In the years since the Cold War and the col­lapse of the USSR, the U.S. Left has sensed that some­thing was mor­ph­ing with­in glob­al cap­i­tal­ism. This ​“some­thing” was described more by its symp­toms than by its essence, e.g., dein­dus­tri­al­iza­tion. In much of the rest of the world there was a grow­ing aware­ness, how­ev­er, that a par­tic­u­lar form of cap­i­tal­ism was becom­ing dom­i­nant on a world scale, a form that came to be known as neolib­er­al cap­i­tal­ism or neolib­er­al globalization.

"Harris offers his book as both an analysis of the growth of neoliberal globalization and a cautionary note on the dangerous road that it has placed before humanity."

Jer­ry Har­ris offers his book, Glob­al Cap­i­tal­ism and the Cri­sis of Democ­ra­cy, as an instru­ment to bet­ter under­stand this trans­for­ma­tion of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism and its impli­ca­tions. Most of the book is devot­ed to help­ing the read­er bet­ter grasp what Har­ris argues is the his­tor­i­cal tran­si­tion — under­way — from cap­i­tal­ism cen­tered around the nation-state to glob­al cap­i­tal­ism. This work is suc­cess­ful, enlight­en­ing and engross­ing. In the final two chap­ters, how­ev­er, Har­ris shifts gears, lay­ing the basis for a prob­lem that I’ll dis­cuss below.

The thrust of Harris’s argu­ment is that since World War II, but espe­cial­ly since the late 1960s/​1970s, cap­i­tal­ism, which as a sys­tem is always in need of expan­sion, has been evolv­ing in such a man­ner that it tran­scends nation­al bor­ders. Con­trary to the­o­rists, such as the late Ellen Meiksins Wood, this is not a return to the era of high-lev­el trade that marked the pre-1914 cap­i­tal­ist world (what some the­o­rists have described as an ear­li­er glob­al­iza­tion). Rather, it is the emer­gence of an unprece­dent­ed inter­pen­e­tra­tion of cap­i­tal on a glob­al stage.

And with this inter­pen­e­tra­tion we start to see, over the last sev­er­al decades, the rise of what has come to be termed as a ​“transna­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist class.” This class, as the name implies, is not root­ed in one coun­try but has assumed an iden­ti­ty that goes beyond spe­cif­ic nation-states. As Har­ris make clear, this does not mean that the nation-state no longer holds any impor­tance — which is the thrust of the argu­ment offered by Michael Hardt and Anto­nio Negri in their famous work, Empire—but that the role has shift­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly, to a great extent ser­vic­ing and serv­ing the needs of the transna­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist class.

This analy­sis clash­es with more tra­di­tion­al argu­ments on the Left but it speaks to mat­ters that the tra­di­tion­al analy­ses have been unable to explain ful­ly. A case in point was the U.S.-led inva­sion of Iraq. At the time of the 2003 inva­sion, much of the Left and the pro­gres­sive anti-war move­ment argued that this was an effort, in effect, to recol­o­nize Iraq under U.S. dom­i­na­tion and seize its oil. In the after­math of the inva­sion, how­ev­er, some­thing odd hap­pened. Occu­pa­tion forces opened Iraq up for busi­ness to glob­al cap­i­tal­ism rather than reserve it for the Unit­ed States alone.

The transna­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist class the­sis has been car­i­ca­tur­ized by some crit­ics as sug­gest­ing that con­tra­dic­tions between nation-states have dis­ap­peared into a glob­al class-against-class sce­nario. Har­ris takes on this idea direct­ly and with a lev­el of detail that, on those grounds alone, makes his work a must-read book.

Har­ris lays out his case in describ­ing the devel­op­ment of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism and the transna­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist class in the first three chap­ters. In chap­ters 4 and 5, he offers a mar­velous exam­i­na­tion of two con­crete sit­u­a­tions: Ukraine and Chi­na. With regard to Ukraine, Har­ris digs behind the head­lines and looks at the class forces on both sides, the rela­tion­ship that they have with cap­i­tal­ist class forces in oth­er parts of the world, his­toric nation-state ten­sions and the wild card of right-wing pop­ulism and neo-fas­cism that is infect­ing both Rus­sia and Ukraine. He exam­ines the inter­re­la­tion­ship of these forces in a sit­u­a­tion — and world — that is under­go­ing a tran­si­tion. And there­in lies the key to under­stand­ing the transna­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist class the­sis: It speaks to a phe­nom­e­non that is emerg­ing and tran­si­tion­ing, rather than a phe­nom­e­non that is ful­ly and total­ly developed.

