Capitalism is a hegemonic global economic and social order that increasingly displays a fatal contradiction between reality and reason, where it threatens not only human welfare but also the continuation of most sensitive forms of life on the planet. Three critical crises make up the contemporary world condition originating from capitalist development: (1) the emergence of global imperial instability associated with shifting world hegemony and the struggle for resources; (2) the Great Financial Crisis and stagnation/depression; (3) the growing threat of planetary ecological collapse.
One country with power
One person making more money
Climate change Since the Second World War, the capitalist world has seen two main political-economic
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But its globalization took the form of a division, from the start, between center and periphery, and thus was imperial in nature. The system was geared from the first to the needs of accumulation in the center, or the top of the world-hierarchy. Furthermore, the growth of multinational corporations based in the center countries has served historically to channel global surpluses away from the peripheries toward the centers. The concentration of power at the center is intrinsic to capitalism as a world system. The world economy is therefore disproportionately focused on the needs of accumulation at the core. The capitalist world system is most stable when governed by a single hegemonic power. Since the majority of natural resources are found in the Global South, they are ferociously fought over by the dominant countries. Neoliberalism, being at the origins of the crisis of the international financial system, is a carrier of violence in various forms, including the use of militarized …show more content…
In the US, the control of the wealth by the top 1 percent of the population had remained genuinely stable throughout the twentieth century, however in the 1970s it plunged quickly as asset values collapsed. After the implementation of neoliberal policies in the late 1970s, the share of national income of the top 1 percent of income earners in the US soared and reach 15 percent by the end of the century. The top 1 percent of income earners in Britain have doubled their share of the national income from 6.5 percent to 13 percent since 1982. Extraordinary surges in income inequalities and wealth have taken place in China as it has embraced free-market-oriented practices. The influx of privatization in Mexico after 1992 catapulted a few individuals almost overnight into Fortune’s list of the world’s wealthiest people. This evidence firmly proposes that the neoliberal turn is somehow associated with the restoration and reconstruction of the power of economic elites. We live in a period of global finance