinson dives into technology and financialisation. As he explains, digitalisation ‘allows capital to transform any current or future stream of earning . . . into an easily tradable capital asset’ (p. 24). Once converted, further speculation can continue on the same asset, like mortgages that are sold again and again between financial institutions:
Theoretically, there can be an endless degree of separation of this speculation from the original productive generation of value . . . This frenzied trading in money that never leaves cyberspace involves ever-greater degrees of separation from any underlying tangible values – assets or wealth produced by human beings. (p. 25)
Next Robinson probes how value isn’t attached to any particular nation but flows through networks of deeply integrated global finance. He frames this by asking a simple question, ‘who owns Apple?’ As he shows, Tim Cook and the other two major individual shareholders have less than 1 per cent of Apple stock. But Vanguard, BlackRock and Berkshire Hathaway own more than 20 per cent. These institutions centralise investments for transnational capitalists the world over. Just recently BlackRock announced that the majority of its new investors are foreign, although it’s considered a US financial institution. As Robinson concludes, ‘value does not park itself in Apple as a corporation. It moves on to global investors managed by the outsized asset management conglomerates’ (p. 33).
At the end of this chapter, Robinson holds out the possibility that digitalisation can be directed towards the transformation of the real economy developing ‘accumulation and growth in the production of goods and services’ that may restore some balance between finance and material production (p. 37).
The next section is titled ‘The second information age’, in which Robinson is concerned with the central role now played by knowledge in the production of services and goods, or what is often termed ‘intangible capital’. Here he is addressing AI, robotics, nano and biotechnology, quantum computers, e-commerce, and so on. World-spanning tech firms have attracted billions from transnational investors in what has become a merger of finance capital and Silicon Valley, and we should add firms from China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Europe. To this, Robinson links the military-industrial-security complex, particularly the Pentagon, as three sectors forming the summit of the global power bloc. I would also include the fossil fuel industry, essential to the military, and key to financing authoritarian governments and politicians around the world. Robinson argues a digitally driven global transformation will intensify the crisis of overaccumulation. But he again ends the chapter with new questions: ‘Can mass struggle by the popular and working classes force on the system a measure of redistribution, re-regulation, and social welfare investment that may offset the crisis into the future and give global capitalism a new lease on life?’ (p. 53). This links to the question brought forth at the end of the previous chapter, can capitalism move away from speculative financialisation to productive capital?
The next section, titled ‘The general crisis of capitalist rule’ dives into the many contradictions facing state legitimacy. Robinson draws our attention to the ‘disjuncture between a globalizing economy and a nation-state-base system of political authority . . . [and] the dispersal of formal political authority across many national states and the nature of the transnational state apparatuses with no center, formal constitution or enforcement capacity’ (pp. 60, 62). This puts each state in the position of competing for global capital, which can only be attracted by enforcing neoliberal policies such as low wages, low taxes, lax environmental regulations and labour discipline. In turn, this undermines the legitimacy of states exacerbating the social and political crises. The resulting pressure heightens splits within ruling groups over how to stabilise the system. One side of the split is the strategy of repressive and militarised accumulation. But Robinson observes, ‘In recent years reformist elements among the transnational elite have expressed alarm that worsening inequalities fan mass revolt’ (p. 57). Their solution is a renewed Keynesian social contract built around green capitalism and productive investments. Here Robinson cites China’s Belt and Road, Biden’s two-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and a rise in social assistance programmes around the world. Perhaps one example of emerging splits was the immediate rejection by finance capital of British prime minister Liz Truss’s move to cut taxes for the rich: a major policy pillar for neoliberalism since Thatcher and Reagan. As Robinson notes, ‘an increasing number of elite forums and corporate foundations are searching for a different set of ideas that may compete for hegemony with neoliberalism and its theoretical foundation in neoclassical economics’ (p. 59). If such an ideological challenge is successful in establishing a counter-hegemony, would this mean political and policy splits between productive capital and speculative financialisation? Robinson doesn’t say, but his open-ended investigation certainly initiates further exploration.
The final main section is ‘Contested futures’, in which Robinson raises a number of interesting possibilities. For example, will China’s state-led capitalism, with its regulation of private capital and focus on infrastructure and productive investments, ‘guide capital accumulation into aims broader than that of immediate profit making’? (p. 74). On the rapidly expanding environmental crisis, Robinson writes,
The challenge for the TCC is how to make ‘green’ capitalism as profitable as fossil fuel capitalism. Renewable energy, electrified mass transportation, low carbon footprint houses and buildings and other technologies aimed at achieving zero emissions could potentially become widespread under a capitalist system pressured by radical mass movements toward radical reform. (pp. 81–82)
But the unavoidable problem is that at some point capitalism will find it impossible to reproduce itself because of its destructive expansionary nature. As Robinson concludes, ‘An ecosocialist revolution against capital is our only hope of survival’ (p. 83). For Robinson, organising around a Green New Deal ‘may help lift the world out of economic depression . . . and generate more favorable conditions for an accumulation of counter-hegemonic forces’ (p. 85). The challenge is for the Left to move from protest to power with a project that overcomes a lack of revolutionary transformative ideology. This was a major focus of his last book, Global Civil War, in which he examined the deficiency of left political organisation and the counter-productive influence of identitarian politics.
Lastly, I should mention a thoughtful and engaging introduction written by Jason W. Moore, titled ‘Global capitalism in the great implosion: from planetary superexploitation to planetary socialism?’. The short essay, from one of the most astute theorists on the environmental crisis, is well worth the read.
In conclusion, Robinson breaks new ground with his questions and probing examinations. What direction will splits in the TCC take, and how should the Left respond? Is it time for an anti-fascist united front built around the Green New Deal? How can the Left unite and move beyond narrow identitarian politics? All these questions, and others, are pregnant within Robinson’s thinking. In taking an open-ended look at these issues, he provides us with an essential work to help guide left activists and thinkers towards an effective strategy that can build counter-hegemony, challenge capitalism, and move us towards the emancipatory project the world so desperately needs.
Global Studies Association of North America