From Capitalist Crisis to Genocide?

Global capitalism is in a state of stagnation, increasing pressure on the political and military actors of transnational capital to find new ways to generate profit. William I. Robinson, a professor at the University of California, has written highly relevant texts on this subject.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the new Cold War between the United States and China, “accelerate the violent collapse of the post-World War II international order and increase the risk of a world war.” Civilization as we know it “is disintegrating under the impact of the relentless accumulation of global capital,” Robinson states in the introduction to his thesis.

At the core of the crisis of this era is “the fundamental conflict within capitalism, the overproduction of capital.” In recent decades, overproduction has reached exceptionally high levels. Large international corporations and financial conglomerates have recorded record profits, even as profit rates have declined and corporate investments have decreased.

“It is precisely this decline in profit rates alongside the increase in the cash hoard that signals the collapse of capitalism. Since 1980, corporate cash reserves have only increased, but idle money is not capital because its value does not increase. Stagnant capitalism is in a state of crisis,” asserts the academic.

The international capitalist class has “accumulated more wealth than it can consume or reinvest.” Global inequalities have continued to rise.

“In 2018, 1% of humanity controlled 52% of global wealth, and 20% of humanity controlled 95%, while the remaining 80% had to make do with barely 5% of that wealth,” Robinson notes, citing research data, some of which is outdated.

“Financial speculation, debt-fueled growth, and plundering taxpayer money” have reached the end of their usefulness as temporary solutions to chronic stagnation. The capitalist class is increasingly desperate to find new ways to dispose of the capital it has accumulated. The result is that “the system becomes more violent, more predatory, and more reckless.”

After the boom of capitalist globalization at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the elite had to admit that the crisis had become uncontrollable. In its 2023 risk report, the Davos Economic Forum warned that the world is facing a “multi-crisis” with “growing economic, political, social, and climate consequences” and a “unique, uncertain, and turbulent decade.”

The insatiable desire to indefinitely prolong capital accumulation prevents the ruling class from finding viable solutions to this crisis. Thus, experiments are underway to transform the current political chaos and economic instability into a new, more deadly phase of global capitalism: ruling groups are turning, according to Robinson, “towards authoritarianism, dictatorship, and fascism.”

In the coming years, new technologies based on automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, combined with the marginalization caused by conflicts, economic collapse, and climate change, will exponentially increase the number of “surplus people” living in proletarian misery, plagued by unemployment and poverty.

The ruling classes face an insoluble problem: how to suppress the potential uprising of this enormous mass of people worldwide? The “madmen” must be held in check by a technocratic control society, a global police state, whose instruments are pandemics, wars, and genocides, with the ultimate goal of destroying humanity.

According to Robinson, this is also the broader context of events in Gaza. “The Palestinian proletariat of Gaza ceased to provide cheap labor to the Israeli economy when Gaza’s rebels were encircled in 2007 and the entire region was turned into a concentration camp. Useless to Israel and international capital, the Gazans are an obstacle to capitalist expansion in the Middle East and are entirely disposable.”

The ongoing genocide makes major contributions to the dynamics of the capitalist crisis. “Gaza is a microcosm and the ultimate manifestation of the fate that awaits the working class and the rest of humanity as the forms of domination in the world order become increasingly brutal and violent,” Robinson warns.

The transnational corporatocracy is preparing for a new radical phase of its control over the human population and the planet. It is no coincidence that new mega-prisons are being built worldwide, along with “block cities” designed to restrict citizens’ movement. The rise of authoritarian political systems is also “part of a broader movement toward a global police state,” Robinson adds.

“Gaza, the Congo, and other countries in hell are sounding the alarm in real-time: genocide could become a powerful means of resolving the conflict between excess capital and surplus humanity in the coming decades.”

Political chaos and chronic instability can create extremely favorable conditions for capital. In the past, wars have been a major economic stimulus, pulling the capitalist system out of its accumulation crisis while diverting attention from political tensions and legitimacy issues.

Each new conflict in the world opens up new opportunities for victory in the fight against stagnation. The endless destructions that follow reconstruction have ripple effects. They not only fuel the profits of the arms industry but also revitalize urban planning, construction, high-tech, energy, and many other sectors.

Geopolitical competition, even genocide, thus becomes a perverse lifeline for crisis-ridden capitalism, offering opportunities for new wealth through violence. From this perspective, the Russian military operation in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza “have paved the way for increased militarization of an already global war economy.”

It took a second world war for capitalism to finally emerge from the Great Depression. The Cold War justified half a century of increased military budgets, followed by the so-called war on terror, which also helped prevent the economy from imploding due to chronic stagnation.

While the militarization of the global economy may help alleviate the overpopulation crisis in the future, it is also risky because it increases tensions and dangerously pushes the world toward a major conflagration.

“We are in the midst of a global civil war,” asserts Robinson. Instead of two armies, citizens around the world face ruling groups with sinister designs. Can popular resistance intensify to the point that the transnational elite must accept major structural reforms in favor of the people?

“The future is uncertain because the outcome will depend on the struggle between opposing social forces, the policies that will emerge from this struggle, and factors that are often difficult to predict. But it is clear that major upheavals are coming,” states the American sociologist.