1

Class Dynamics of the Global Capitalist System

Berch Berberoglu

University of Nevada, Reno

Global capitalism is an extension of capitalism from the national to the transnational and global

level. Thus, in the era of neoliberal globalization, the class dynamics of the world capitalist

system operate at the global level. The central class contradiction of capitalism, as it developed

from its origins in Europe and subsequently spread throughout the world, is the labor-capital

relation based on the exploitation of wage labor. And it is this inherent contradiction of the

global capitalist system that translates into class struggle and social transformation at global

proportions.

Global Capital and Its Class Dynamics

The global expansion of capital across the world, while beneficial to a handful of global

monopolies and the capitalist class in general, has brought about a shift in the domestic economy

of the advanced capitalist states—from industrial production to finance and the service sectors—

resulting in an overall economic decline within the advanced capitalist centers. The ensuing

changes in the material condition of workers in the advanced capitalist countries has brought to

the fore a new set of contradictions that are increasingly becoming problematic for the advanced

capitalist/imperialist state. The global capitalist crisis and the declining standard of living of the

working class in the United States and other advanced capitalist countries is thus a direct
 2

reflection of the globalization of capital whose reach extends to vast territories across the world.1

The development of capitalism over the past hundred years formed and transformed

capitalist society on a global scale. This transformation came about through the restructuring of

the international division of labor prompted by the export of capital and transfer of production to

cheap labor areas abroad. This, in turn, led to the intensification of the exploitation of labor

through expanded production and reproduction of surplus value and profits by further

accumulation of capital and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production on a world

scale. A major consequence of this process is the increased polarization of wealth and income

between labor and capital at the national and global levels, and growth in numbers of the poor

and marginalized segments of the population throughout the world. These and other related

contradictions of global capitalism define the parameters of modern, capitalist globalization and

provide us the framework for discussion on the nature and dynamics of neoliberal globalization

today.

The widening gap between the accumulated wealth of the capitalist class and the

declining incomes of workers has sharpened the class struggle in a new political direction, which

has brought the advanced capitalist state to the center stage of the conflict between labor and

capital and revealed its ties to the monopolies. This has undermined the legitimacy of the

capitalist state, such that the struggles of the working class and the masses in general are

becoming directed not merely against capital, but against the state itself. 2 This transformation of

the workers’ struggle from the economic to the political sphere is bound to set the stage for

protracted struggles in the period ahead—struggles that would facilitate the development of a

much more politicized international labor movement. The globalization of capital is thus bound

to accelerate the politicization of the working class and lead to the building of a solid foundation
 3

for international solidarity of workers on a world scale that is directed against global capitalism

and the advanced capitalist state on a world scale.3

The relationship between the owners of the transnational corporations—the global

capitalist class—and the imperial state, and the role and functions of this state, including the use

of military force to advance the interests of this capitalist class, thus reveals the class nature of

the imperial state and the class logic of globalization in the world today. 4 But this logic is more

pervasive and is based on a more fundamental class relation between labor and capital that now

operates on a global level – that is, a relation based on exploitation. Thus, in the age of neoliberal

capitalist globalization, social classes and class struggles are a product of the logic of the global

capitalist system based on the exploitation of labor worldwide.5

Capitalist expansion on a world scale at this stage of the globalization of capital and

capitalist production has brought with it the globalization of the production process and the

exploitation of wage-labor on a world scale. With the intensified exploitation of the working

class at super-low wages in repressive neocolonial societies throughout the world, the

transnational corporations of the leading capitalist countries have come to amass great fortunes

that they have used to build up a global empire through the powers of the imperial state, which

has not hesitated to use its military force to protect and advance the interests of capital in every

corner of the globe.

The globalization of capital and imperialist domination of the world political economy

have thus led to the intensification of the global contradictions of capital, which continues to

have a great impact on class relations throughout the world. The central contradiction of this

global expansionary process and the spread of capitalist relations of production throughout the

world is the exploitation of wage-labor on a worldwide basis. And this, in turn, has led to the
 4

emergence of class conflict and class struggles in many countries around the world.6

Looking at globalization in class terms, we see that a complex web of class relations has

developed at the global level that is both complementary and contradictory. Thus while the

capitalist classes of the dominant imperialist states cooperate in their collective exploitation of

labor and plunder of resources at the global level (as manifested in control of cheap labor, new

markets, and vital sources of raw materials, such as oil, and the intervention of the capitalist state

to protect these when their continued supply to the imperial center are threatened) the underlying

contradictions of global competition and conflict among these states lead at the same time to

interimperialist rivalries and confrontation throughout the world. Just as each imperialist power

exploits its own as well as its rivals’ working classes for global supremacy, so too one observes

the potential unity of the working classes of these rival imperialist states as they come together in

forging a protracted struggle against the entire global capitalist system. It is here that the

capitalist/imperialist state comes to play a critical role in facilitating the exploitation of global

labor by transnational capital, but in doing so also risks its demise through the unfolding

contradictions of this very same process that it is increasingly unable to control and regulate.

