Capitalism (Global)

Abstract

While the idea of international capitalism has been part of political economy and related disciplines for more than a century, the concept of global capitalism is of more recent origin. Despite the fact that many scholars have used the terms interchangeably, one consequence of the popularity of the concept of globalization in the 1990s was the increasing force of the argument for a firm distinction between the terms. International capitalism has generally been conceptualized in state‐centrist terms, focused mainly on how national capitalists based in competing national economies and working through national companies operated across borders. The distinctive concept of global capitalism takes its departure from the idea of a global economy dominated by globalizing corporations and those who own and control them, and those in influential positions who serve their interests. Indeed, in many cases, it is those who control the states that the concept of international capitalism takes to be the primary unit of analysis who facilitate corporate interests. This entry traces the development of the concept of global capitalism since the 1960s from the transitional idea of capitalist world economy through several attempts to establish a genuinely global conception of capitalism not grounded in national economies and societies. Resistance to global capitalism is analyzed in terms of the class polarization and ecological crises inherent in the system.