Xiaoping Wei

Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

ABSTRACT

Economic globalization has been accompanied by the cross-border development of class relations. Resting on large-scale cross-border operations by transnational corporations, capital is accelerating the formation of a transnational capitalist class. The capitalist world has formed new, contradictory relations based on a multitude of existing inherent contradictions, rendering the world situation still more complex. In the late twentieth century, a number of scholars began to focus on this phenomenon, discussing various of its aspects such as the gap between rich and poor brought about by the formation of a transnational capitalist class on a global scale; the transnational capitalist class and the question of global hegemony; and the relation between the transnational capitalist class and the world system. Their discussions have since attracted the attention of Chinese scholars. This paper presents a basic theoretical analysis of the above phenomenon using the methodology of historical materialism, while also summarizing and commenting on the opinions of representative scholars.

KEYWORDS

Globalization; transnational capital; global system

From: International Critical Thought 2020 10 (2)

Editor: Wang Yi