“Global Civil War – Capitalism Post-Pandemic” by William I. Robinson, 2022
Robinson’s
thesis is that the CoVid pandemic super-charged capital’s world-wide movement
into a Fourth Industrial era of technology – that of advanced digitalization of
nearly everything – labor, profits, military issues, surveillance and
commodification. This is thru AI,
robots, cloud data computing, 5G, the Internet of Things, blockchain and
‘immaterial’ commodities. The results are increasing inequality,
financialization and exploitation of the earth’s resources. Like Peter Phillips, he thinks the
transnational capitalist class (TCC) is leading this effort.
The
Pandemic
What
are the details? Robinson first
discusses the vast increase in inequality across the world. The pandemic ran up the number of
millionaires and billionaires as they took advantage of the crisis, with an 88%
increase in wealth for the top group.
This though $9 trillion was lost in the general world economy as it went
into a deep recession in 2020. Trillions were doled out by national banks to
keep corporations afloat. The pandemic
is one of the key recent ‘restructurings’ of capital according to him – in the
1930s under Roosevelt, in the 1970s with the advent of neo-liberalism, in the
2007-2008 crash that ushered in austerity and damaged neo-liberalism and now
the 2020 pandemic, which is prompting a digital restructuring of capital
globally.
The
pandemic allowed capital to move work to the internet for many white collar
jobs. It increased robotization. It led to new algorithms, making work more
productive and resulting in fewer employees. It elevated the role of TCC
corporations, which were further able to escape national economies. The pandemic led to an over-accumulation of
capital but without a productive or profitable outlet. This situation results in speculation,
internal drives for privatization and national conflicts to stave of
stagnation. Equity firms buying houses fits into this strategy for instance. Robinson also applies Marx’s theory of the
tendency of the rate of profit to fall. When
capital invests in machines instead of labor, moving from variable capital to
fixed capital, this pushes down profit rates. As all profits come from labor
and nature, the capitalists ‘naturally’ begin to squeeze global labor more and increase
exploitation of the last bits of the earth.
Accompanying
the rise in inequality was a jump in digital surveillance and police action,
spurred by technical fixes to deal with the plague. China was a leader in this method, but other
countries followed suit and he details examples of each. Populations were subject to a high level of
national control around movement, killing the tourist industry, stranding
citizens and grounding planes. While
flirting with the ‘lab leak’ theory, Robinson understands the majority of new
diseases are ‘zoonotic’ – coming from human invasions of formerly pristine animal
environments - so the Wuhan ‘wet market’ is the very likely culprit. Regarding China, even in 2020, U.S. investors
owned $1.1 trillion equity in Chinese entities.
In 2023 it went to $1.26 trillion. Both economies are entwined in spite of the
conflict.
Technology
Expansion
In
2019 about half the planet was on-line, with 5.2 billion smartphones in
operation. Now it is 7.2 billion in
2024. The misnamed ‘sharing economy’ and
3D printers saw huge increases in 2019.
In 2019, digital services made $1.9 trillion, half of all services
world-wide. In 2022 global IP traffic hit
around 15,700 GB per second. All of these have increased since he wrote
the book. This is why ‘intellectual
property’ has become so valuable, a tech understanding essential to almost any
job and why ‘intangible assets’ for corporations outweigh ‘tangible’ ones. Paper currency is more and more going out the
window to boot, though according to Robinson world capital had $14.4 trillion
in digital cash in 2020, showing its inability to find investment opportunities.
The
pandemic, according to Bank of America, most profited tech services, new media
and entertainment, e-commerce, data centers, biopharma and bio-tech, on-line
medical diagnostics, industrial and military automation, software,
semi-conductors, cloud services, renewable utilities and food and household
staples. Robinson contends that this grouping is part of the new ‘bloc of
capital.’ He contends this reflects
capital reaching a limit to global ‘extensive expansion’ and turning to internal
‘intensive expansion.’ The goal is ‘laborless production’ and even ‘zero marginal costs.’ For instance automation has reduced
agricultural employment picking things like fruit and nuts in California by
11%. He contends, as have others, that automation is coming for every sector of
jobs, even middle-class professionals.
