It
is quite common at the moment to point to several crises afflicting the global
political economy at this point in time. Robinson acknowledges these different
dynamics, but he is also clear that these various crises are all interrelated.
‘It is not that distinct crises – economic, social, political, and ecological –
are “converging”. These are not separate crises; they are distinct moments that
are mutually constitutive and form a unity, the epochal crisis of capitalist
civilization’ (P.8).
Most
importantly, global capitalism is gripped by a crisis of overaccumulation in
which a lot of private finance, private profits are sloshing around in the
system, desperately, and ultimately often unsuccessfully, trying to identify
profitable investment opportunities. ‘Global net corporate profits more than
tripled in real terms from 1980 to 2013, from $2 trillion annually to $7.2
trillion. Average net profits experienced a 52 percent increase for the
three-year period from 2021 to 2023 over the average for the preceding three
years. While transnational corporations registered record profits during the
2010s, corporate investment declined as opportunities for profitable
reinvestment dried up’ (PP.32-3).
Of
course, a crisis of overaccumulation does not inevitably result in the collapse
of capitalism. There are always some avenues available to capital to stave off
crisis and be it only temporarily. One of the new accumulation points for
investment is Artificial Intelligence. ‘Annual investment in [computer,
information and related technologies] jumped from $17 billion in 1970 to $65
billion in 1980, then to $175 billion in 1990, $496 billion in 2016, topped
$800 billion in 2019, and the topped $1 trillion in 2023’ (P.41). Whether AI
will actually deliver the expected profit levels is highly questionable –
somethings which is doubted even by Sundar Pichai, the Head of Alphabet,
Google’s parent company – (BBC, 18/11/2025) – but for now it
offers one area of further investment for super profits.
Moreover,
Robinson identifies well how the crisis of overaccumulation spills over into
geopolitical tensions. However, rather than talking in terms of one state
trying to assert itself in the interest of its capital, e.g. the US state in
the interest of US capital and the Chinese state in the interest of Chinese
capital, Robinson skilfully links geo-political inter-state tensions to the
increasingly transnational nature of global capital. Thus, ‘states must also
compete with one another to attract transnationally mobile capital and to
secure the inflow of resources and raw materials that this capital needs to
undertake accumulation as they strive to stabilize their own respective
national social orders’ (P.109). Transnational capital, in turn, is
increasingly integrated while also competing with each other at the same time. For
example, the ‘China Investment Corporation held 2.1 percent of Blackrock
shares, the Kuwait Investment Authority held 5.24 percent, Temasek Holdings
Limited from China held 3.9 percent, and so on, so that Blackrock itself
appeared as a holding company and clearinghouse for networks of transnational
capital’ (P.43).
In
other words, it makes no sense to think in terms of Chinese capital versus US
capital or China versus the US. Rather than thinking in terms of
inter-imperialist rivalries between states, the focus has to be on
transnational class relations. Instead of understanding imperialism as a
relationship among countries, the focus has to be on ‘the webs of transnational
class exploitation mediated through states’ (P.136).
The
intensifying geopolitical tensions offer another way out of crisis for capital
in that an emphasis on war as accumulation strategy results in drastic
increases in state military expenditure around the world. ‘Permanent war
involves endless cycles of destruction and reconstruction, each phase in the
cycle fuelling new rounds of accumulation’ (P.39).
A
final contribution is Robinson’s examination of the fate of the so-called
‘surplus humanity’ or ‘surplus population’. Due to increasing automation of
work – alone in China Robinson identifies a decline of thirty million
manufacturing jobs from 1996 to 2014 (P.50) – there is an increasingly large
pool of people who are no longer needed for capitalist accumulation, not even
as members of the reserve army of labour.
This
surplus humanity is either locked away in ever larger prisons, or it is
massacred in genocides. It is in this respect that Robinson’s analysis of the
genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people is spot on. As
Israel has increasingly replaced cheap Palestinian labour with cheap labour
from Asia, Palestinians have become surplus to requirements. They became an
obstacle to further capitalist accumulation. ‘Gaza, the Congo, and other
hellscapes are real-time alarm bells that genocide may become a powerful tool
in the decades to come for resolving capital’s intractable contradiction
between surplus capital and surplus humanity’ (P.196).
And
yet, as insightful as Robinson’s analysis is, there are also two blind spots I
would like to highlight. Robinson is clear about the implications of capitalist
crisis for global ecology. What he overlooks, however, are the internal
relations of capitalist crisis with patriarchal and racist forms of oppression.
Robinson does address the issue of social reproduction in Chapter 2, but
Marxist feminist Social Reproduction Theory is only dealt with in passing
(PP.54-5 and PP.68-71). Hence, he does not acknowledge patriarchy as a
structuring condition of global order (Johnston and Meger
2025)
and therefore overlooks how patriarchal forms of oppression are internally
related to capitalist exploitation and how women disproportionally suffer, for
example, from austerity policies or how capitalist exploitation is inevitably
always gendered more generally.
Equally,
Robinson does not take into account racist forms of oppression, which are
characteristic of the capitalist crisis of overaccumulation in the way they are
internally related to capitalist exploitation. Who is predominantly part of
surplus humanity? Who are the victims of mass incarceration? It is racialised
sections of global humanity. Why does the West defend Ukraine against Russia’s
military aggression, while it supports Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian
people? There is a clear racist dynamic underlying Western foreign policies.
Ukrainians are white, while Palestinians are non-white. They are the other,
they are surplus humanity, which has to be removed. Because colonialism was
part and parcel of the outward expansion of capitalism, colonialism with its
racist forms of oppression is also a historical conditioning structure, which
is internally related to capitalist exploitation. And Gaza is the most visible
expression of this internal relation.
These
points of criticism should not, however, distract us from the major achievement
of this book. A must-read for everyone interested in charting the
manifold crises we find ourselves in and developing alternative ways out of
crises.
Andreas Bieler
1 December 2025
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