Global Capitalism

Before and after World War II, a serendipitous confluence of events created a healthy balance between the market and the polity - between the engine of capitalism and the egalitarian ideals of democracy. A global financial system was devised explicitly to allow nations to manage capitalism. Yet this golden era turned out to be lightning in a bottle. From the 1970s on, a power shift occurred, in which financial regulations were rolled back, taxes were cut, inequality worsened, and disheartened voters turned to far-right faux populism. Can democracy find a way to survive?

Our global economic system is broken. But we can replace the current picture of global upheaval, unsustainability, and uncertainty with one of an economy that works for all people, and the planet. First, we must eliminate rising income inequality within societies where productivity and wage growth has slowed. Second, we must reduce the dampening effect of monopoly market power wielded by large corporations on innovation and productivity gains. And finally, the short-sighted exploitation of natural resources that is corroding the environment must end.

Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Harsha Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, and racist nationalist rule.

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide.

To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work - and what makes it fail - is crucial to understanding its long-term health and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it.

Marx and Engels were right when they observed in the Communist Manifesto that free markets had in a short time created greater prosperity and more technological innovation than all previous generations combined. A century and a half later, all the evidence shows that capitalism has lifted millions and millions from hunger and poverty. Today's story about global capitalism, shared by right-wing and left-wing populists, but also by large sections of the political and economic establishment, does not deny that prosperity has been created, but it says it ended up in far too few hands.

For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.

What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism. This book critically examines these new business forms.

In 2015, the anonymous leak of the Panama Papers brought to light millions of financial and legal documents exposing how the superrich hide their money using complex webs of offshore vehicles. Spiderweb Capitalism takes you inside this shadow economy, uncovering the mechanics behind the invisible, mundane networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers who facilitate the illicit movement of wealth across borders and around the globe. Hoang reveals the strategies and examines the moral dilemmas of making money in legal, financial, and political gray zones.

Economic growth isn't working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it.

Counter-Cola charts the history of one of the world's most influential and widely known corporations, the Coca-Cola Company. It tells the story of how, over the past 130 years, the corporation has tried to make its products and brands physically and culturally a central part of global daily life in over 200 countries. Through this story of Coca-Cola, Amanda Ciafone reveals the pursuit of corporate power within the key economic transformations-liberal, developmentalist, neoliberal - of the 20th and 21st centuries. A story of global capitalism, it is not without contest.

The coronavirus pandemic, the deepening economic crash, dangerously divisive political responses, and exploding social tensions have thrown an already declining American capitalist system into a tailspin. The consequences of these mounting and intertwined crises will shape our future. In this unique collection of over 50 essays, The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself, Richard D. Wolff argues clearly that "returning to normal" no longer responds adequately to the accumulated problems of US capitalism.

A century ago, migrants often crossed an ocean and never saw their homelands again. Today, they call - or Skype - home the moment their flight has landed, and that's just the beginning. Thanks to cheap travel and easy communication, immigrants everywhere stay in intimate contact with their native countries, creating powerful cross-border networks. In Borderless Economics, Robert Guest, The Economist's business editor, travels through dozens of countries and 44 American states, observing how these networks create wealth, spread ideas and foster innovation.

Un alegato a favor de la globalización: no es excesiva, sino insuficiente. El libre mercado ha sacado a millones de personas del hambre y la pobreza, una realidad evidente incluso para Marx y Engels. Pese a ello, a principios de este milenio, emergió y proliferó un potente movimiento anticapitalista internacional. Johan Norberg desarrolló entonces una esclarecedora defensa de la teoría y la práctica del liberalismo económico. Su tesis contribuyó a crear conciencia sobre el hecho de que los países sólo podrían salir del subdesarrollo con más comercio, inversión e iniciativa empresarial.