The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis

2. “No Revolution Required”

It is strange to look for the origins of the 21st century financial crisis in 19th century imperialism. And yet, imperialism, as the politics of unlimited expansion of state power for private benefit, has much in common with our globalized world in which the public good is derived from private interests. Based in Thomas Hobbes political thinking, modern government is rooted in and grows from the acquisition of power. Hobbes sees that an endless acquisition of wealth corresponds to an endless acquisition of power. Arendt adds that the upshot of that correspondence is “the blind conformism of bourgeois society,” which deprives men of their ability to act into the future. Jerome Kohn argues that the logical end of capitalism is the conformism of a world comprised exclusively of private interests.