Robinson, W. “Global Capitalism and its Anti-Human Face: Organic Intellectuals and Interpretations of the Crisis”. Globalizations, Vol.10, No.5 (2013): 659-671.

Robinson, W. “Global Capitalism and its Anti-Human Face: Organic Intellectuals and Interpretations of the Crisis”. Globalizations, Vol.10, No.5 (2013): 659-671.

• The author holds that since the 1980s, a new form of capitalism has emerged. It is characterized by the rise of a truly globalized economy that benefits and is owned by a transnational capitalist class, the creation of transnational state apparatuses that govern this international economic activity, and the increasing influence of global inequalities on social and economic conditions across the world (660-661).
• The 2008 financial crisis was not a cyclical crisis, a recurrent crisis as a result of natural market patterns, but a structural crisis, which requires a major change in the form of capitalism practiced in the world (661).
• Previous crises included the Great Depression, which was resolved by Keynesian economic planning, and the crisis of the 1970s, which was resolved by the creation of the globalization of capital (661).
• The structural crisis precipitated by the 2008 financial crash has more limited options for reform than previous previous crises, since the resources of the planet are rapidly diminishing. The proliferation of military technology also means that the threat of violence due to social dislocation from economic or environmental collapse is greater than ever. The new stage of capitalism must also deal with a growing surplus population of lumpen proletariat and the end of frontiers for capitalist accumulation (661-662).
• The new stage of globalized capitalism emerged during the 1980s as a result of the advancement of communications technology, mass privatization under neoliberal governments, and the massive expansion of capitalist labor relations, especially in the Third World. This generated a boom of growth, but was followed by stagnation because an over-accumulation of wealth has limited the potential opportunities for productive investment as sufficient rates (662-663).
• There are a small number of remaining arenas in which global capital can still generate significant returns on investment. These include the arms and prison industry, which constantly generate new opportunities for expansion and defies permanent solutions (663).
• Through endorsement of neoliberal policies, transnational capitalists have managed to convince politicians to reduce state budgets and enforce austerity upon the population. This results in lower taxes for transnational capital since there are fewer state programs to support (663).
• The other method of massively increasing gains on capital investment was through speculation, which expanded to include speculation on every possible good and product since the 1980s. This glorified gambling allows potentially massive gains, but entails high risk and is economically unproductive (663).
• The response of the transnational capitalist class to the 2008 financial crisis has been to expansion of neoliberal programs in Western countries. This has involved privatization and austerity programs, which simultaneously reduce the tax burden on global capital and make labour more productive by cutting social programs and making work contracts more tenuous and exploitative (664).
• The implementation of austerity policies in response to financial crises is a deeply political decision, since it involves the shifting of fiscal responsibility onto the working classes and taxpayers as opposed to forcing transnational capital to cover the cost of state budgets. The state is forced to choose to take money from the transnational capitalists or from the rest of the populace, and they are repeatedly choosing to target the populace (664).
• "The bailouts of transnational capital represent in themselves a transfer of the devaluation of capital onto labor. The budgetary and fiscal crises that supposedly justify spending cuts and austerity are a matter of political decisions; [...] They are a consequence of the unwillingness or inability of states to challenge capital [...] Mass unemployment, foreclosures, the further erosion of social wages, wage cuts, furloughs, the increased exploitation of part-time workers, reduced work hours, informalization, and mounting debt peonage—including capital’s claim to the future wages of workers through public debt—are some of capital’s transfer mechanisms" (664).
• The response of society and politics to the structural crisis created by the 2008 financial crash has generally fallen into three groups: reformism, whereby economic elites propose restraining some capital forces through Keynesian economics; leftist populism, mainly manifesting itself in strikes and labor movements; and neofascism, expressed particularly by middle classes and historically privileged groups against scapegoated minorities (665-666).
• The author expressed concern that neofascism is the movement most likely to emerge dominant from the structural crisis, since this movement is not actively challenged by global capital -- as leftist projects are -- and manages to provide a political solution to the problem of a massive, rebellious, lumpen proletariat (666).
• The neofascist movement is likely to receive political and financial support from, or at least be tolerated by, the military and prison industries, extractive industries, and the financial industry because it creates the social dislocation that feeds the first, dispossess people to allow the expansion of the second, and provides the means to enforce radical austerity on some segments of the population, benefitting the third (667).
• Any effective solution to the structural crisis that emerged after 2008 would require either the abolition of capitalism or the radical redistribution of wealth from the global capitalist class to the global poor. This would involve a level of state regulation and intervention in the economy that has not been previously accepted by the transnational capitalist class (668).
• Effective solutions are further paralyzed by the lack of systems for regulating global capital, since state mechanisms do not and cannot adequately control the activities of transnational global (669).
• "The only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward to the poor majority of humanity along the lines of a twenty-first century democratic socialism, in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature" (669).