Global Capitalism: The New Leviathan

By Robert J.S. Ross and Kent C. Trachte

Book Overview

How have global markets and global manufacturing changed the balance of social, economic and political power? With this volume Ross and Trachte challenge existing political-economic theory. In concise terms they show how traditional theories of monopoly capitalism and world systems are not well-suited to analyze the emergence of global capitalism. This book, in a series of case studies of U.S. metropolitan areas, examines the dramatic transformation of the world economy in the last two decades. The book's last section examines political strategy and the political theory implied by the heightened power of capital.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791403408
• ISBN13: 9780791403402
• Release Date: July 1990
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Timely analysis of the global economic system.

For all Marxists, and most non-Marxists, this book is simply unique. Professors Ross and Trachte have designed a framework accounting for the change in the class balance of power resulting from the globalization of capital. They then apply this framework to three case studies, thereby showing how the owners of capital have become stronger vis a vis the state and labour, with the result being an intensification of class struggle on a global scale, resulting in the rollback of many of the gains made by the working class earlier on in this century, (such as the welfare state, minimum wage laws, etc..) They also explain why earlier theories, (monopoly capitalism and world systems,) are inadequate insofar as explaining the global economy of the 1990's is concerned. Their own theory of global capitalism, on the other hand, does this brilliantly; for anyone who wishes to understand the fundamentals of the international economy, this book is invaluable.