On-line work weakens the class |
Isolation
is the social product engineered by working at home or in scattered, small offices
and shops. It reflects the reduction in
size of huge auto factories like River Rouge, mini-steel mills and the export of
production to China and Mexico. This is
being partly counteracted by the growth in huge logistics warehouses like Amazon,
but even in these locations workers are monitored and fewer due to robots. 'Essential workers' were the blue-collar exception but, as in the slaughterhouses, they got sick and died in higher numbers. Isolation and automation breaks up the social
ties and links among workers, especially the digital proletariat. The huge growth
in ‘independent contractors,’ ‘gig’ jobs and temp labor emphasizes this point. This all helps capital.
The
Answer?
Robinson
has 3 outcomes to this last phase of capitalist restructuring. Either a class revolution, a rise of fascist
dictatorships or an environmental and barbarous collapse of world civilization. These are all extreme poles, but they
reference present tendencies. Robinson
runs through a familiar, anodyne list of large Left protests before and during
the pandemic in 2019-2020 – among them huge strikes in India, the French Yellow
Vests, Chinese labor disruptions and protests against police brutality across
the world after the murder of George Floyd
The quantity of conflicts went way up worldwide. Robinson notes that revolutionary
organization, a socialist goal and theory are missing, so the ‘quality’
is not yet there. International
coordination is another, as ‘socialism in
one country’ wasn’t possible in the last century, nor in this one. Another is that being ‘anti-state’ or trying
to reform the state ignores the state’s absolute connection with the economy. As if the police are a stand-alone entity! In this context he writes against the
ideologies of post-modernism and identitarianism as being absorbed and promoted
by a wing of capital.
One
cheery rebellion Robinson highlights is the 2019 Sudanese political revolution
which ousted a corrupt dictator from Khartoum.
Unfortunately his book was written before the brutal reversal of that
revolution and descent into a bloody and long-lasting civil war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the genocidal
bombing of Gaza are also missing. His
main point is that neo-liberalism no longer suffices as a capitalist answer to
the world’s problems. This is the
conundrum the U.S. Democratic Party faces but will ignore.
Which leads
us to his second option – fascism. Protests did not just originate from the
Left but from the Right and Libertarianism – although some reformist ‘leftists’
still can’t understand this. The growth in elected authoritarians like Trump,
Orban, Netanyahu, Putin, Erdogan and Modi reflect this. It’s the ‘democratic dictatorship of the oligarchs and
petit-bourgeoisie’ to my mind. On
their shirttails are ultra-right to fascist militias, organizations, religious
sects and internet podcasters - some even pretending to be ‘anti-war’ or
‘anti-imperialist.’
Fascism
is a particular response to capitalist crisis according to Robinson, trying to
appeal to a plebian base, but violently supporting capitalist accumulation by
blaming everyone but the monied ruling class.
This method is no secret. The U.K.s
Brexit was a good example. It showed the
reactionary rot of nationalism, which is a compliment to irrationalism, fundie
religions, racism and ethno-politics in the backasswards arsenal of the
Right. Robinson understands that the TCC
appreciates pro-business efforts, but not outright fascist or authoritarian
tacks so far. They would rather have
improved and widespread policing instead of Brownshirts and illegal violence.
Robinson
understands that the spatial displacement of crises is no longer as possible. A template of cyclical, structural and systemic crisis is Robinson's template to understanding breakdowns and restructuring. Cyclical crises occur on a regular basis,
like recessions and depressions. Structural
ones demand a fundamental change in accumulation and technology, which is what
is happening now with the 4th industrial revolution. The third, a systemic crisis,
spells doom for capital itself … something no one can predict but one can prepare
for. Take your pick.
Prior
blogspot reviews, use search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year
archive, using these terms: “The Global Police State” (Robinson); “Giants
– the Global Power Elite” and “Titans of Capital” (both by Phillips); “The Long
Depression” and “Capitalism in the 21st Century” (both by Roberts);
“Zombie Capitalism,” “The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles” and “The Enigma of
Capital” (both by Harvey); “Dead
Epidemiologists” (Wallace); “Pandemic – CoVid Shakes the World” (Zizek); “Who
Get’s Bailed Out?” “Going Viral” or the word “technology.”
And I
bought it at May Day Books!
Red
Frog / November 20, 2024