Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity

This exciting new study provides an original and provocative exposé of the crisis of global capitalism in its multiple dimensions - economic, political, social, ecological, military, and cultural. Building on his earlier works on globalization, William I. Robinson discusses the nature of the new global capitalism, the rise of a globalized production and financial system, a transnational capitalist class, and a transnational state and warns of the rise of a global police state to contain the explosive contradictions of a global capitalist system that is crisis-ridden and out of control. Robinson concludes with an exploration of how diverse social and political forces are responding to the crisis and alternative scenarios for the future.

1. Global capital and global labor; 2. Notes on transnational state apparatuses; 3. Beyond the theory of imperialism; 4. The 'Great Recession': financial speculation and militarized accumulation; 5. Policing global capitalism; 6. Interregnum: a new crisis of hegemony.

William I. Robinson is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is also affiliated with the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program and with the Global and International Studies Program. He has previously published seven books, among them, the award-winning Promoting Polyarchy (Cambridge, 1996), A Theory of Global Capitalism (2004), and the award-winning Latin America and Global Capitalism (2008). He has published some fifty articles in academic journals such as Sociological Forum, Theory and Society, International Studies Review, International Sociology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, International Relations, Global Society, Globalizations, Race and Class, New Political Economy, Third World Quarterly, and Radical Philosophy and hundreds of essays, books chapters, and articles in the popular press. He is a member of the editorial board of fifteen academic journals. In 2013 Robinson was elected chair of the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He is a member of the ASA, the Latin American Studies Association, the Global Studies Association, and the International Studies Association. He was a founding writer for and editor of Pensamiento Propio, a monthly journal of the Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales.