Understanding the Modern World with Marx's Political Economic Critical Thinking

Abstract

How relevant is Marxist economic theory to the problems of today’s world? Did those contradictions that Marx analyses in his Das Kapital disappear? The answer is clear: no, but they have now acquired a larger scale involving some new actors. The faster pace of economic globalisation at the end of the last century has been accompanied by the cross-border development of class relations. Resting on large-scale cross-border operations of transnational corporations, capital is now contributing to the formation of a transnational capita­list class. In today’s world there are new, contradictory relations based on a multitude of inherent contradictions, rendering the world situation more complex: the rich-poor gap brought about by the formation of the transnational capitalist class; the transnational capitalist class and the question of its global hegemony; and the relationship between the transnational capitalist class and the world system. All these factors are of economic nature but their impact goes beyond the economic sphere. The resulting hegemony of the transnational capita­list class pushes the world situation in the direction of economic politicisation and further political militarisation. It is clear that our world is still dominated by the capital, which was discussed by Marx in his critique of political economy. This approach still provides the basic framework for understanding and examining our era.