Neoliberal Globalization and Capitalist Crises in the Age of Imperialism

Abstract

During the past two decades, the concept of “globalization” has been used in reference to global social, economic, and political processes as if it were some profoundly new development in world history. In this chapter, I argue that while the scale and breadth of this recent wave of globalization is certainly unparalleled, the underlying political-economic processes that are its mode of operation have been in place for over a century, and have given rise to previous waves of globalization during the course of the twentieth century. Pre-nineteenth-century global movement of capital, technology, and people were driven by precapitalist colonial expansion. Under capitalism, especially during the stage of industrial-finance capital over the past century, maintenance of rates of profit, rather than simply securing land, material resources, or slaves, has been the driving force of global economic expansion. Thus, I argue that understanding economic and sociopolitical processes within the framework of modern capitalist imperialism—including, especially, the need for cheap labor, raw materials, and new markets abroad, and political-military policies that protect these interests around the world—provides us a useful framework for understanding the nature, dynamics, and contradictions of this most recent wave of globalization and the various forms of resistance against it.