Reviewed by Steve
Ellner

William I. Robinson, Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2022), 185 pp., $17.95

In previous works, William Robinson, among other mostly Marxist analysts, has written on the highly adverse and troublesome effects of the so-called fourth industrial revolution consisting of a “new wave of digitalization” (86) and computer technology, artificial intelligence, platform-based industry, biotechnology, laborless production and other technological inroads, which have thoroughly transformed capitalism. In his new book, Robinson demonstrates with abundant facts and examples how the Covid pandemic accelerated these developments, which constitute the core of twenty-first century global capit- alism. One result was that inequality “reached unprecedented levels worldwide” (84). Indeed, what Naomi Klein called the “shock doc- trine” played out during the pandemic beginning in 2020, when Rahm Emanuel commented “never let a crisis go to waste” (37), thanks to trillions in bailout money allocated to big capital. Robinson debunks the “fairy-tale” arguments of the mainstream champions of the fourth industrial revolution who ignore its negative, if not nefarious, impact and see it as “ushering [in] a new age of prosperity, democracy and abundance for all” (85).

Robinson refers to Marx’s thesis linking technological development and systemic change – what some misleadingly call “technological determinism.” Marx famously wrote that the windmill was to feudalism what the steam engine was to industrial capitalism. While Marx noted the horrendous conditions of factories in 19th-century England, he was quick to point out that capitalism in its early stage represented a progressive and favorable historical change. In contrast, the fourth industrial revolution, for all its attractive features (Google Maps, movie streaming, etc.), is a horror show, as described by Robinson. High up on this list is the police state, which Robinson discussed in his previous book The Global Police State,1 and which the COVID pandemic strengthened. In a dynamic that paralleled events after September 11, 2001, the pandemic served to justify the abridgement of democratic rights, including “draconian ‘antiterrorist’ security legislation” in 14 countries “that often made legal the repression of social movements and political dissent” (41). As in the case of the Patriot Act, these measures are unlikely to be temporary and may serve as a “smokescreen to consolidate a global police state” (50). The pandemic encouraged the development of increasingly sophisticated methods of surveillance (as analyzed in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff)2 through the use of digital technology to “surveil the movement of potentially infected individuals” (46). The new wave of digitalization accelerated by the pandemic has also led to the use of “autonomous weaponry, such as unmanned attack and transportation vehicles, robot soldiers, [and] a new generation of superdrones” (79), as well as “predictive policing,” a practice which discriminates against vulnerable sectors. These methods of enhanced state control are just a few examples of the three-fold convergence that the book documents: the “advanced digitalization” (54) of the fourth industrial revolution, the COVID pandemic, and despotism and the departure from traditional norms and practices.

Robinson has long argued that transnational capital (TNC) has replaced national capital as the dominant force in the age of globalization. His Marxist critics claim that his thesis is at odds with the existence of a strong nation-state such as that represented by Washington and even with the concept of imperialism according to Lenin, which is territorially based. According to them, the existence of an imperialist state that defends national capital, and is as powerful as Washington is, precludes the possibility that the TNC has become hegemonic. Robinson responded by pointing to the emergence of a Transnational State (TNS), as exemplified by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).3 More importantly, Robinson argued that the nation-states, and that of the United States in particular, represented the interests of the TNC more than those of national capital. Under Trump, however, the TPP was scrapped, at the same time that the polarization of Cold War II sharpened conflict over national interests.

In this book, Robinson answers his critics with a nuanced, and in my opinion more convincing, explanation of the coexistence of a hegemonic TNC and a hegemonic nation-state. Along the lines of the theory of the state formulated by Nicos Poulantzas,4 Robinson discards the notion that the state is a mere instrument of the hegemonic class fraction, in this case the TNC, and argues that the legitimizing function of the state enters into contradiction with the capital accumulation imperative of the TNC. Robinson adds that “geopolitical frictions” such as those involving Russia and China, “are used to justify rising military budgets” (51) and in the process foster “militarized accumulation” (25). Indeed, the legitimizing function can plainly be seen in the case of the war mongering of Democratic Party centrists and Republicans that, at least until now, has resonated among many voters and thus serves to bolster legitimacy. In short, the legitimizing function has a dynamic of its own which at times “overdetermine[s] economics” (52), specifically the maximization of profits of big capital. Robinson adds that “we can expect the contradictions” between the two functions “to intensify in the post-pandemic world” (53).

