What follows Neo-liberalism? The Deepening Contradictions of US Domination and the Struggle for a New Global Order

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This chapter explores neo-liberalism, its forms, its periodization, and its future in the context of the changing dynamic of the capitalist world market. It focuses particularly on American neo-liberalism and foreign economy policy because the United States remains the dominant neo-liberal power. It argues that, notwithstanding the loss of American economic hegemony and the growing challenge to its domination across a number of fields, US economic and political power retains disproportionate significance because the new forms of financial domination promoted by the federal government, its associated international economic apparatuses, and transnational financial capital are still ‘ecologically dominant’ in shaping the world economy and global order more generally. The chapter has five parts. It first addresses issues of periodization that bear on the capitalist world market and neoliberalism, then defines neo-liberalism and distinguishes its four main forms, proceeds to discuss four forms of economic determination broadly considered, argues that the logic of American neo-liberalism is ecologically dominant in the world market, and concludes with some general remarks on the contradictions and limits of American domination.