Har­ris’ exam­i­na­tion of con­tem­po­rary Chi­na is just as illu­mi­nat­ing and sat­is­fy­ing. Again, he exam­ines the con­nec­tions that the Chi­nese cap­i­tal­ists have devel­oped with oth­ers in the transna­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist class, includ­ing the role of the Chi­nese State — iron­i­cal­ly led by a par­ty that calls itself ​“Com­mu­nist” — in the inte­gra­tion of the Chi­nese econ­o­my into the larg­er glob­al cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my. Har­ris, along with oth­er the­o­reti­cians of this school, argues that many — though not all — of the con­tra­dic­tions we are wit­ness­ing between Chi­na and the Unit­ed States are a reflec­tion of the efforts by Chi­nese cap­i­tal­ists, and their allies, to alter the terms under which glob­al cap­i­tal­ism oper­ates. In oth­er words, the con­flict is not a com­pe­ti­tion between tra­di­tion­al empires but, ana­log­i­cal­ly, dis­putes with­in a gang.

Har­ris offers his book as both an analy­sis of the growth of neolib­er­al glob­al­iza­tion and a cau­tion­ary note on the dan­ger­ous road that it has placed before human­i­ty. Per­haps it is for that rea­son that his final two chap­ters exam­ine alter­na­tives to neolib­er­al glob­al­iza­tion, includ­ing both failed alter­na­tives as well as sources of hope. The prob­lem is that this comes across as two dif­fer­ent books. While it was clear that Har­ris was try­ing to get the read­ers to con­sid­er how to strug­gle against glob­al cap­i­tal­ism and its ten­den­cy towards author­i­tar­i­an­ism and bar­barism, there was a miss­ing transition.

Har­ris might also have been more suc­cess­ful had he inte­grat­ed into his dis­cus­sion a deep­er analy­sis of the rise of right-wing pop­ulism (includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to neo-fas­cism) in the con­text of neolib­er­al glob­al­iza­tion. After all, right-wing pop­ulism posits itself as THE alter­na­tive strat­e­gy of neolib­er­al glob­al­iza­tion. While Har­ris acknowl­edges right-wing pop­ulism at var­i­ous points in the book, he tends to merge it a bit too quick­ly with oth­er seg­ments of the Right, includ­ing into what the the­o­reti­cian Nicos Poulantzas ref­er­enced as ​“author­i­tar­i­an sta­tism” and what I have described as ​“neolib­er­al author­i­tar­i­an­ism.” Draw­ing from Poulantzas, I would dis­tin­guish the move­ment towards author­i­tar­i­an­ism by the so-called demo­c­ra­t­ic cap­i­tal­ist state as not iden­ti­cal with the rise of right-wing pop­ulism, though the two ten­den­cies can and do overlap.

Despite the abrupt tran­si­tion, Harris’s dis­cus­sion of alter­na­tives is use­ful, though a bit of a dis­trac­tion. In fact, I would argue that he should fur­ther devel­op his think­ing on alter­na­tives in a sep­a­rate vol­ume. And I would fur­ther argue that a deep­er exam­i­na­tion of right-wing pop­ulism in the con­text of neolib­er­al glob­al­iza­tion deserves to be addressed by adher­ents to the so-called glob­al cap­i­tal­ism school in order to flesh out their analysis.

Glob­al Cap­i­tal­ism and the Cri­sis of Democ­ra­cy is an excep­tion­al­ly thor­ough and thought-pro­vok­ing work. Very rarely, these days, do I use a high­lighter when read­ing a book in order to remind myself of facts, points of inter­est or points of dif­fer­ence. In this case, the high­lighter was with me till the end, with my know­ing that I will return to this book as a resource for bet­ter under­stand­ing, as well as explain­ing, the devel­op­ment of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism and its impli­ca­tions for the bil­lions of peo­ple on this plan­et rav­aged by it.