Robinson clearly considers the fourth industrial revolution a phase in capitalism and calls the changes that the Covid pandemic accelerated “capitalist restructuring” (90). Indeed, his characterization of the fourth industrial revolution as an example of the internal transform- ation of the capitalist system is derived from Marx and Engels. Both famously observed in The Communist Manifesto that “the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of pro- duction, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”

Robinson stops short of engaging those theoreticians, across the political spectrum, who argue that the salient features of the fourth industrial revolution resemble feudalism rather than representing a new stage of capitalism. These “neo-feudalism” (or “techno-feudalism”) writers, who include the Greek Marxist economist Yanis Varoufakis, argue that what Robinson calls “capitalist restructuring” represents a break with the capitalist system. Varoufakis calls the new system a “post-capitalist dystopia” that is “worse than capitalism.”5 The neo-feudalism writers maintain that digital platforms, accumulation by dispossession, the predominance of fictious capital, prison labor in privatized prisons, central banks’ massive printing of money that replaces profits as the driver of the global economy and other developments largely discussed by Robinson do not involve production that generates surplus value, which is a basic component of capitalism. Furthermore, these modes do not involve “free” labor markets, which are also specific to the capitalist system. Yet a deviation from pure capitalism does not signify a complete break with the system. As David Laibman observed in Passion and Patience: Society, History, and Revolutionary Vision, regardless of how an economic system is defined (be it slavery, feudalism, capitalism or socialism), seldom in history has it existed in its pure form in a given country or region.6

In the chapter “Whither the Global Revolt?” Robinson analyzes resistance to neoliberalism in the twenty-first century through a globalization lens. He looks at the popular insurgencies that broke out in two waves following the 2008 crash, which he calls a “veritable tsunami of mass rebellion not seen since at least 1968” (102). One began with the “Arab Spring” and included the Occupy Wall Street movement and the protests in Spain and Greece led by Podemos and Syriza, and a second between 2017 and 2019, which included protests throughout Latin America as well as the “yellow vest” movement in France. Robinson contends that the protests were driven by what the Financial Times called a “‘global mood’” (103) and “had a truly global character” (102). Actually, the dynamic in which events in one country have a ripple or “demonstration” effect throughout the region or the world has been a constant throughout history. For Robinson to demonstrate the unique qualities of the post-2008 “global revolt” he would have to show that there were solid organizational links among protest movements throughout the world. Such links existed, but as Robinson recognizes, as in the case of the World Social Forum, they were tenuous and hardly a driver of the “global revolt.”

     Robinson goes on to point to the limited effectiveness of the Black Lives Movement and other anti-racist protests in 2020 in that they were “devoid of any critique of capitalist exploitation that linked race to class” (130), as is also generally the case with identity politics. These movements have only been successful in “eradicating the symbols of racism and oppression” and for this reason “they were quickly embraced by many political and corporate elites” (131). To be effective, it is essential that the social movements adhere to a class analysis and that they “be part of a more expansive transnational counterhegemonic project, including transnational trade unionism … and transnational political organiz- ations that put forth a transnational transformative project” (120). While Robinson’s critique holds true, his analysis resembles the sharp criticisms now common among leftists who fail to recognize the potential of identity politics – even short of class analysis – to expose contradictions in the capitalist system and the double standards of those who support it. Since the publication of his first works about globalization over two decades ago, Robinson has offered considerable evidence to substantiate his theories about contemporary capitalism. This book is no exception. The information it marshals about the innovations of the fourth indus- trial revolution demonstrates their far-reaching implications, which Robinson persuasively argues require a rethinking of theoretical analysis and strategy. Most importantly, the book shatters the illusion that the new wave of technological innovations in a capitalist context represents something other than a threat to civilization as we know it.

Steve Ellner
Latin American Perspectives,
California

Sellner74@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2024.2435792

  1. William I. Robinson, The Global Police State (London: Pluto Press, 2020).

  2. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (London: Profile Books, 2019).

  3. William I. Robinson, “Debate on the New Global Capitalism: Transnational Capital- ist Class, Transnational State Apparatuses, and Global Crisis.” International Critical Thought. Vol. 7, no. 2, 2017, p. 172.

  4. Nicos Poulantzas, “The Problem of the Capitalist State.” New Left Review, First Series, Vol. 58, 1969.

  5. Yanis Varoufakis, “Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over.” https://www.project- syndicate.org/commentary/techno-feudalism-replacing-market-capitalism-by- yanis-varoufakis-2021-06

  6. David Laibman, Passion and Patience: Society, History, and Revolutionary Vision (New York: International Publishers, 2015), pp. 67, 117–120.