Global Studies

This article analyzes the global crisis from the perspective of global capitalismtheory, in particular, with regard to the rise of a globally integrated productionand financial system, a transnational capitalist class, and transnational stateapparatuses. It situates the causal origins of the global crisis in a combination of over-accumulation and in contradictions of state power. This 21st century crisis is unprecedented in terms of its magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecological degradation and social deterioration, and the scale of the means of violence. The global economy experienced a period of hyper-accumulation in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of capitalist globalization but stagnated by the turn of the century. Transnational capitalists and elites turned to two major mechanisms for unloading surplus and sustaining accumulation in the face of chronic stagnation: financial speculation and militarized accumulation. Reformist-oriented elites have responded to the crisis by calling for a neo-Keynesianism from above and mechanisms for transnational regulation while popular and working classes have resisted attempts to transfer to them through austerity, wage cuts, and unemployment the burden of the crisis.