The problems that the imperial state has come to tackle at both the global and national

levels are such that it is no longer able to manage its affairs with any degree of certainty. At the

global level, the imperial state has been unable to deal with the consequences of ever-growing

superexploitation of labor in Third World sweatshops that has led to immense poverty and

inequality worldwide; nor has it been able to take measures to reverse the depletion of resources,

environmental pollution and other health hazards, a growing national debt tying many countries

to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other global financial institutions, and

a growing militarization of society through the institution of brutal military and civilian
 5

dictatorships that violate basic human rights. The domination and control of Third World

countries for transnational profits through the instrumentality of the imperial state has at the

same time created various forms of dependence on the center that has become a defining

characteristic of globalization and imperialism.7

Domestically, the globalization of capital and imperialist expansion has had immense

dislocations in the national economies of imperialist states. Expansion of manufacturing industry

abroad has meant a decline in local industry, as plant closings in the United States and other

advanced capitalist countries has worsened the unemployment situation. The massive expansion

of capital abroad has resulted in hundreds of factory shutdowns with millions of workers losing

their jobs, hence the surge in unemployment in the United States and other imperialist states. 8

This has led to a decline in wages of workers in the advanced capitalist centers, as low wages

abroad have played a competitive role in keeping wages down in the imperialist heartlands. The

drop in incomes among a growing section of the working class has thus lowered the standard of

living in general and led to a further polarization between labor and capital.9

Globalization of Capital, Class Conflict, and Class Struggle

on a World Scale

The dialectics of global capitalist expansion, which has caused so much exploitation, oppression,

and misery for the peoples of the world, both in the Third World and in the imperialist countries

themselves, has in turn created the conditions for its own destruction. Economically, it has

afflicted the system with recessions, depressions, and an associated realization crisis; politically,

it has set into motion an imperial interventionist state that through its presence in every corner of
 6

the world has incurred an enormous military expenditure to maintain an empire, while gaining

the resentment of millions of people across the globe who are engaged in active struggle against

it. While one consequence of imperialism and globalization has been economic contraction and

an associated class polarization, a more-costly and dangerous outcome of this process has been

increased military intervention abroad. However, such aggressive military posture has created

(and continues to create) major problems for the imperialist state and is increasingly threatening

its effectiveness and, in the long run, its very existence. 10

The imperialist/capitalist state, acting as the repressive arm of global capital and

extending its rule across vast territories, has dwarfed the militaristic adventures of past empires

many times over. Through its political and military supremacy, it has come to exert its control

over many countries and facilitate the exploitation of labor on a world scale, which in turn has

generated a response from those affected by it to transform the entire capitalist/imperialist

system. As a result, imperialism today represents a dual, contradictory process whose dialectical

resolution is an outcome of its very nature—a product of its growth and expansion across time

and space within the confines of a structure that promotes its own destruction and demise.

In our time, in the age of globalization, i.e., the era of global capitalism, class and class

conflict have become more, not less, pronounced, and their prevalence everywhere around the

world made it a visible feature of the global capitalist system. Today, as class divisions widen

and as classes become increasingly polarized and in continual conflict, class struggles are

becoming more and more part of the social landscape of global capitalist society across the

world.

With the worldwide spread of capitalism as the primary source of the globalization of

capitalist class relations on a world scale, capital has effected transformations in the class
 7

structure of societies with which it has come into contact. As a result, the class contradictions of

global capitalism have become the primary source of class conflict and class struggle throughout

the world.

This, in turn, has greatly politicized the struggle between labor and capital and called for

the recognition of the importance of political organization that many find it necessary to effect

change in order to transform the capitalist-imperialist system.

Understanding the necessity of organizing labor and the importance of political

leadership in this struggle, radical labor organizations have in fact taken steps emphasizing the

necessity for the working class to mobilize its ranks and take united action to wage battle against

capitalist imperialism globally.11

It is important to understand that the critical factor that tips the balance of class forces in

favor of the proletariat to win state power is political organization, the building of class alliances

among the oppressed and exploited classes, the development of strong and theoretically well-

informed revolutionary leadership that is organically linked to the working class, and a clear

understanding of the forces at work in the class struggle, including especially the role of the state

and its military and police apparatus—the focal point of the struggle for state power.12

The global domination of capital and the advanced capitalist/imperial state during the

twentieth century did not proceed without a fight, as a protracted struggle of the working class

against capital and the capitalist state unfolded throughout this period of capitalist globalization.

The labor movement, the anti-imperialist national liberation movements, and the civil rights,

women’s, student, environmental, anti-war, and peace movements all contributed to the

development of the emerging anti-globalization movement in the late twentieth and early twenty-

first centuries. These and related contradictions of late-twentieth-century capitalist globalization

 8

led to the crisis of the imperial state and the entire globalization project which increasingly came

under attack by the mass movements of the global era that came to challenge the rule of capital

and the capitalist state throughout the world.

