Friday, July 29, 2016

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh — Evolution of Capitalism, Escalation of Imperialism

The purpose of this essay is to show that as capitalism has evolved from the early stages of small-scale manufacturing to the current stage of the dominance of finance capital, its arena of expropriation has, accordingly, expanded from the early colonial/imperial conquests abroad to today’s universal dispossession worldwide, both at home and abroad. Specifically, it aims to expose the class nature of imperialism independent of nationality and/or geography, and to indicate how this profit-driven characteristic of capitalism is at the root of today’s global austerity economics; an ominous development that dispossesses not only defenseless peoples abroad, but also the overwhelming majority of the people at home—a socio-economic plague that can be called the “new imperialism,” or “imperialism by dispossession” [1].
The new imperialism differs from the old, classical imperialism in at least four major ways.…
Counterpunch Ismael Hossein-Zadeh | Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University

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