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Debate on the New Global Capitalism Transnational Capitalist Class INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT, 2017 VOL. 7, NO. 2, 171–189 https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2017.1316512 Debate on the New Global Capitalism: Transnational Capitalist Class, Transnational State Apparatuses, and Global Crisis William I. Robinson Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The state-centrism and nation-state/inter-state framework that Received 9 November 2016 reifies and fetishizes the nation-state and informs much Accepted 17 December 2016 theorization and analysis of world politics, political economy, and Published Online class structure is ever more incongruent with twenty-first century world developments. An epochal shift is underway to a new KEYWORDS phase in the on-going and open-ended evolution of world Global capitalism; capitalism, global capitalism, characterized by the rise of truly transnational capitalist class; transnational capital and the integration of every country into a transnational state; global new globalized system of production and finance, a transnational crisis; state-centrism; critique capitalist class as would be global ruling class, and transnational of realism; global hegemony; state apparatuses. The anomalies in traditional approaches transnational corporations demonstrate the need for a Kuhnian paradigm shift. Competition among capitals and international conflicts are endemic to the system yet competition takes on new forms in the age of globalization not necessarily expressed as national rivalry. Global capitalism is in crisis. The more enlightened strata of the transnational elite want stronger transnational state apparatuses in order to cement the rule of the transnational capitalist class, bring a measure of regulation and governance from above, and stabilize the crisis-ridden system. A global rebellion against the transnational capitalist class is underway but popular, working class, and leftist struggles face many challenges. The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from the old ones. (John Maynard Keyens 1965, viii) It is time for a paradigm shift in our study of world capitalism and the global ruling class. In his seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (2012) observed how the first impulse of those who receive disruptive information is to force it into a fam- iliar framework. The framework shapes how we interpret incoming information and filters out that which may be anomalous. Signs of a mismatch are disregarded for as long as poss- ible. But eventually the anomalies become all too evident, as the framework is no longer able to explain that which requires explanation. The only way forward is a shift in perspec- tive, or what Kuhn famously called a “paradigm shift.” The state-centrism and the nation state/inter-state framework that informs much theorization and analysis of world politics, political economy, and class structure is CONTACT William I. Robinson [email protected] © 2017 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 172 W. I. ROBINSON ever more incongruent with twenty-first century world developments. For the past two decades I have been in debate with my critics with regard to the idea a new stage in world capitalism—global capitalism—characterized by the rise of transnational capital, atransnationalcapitalistclass(TCC),andatransnationalstate(TNS).1 If critics of the theory of global capitalism rarely address the empirical evidence that I and others have put forward to support the global capitalismthesis,evenlesssodotheyattemptto account for the mounting anomalies and incongruences in their own accounts, or the inability of these accounts to provide adequate explanation for contemporary world developments. As I write these lines in early 2016, the United States and 10 other countries just signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, or TPP. The agreement will allow foreign corpor- ations operating in US territory to appeal key regulations to an international tribunal that will have the power to override US law. It will as well prohibit the US and any other sig- natory state from discriminating in favor of “national” firms. If the world is made up of national ruling classes in competition with one another, as the dominant paradigm sup- poses, why would the US state, with the backing of the transnational corporate commu- nity, promote through such trade deals the relocation abroad of USA-based capital and the entrance of “foreign” capital from other countries into the US market? Why would states, more generally (including the USA), deregulate national financial and other mar- kets that result in capital flight and in a contraction, sometimes drastically, of the national state’s tax base? What is the nature of the class and social group interests behind state pro- motion of the transnationalization and cross-border integration of capital, and what does this tell us about the global ruling class? To take another example, as I write a scramble has begun among global mining con- glomerates for the global market in lithium, the key ingredient in rechargeable batteries that are the cutting edge of new transportation, communications, and energy technol- ogies. A major portion of known lithium reserves is located in Chile. The Economist reports that a Chinese firm CITIC (China International Trust Investment Company) was bidding for part of the controlling shares currently held by the Chilean-based com- pany SQM (Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile). Meanwhile, a competing Chinese firm, Tianqi, has partnered with a US-based company Albermarle, to produce lithium in Australia. A year earlier, in 2015, Albermarle, the world’sbiggestlithiumproducer, bought Rockwood, owner of Chile’ second biggest lithium deposit. Next door to Chile, a big lithium-brine project in Argentina is run by a joint venture bringing together an Australian-based mining group, Orocobre, and Toyota. The lithium is sent on by these transnational networks of mining conglomerates to China for the production of communications equipment, car batteries, and so forth, by such global corporate behe- moths as Foxcomm, which assemblies Apple products, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, and LG (The Economist 2016). The nation state paradigm would sort out capital into particu- lar national boxes and then link these “national” capitals to their respective national states in order to explain the dynamics of international relations. The transnational class relations and political dynamics behind the entanglement that makes up the global lithium trade are obscured behind the effort to frame them within international relations. A third example is the still lingering debate on the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, which spawned a cottage industry on the “new imperialism.”2 Most observers saw the INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 173 invasion as a US attempt to control Iraqi oil in the face of rivals and shore up its declining hegemony. In criticizing my theory of a transnational state, Van der Pijl (2005, 276) states that “the USA and the UK have used (in Iraq for instance) their military ‘comparative advantage’ to trump the Russian and French willingness to strike oil deals with the Saddam Hussein regime when it appeared that UN sanctions were unraveling.” Yet the very first transnational oil company to be assisted by the US state department in the wake of Washington’s invasion and occupation was the “French” oil company Total, followed by Chinese oil companies who were able to enter the Iraqi oil market thanks to the US occupation. If the US intervention was about US rivalry with other states and “their” national capitals, then why would the US proconsul in Iraq, Paul Brenner, have declared just weeks into the occupation that Iraq was “open to business” to investors from any- where in the world under the protective canopy of the US occupation? In contrast to the dominant paradigm, these varied developments are better explained through the lens of capitalist globalization in recent decades. At the center of such an explanation is the rise of truly transnational capital and a transnational capitalist class, henceforth TCC, in its dialectical struggle with global labor. The TCC as the new global ruling class stands at the apex of a global power bloc, in the sense meant by Poulantzas of a broader bloc among allied groups and strata that come together in long-term strategies and alliances. It has been attempting to construct, with quite limited success, a global hegemonic bloc, in the sense meant by Gramsci, in which one group, the TCC, exercises leadership and imposes its project through the consent of those drawn into the bloc, while those from the majority who are not drawn into this hegemonic pro- ject, either through material rewards or ideological mechanisms, are contained or repressed. In 2004 I wrote: The new global ruling bloc consists of various economic and political forces led by the TCC whose politics and policies are conditioned by the new global structure of accumulation and production. It is the logic of global accumulation, rather than national accumulation that guides the political and economic behavior of this ruling bloc. At the center of the globalist bloc is the TCC, comprised of the owners and managers of the transnational corporations and other capitalists around the world who manage transnational capital. The bloc also includes the elites and bureaucratic staff of the supranational agencies such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. The historic bloc also brings together
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