Geopolitics & Empire
May 20, 2022
Professor William Robinson discusses the unprecedented systemic crisis of global capitalism which has brought about a global police state and global civil war. Years of turmoil are ahead of us as a crisis of chronic stagnation (over-accumulation) and state legitimacy has led to extreme repression in the face of acute inequality. The global economy and society has been militarized. Professor Robinson says the ruling groups are not omnipotent and are responding to the mass revolt from below. The pandemic allowed the transnational class to consolidate its grip on the global economy and form a Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Pentagon nexus. The pandemic served as a dry run for how digitalization is going to allow greater control over the working class. The transnational elite are united, including in Russia and China, in maximizing profit and keeping a clamp on rebellion from below. However, the global revolt is unprecedented in history and there is reason to be hopeful.
William Robinson: Rise of the Global Police State & Global Civil War
About William Robinson
William Robinson is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also affiliated with the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program, and with the Global and International Studies Program at UCSB. His scholarly research focuses on: macro and comparative sociology, globalization and transnationalism, political economy, political sociology, development and social change, immigration, Latin America and the Third World, and Latina/o studies.
As a scholar-activist he attempts to link his academic work to struggles in the United States, in the Americas, and around the world for social justice, popular empowerment, participatory democracy, and people-centered development.
At his website you will find links to his curriculum vitae, several hundred captioned photos from his research and travels around the world, and sample syllabi from courses he teaches at UCSB. Also available on his site are downloadable PDF files for his out-of-print 1992 book, A Faustian Bargain and the 2007 Spanish language edition of his book on global capitalism, Una Teoria sobre el Capitalismo Global, as well as links to a variety of academic and global justice websites.
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: https://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
