Global Finance Capitalism Is Dead

I was reading a piece by Waldon Bello here. And I’ve been thinking: global finance capitalism is dead. As a corollary, the American military and financial empire is dead. The imperial system — where the periphery contributed tribute to the US and the aging imperial hubs of Western Europe is dead and buried. The US and Britain are running around trying to resuscitate it — but their efforts resemble the frantic running around of a chicken that has just had its head cut off.

All the old indices — per cent rates of growth, unemployment levels, jobs created — have become meaningless in the sense that none of them are subject to control and management. Well, to be honest, all of  the macroeconomic controls have already been dismantled over the last thirty years in our neoliberal age. A more important point is that “growth’ will have to cease being a fetish: the biosphere cannot afford it. Patterns of consumption and investment based on “growth” (i.e., increased exploitation of nature) will have to cease. In this connection, there’s an eminently watchable interview of Dmitry Orlov here by the “Russia Today” network.

The new world that will emerge with the collapse of US military power, US transnational corporations, and US-dominated agencies (IMF, World Bank) will not be any kinder than the old one — it just won’t be dominated by one hegemon. In this connection I was just reading about how the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is beginning to flex its muscles (read here). The SCO is really just Russia and China. We’ll probably see more of these regional organisations in the years to come and the member states of these will cooperate more on defence and barter deals.

Advertisements