Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity by William I. Robinson (review)

When I first heard in 2011 that Bill Robinson was going to be giving a talk on "Global Capitalism and Twenty-First Century Fascism" at a conference I was attending in Prague, Czech Republic, I thought he had perhaps begun to overreach the logic of the global capitalism perspective he and others (Carroll 2010; Robinson and Harris 2000; Sklair 2001) worked to establish as a viable research program. Certainly, the Great Recession had taken its toll on the world economy and popular movements from Tunisia to New York had begun to assert visible, renewed campaigns against hegemonic forces, but the threat of an equally renewed fascist reaction seemed far-fetched. However, on hearing his analysis of the current structural crisis faced by global capitalism and seeing mounting evidence for the possibility of a fascist solution to that crisis, I began to reconsider. At the time of writing this review, Donald Trump's racist and sensationally violent rhetoric has landed him the Republican presidential nomination, UKIP's anti-immigrant populism succeeded in securing a yes vote for British secession from the EU, and states from Europe to the United States have increasingly turned to mass incarceration in the handling of refugees, migrants, the poor, and other "surplus populations" displaced by the wake of political economic restructuring and organized violence dominant groups have set in motion worldwide (Robinson 2014).

Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity presents a polemical, no-holds-barred warning about the crisis potentials the global system faces and the range of possible elite responses to those potentials and signals "opportunities for transformative emancipatory projects" from below (Robinson 2014, 232) that move beyond the propensity to "'speak truth to power'" and instead "confront power with power" (Robinson 2014, 234). One the one hand, Robinson (2014) offers the kind of macrotheoretical assessment of global political economy characteristic of his previous work. He argues that contemporary global capitalism arises from the structural crises of the 1970s via a restructuring of the global division of labor enabled by revolutions in transportation, information technology, and state policies conducive to the needs of transnational corporations (TNCs). As TNCs proliferate, relationships among their agents lead to both the formation of Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC) relations and an emergent Transnational State (TNS) apparatus designed to mediate among nation-states and TNCs operating within a global system of accumulation. Consequently, our current political economic environment is shaped by powerful forces that operate on a truly global level and continue to transform social relations within and between nation-states in ways that benefit the dominant fractions of the TCC and their agents. As a result, Robinson asserts that the focus of social scientists and informed publics must be attenuated to transnational social formations if we are to produce empirical analyses of social life, as well as effective democratic responses to capitalist globalization.

On the other hand, Robinson speaks with a sense of urgency not necessarily heard in previous work. While crises of reproduction and legitimacy (among other contradictions), as well as possible systemic and countersystemic responses, are identified by Robinson elsewhere (Robinson 2004, 2012), he minces no words in his opening lines to the Introduction:

Our world is burning. We face a global crisis that is unprecedented in terms of its magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecological degradation and social deterioration, and the scale of the means of violence.

(Robinson 2014)

Later, he asserts that we are on the verge of "a crisis that is approaching systemic proportions, threatens the ability of billions of people to survive, and raises the specter of a collapse of world civilization" (Robinson 2014, 5). In other words, we face neither a mere cyclical adjustment, nor minor restructuring of the system, but a crisis that undermines the viability of the social order and our species at multiple levels.

A significant portion of the book is devoted to responses to critics of the global capitalism perspective. Robinson takes aim at those who argue that...