The Making of Global Capitalism

Posted on Jan 31, 2013

Verso Books

(Page 5)

Yet the gap that exists between the stubborn realities of capitalism and the revolutionary spirit so manifest in public squares around the world which inspired the occupations in the US itself teaches a sobering lesson. It is not in fact possible to change the world without taking power. It is precisely because the aspiration for a world beyond capitalism is once again so broadly extant today that it is especially useful to recall ‘one of the basic axioms of historical materialism: that secular struggle between classes is ultimately resolved at the political – not at the economic or cultural - level of society.’ Whether called socialism or not, today’s revived demands for social justice and genuine democracy could only be realized through such a fundamental shift of political power, entailing fundamental changes in state as well as class structures. This would at a minimum require turning the financial institutions that are the life-blood of global capitalism into public utilities that would facilitate, within each state, the democratization of the decisions that govern investment and employment. But this will first require building very different movements and parties from those that carried the socialist impulse in the previous century.

Advancing such a radical politics requires a sober perspective on what currently exists, and how we got here, so as to better understand the nature and scale of the task involved in getting somewhere better. To help clarify this has been our goal in this account of the making of global capitalism. Its unmaking will only be possible if the states that have made it are themselves transformed – and that applies, above all, to the American state.

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