William I. Robinson^a and Yousef K. Baker^b

^a Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA;

^b International Studies Program, California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

ABSTRACT

The escalation of worldwide inequalities reflects a crisis of global capitalism that is as much structural, one of over-accumulation, as it is political, one of hegemony. This article explores the current restructuring of global capitalism and global labor. Capitalist globalization has undermined earlier redistributive arrangements at the level of the nation-state, unleashing unprecedented global social polarization and also aggravating over-accumulation pressures. The transnational capitalist class has turned to several mechanisms to sustain accumulation in the face of stagnation: financial speculation, the pillaging of public finance, and militarized accumulation. Digitalization is driving new world capitalist restructuring that is resulting in increased precariatization and the expansion of surplus labor or surplus humanity. This precariatization includes cognitive workers who are atomized and isolated as the labor process has become individualized, which poses new challenges for working-class consciousness and solidarity among multilayered members of the global working class. The crisis poses a danger of twenty-first century fascism and a global police state but also new possibilities for emancipatory projects. An emancipatory project must bring together surplus humanity and its struggles in the margins and at points of social reproduction with workers inserted into the circuits of global capital under precarious work arrangements.

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 12 May 2019

Revised 3 June 2019

Accepted 11 June 2019

KEYWORDS

Precariat; global capitalism; global inequalities; surplus labor; capitalist crisis

From: International Critical Thought 2019 9 (3)

Editor: Wang Yi