End of an Epoch: Understanding the Global Crisis with William I. Robinson

"The centuries-long history of capitalism is one marked by repeated crises. Every decade or so, we can expect to experience a recession, otherwise known as a "cyclical" crisis, but, every 40 or 50 years, something much more serious will occur. A "structural" crisis runs far deeper, and it can only be resolved with a radical reorganization, and expansion, of the capitalist system itself. It is within such a crisis that we have found ourselves since the 2008 financial crash."

"Robinson, in the text, characterizes the present crisis as one of over-accumulation-that is, the ruling class, or the transnational capitalist class (TCC), has accumulated more capital than it can reinvest-and of chronic stagnation and a declining rate of profit. As global inequality reaches ever more preposterous extremes, the wealthy hoard ever greater amounts of wealth as consumer-driven growth stagnates and mass markets shrink."

"During the last structural crisis of the 1970s, the ruling class launched globalization, which, in effect, was a restructuring of the system that freed capital of its nation state confines and allowed it to expand to all but a few pockets of the world. It is Robinson's contention that this capitalist epoch of globalization has since become exhausted-that global markets are saturated-and that, thus, the system must restructure in such a way as to create new profit-making opportunities for the transnational capitalist class."

Global capitalism has entered an unresolved structural crisis since the 2008 financial crash characterized by over-accumulation, chronic stagnation, and falling profit rates. Wealth concentration has increased as consumer-driven growth weakens and mass markets shrink, producing rising popular desperation and revolt risk. Past restructuring in the 1970s produced globalization that expanded capital beyond nation-state limits; that expansion has become exhausted as global markets saturate. The system therefore seeks new forms of restructuring to restore profitability, including shifting crisis costs onto workers through wage reductions and workplace degradation, while deploying measures to contain and control popular unrest.

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