The global expansion of capital and transnational capitalist domination of the Third

World has led to the growth of anti-imperialist anti-globalization movements which have come

to challenge the global capitalist system through revolutions across the world. 13 These

movements have often become part of the worldwide struggle against globalization and

imperialism led by the working class through cross-border labor organizing and international

labor solidarity through labor internationalism.14

This, in turn, has led to the development of broader international alliances made up of a

multitude of movement organizations that bring together various oppressed peoples to wage a

wider struggle against global capitalism through transnational activism.15

The political mobilization of oppressed groups that have come together to effect change

have sometimes succeeded in bringing about new non-exploitative social relations. The degree

of success in constructing a new society along egalitarian lines has been an outcome of a variety

of factors, above all the degree to which these experiments have been successful in thwarting

imperialist attempts to undermine such efforts. Regardless of the varied experiences of one or

another society or social movement to secure such change, however, social revolution and the

revolutionary transformation of society in the epoch of global capitalism has more and more

become the only viable option available to oppressed groups and classes to bring about

fundamental social change.

The Transformation of Global Capitalism

 9

The global capitalist state, through its political and military supremacy, has come to exert its

control over many countries and facilitated the exploitation of labor on a world scale. As a result,

it has reinforced the domination of capital over labor and its rule on behalf of capital. This, in

turn, has greatly politicized the struggle between labor and capital and called for the recognition

of the importance of political organization that is necessary to transform the global capitalist

system. In considering the emerging class struggles throughout the globe, the question that one

now confronts is thus a political one. Given what we know of neoliberal globalization and its

class contradictions on a world scale, how will the peoples’ movements respond to it politically

worldwide? What strategy and tactics will be adopted to confront this colossal force? It is

important to think about these questions concretely, in a practical way—one that involves a

concrete scientific analysis and organized political action.

Understanding the necessity of mobilizing labor and the importance of political

leadership in this struggle, radical labor organizations have in fact taken steps emphasizing the

importance for the working class to mobilize its ranks and take united action to wage battle

against capitalist globalization.16

Strikes, demonstrations, and mass protests initiated by workers and other popular forces

have become frequent in a growing number of countries controlled by the transnationals in recent

years. Working people are rising up against the local ruling classes, the state, and the

transnational monopolies that have together effected the super-exploitation of labor for decades.

Various forms of struggle are now underway in many countries under the grip of transnational

capital.

The logic of transnational capitalist expansion on a global scale is such that it leads to the
 10

emergence and development of forces in conflict with this expansion. The working class has

been in the forefront of these forces. Armed insurrection, civil war, and revolutionary upheavals

are all a response to the repression imposed on working people by global capitalism and its client

states throughout the world. Together, these struggles have been effective in frustrating the

efforts of global capital to expand and dominate the world, while at the same time building the

basis of an international working-class movement that finally overcomes national, ethnic,

cultural, and linguistic boundaries that artificially separate the workers in their fight against

global capitalism. The worldwide working-class struggle against global capital has led to several

successful revolutions during the twentieth century. Throughout this period, workers’

organizations have focused on building international labor solidarity for worldwide efforts to

wage a successful battle against global capitalism. In this sense, labor internationalism (or the

political alliance of workers across national boundaries in their struggle against global

capitalism) is increasingly being seen as a political weapon that would serve as a unifying force

in labor’s frontal attack on capital in the early twenty-first century.17

The solidarity achieved through this process has helped expand the strength of the

international working class and increased its determination to defeat all vestiges of global

capitalism throughout the world, and build a new egalitarian social order that advances the

interests of working people and ultimately all of humanity.

Global capitalism today represents a dual, contradictory development whose dialectical

resolution will be an outcome of its very nature—a product of its growth and expansion across

time and space within the confines of a structure that promotes its own destruction and demise. It

is important to understand that the critical factor that tips the balance of class forces in favor of

the working class to win state power is political organization, the building of class alliances
 11

among the oppressed and exploited classes, the development of strong and theoretically well-

informed revolutionary leadership that is organically linked to the working class, and a clear

understanding of the forces at work in the class struggle, including especially the role of the state

and its military and police apparatus—the focal point of the struggle for state power.18 The

success of the working class and its revolutionary leadership in confronting the power of the

capitalist state thus becomes the critical element ensuring that once captured, the state can

become an instrument that the workers can use to establish their rule and in the process transform

society and the state itself to promote labor’s interests in line with its vision for a new society

free of exploitation and oppression, one based on the rule of the working class and the laboring

masses in general.

Our understanding of the necessity for the transformation of global capitalism, which is

political in nature, demands a clear, scientific understanding of its contradictions in late

twentieth- and early twenty-first-century form, so that this knowledge can be put to use to

facilitate the class struggle in a revolutionary direction. In this context, one will want to know not

only the extent and depth of global capitalist expansion, but also its base of support, its linkage to

the major institutions of capitalist society (above all the state, but also other religious, cultural,

and social institutions), the extent of its ideological hegemony and control over mass

consciousness, and other aspects of social, economic, political, and ideological domination.

Moreover—and this is the most important point—one must study its weaknesses, its problem

areas, its vulnerabilities, its weak links, and the various dimensions of its crisis—especially those

that affect its continued reproduction and survival.19 Armed with this knowledge, one would be

better equipped to confront capital and the capitalist/imperialist state in the struggle for the

transformation of global capitalism in this century.

 12

NOTES
 1
1. See Berch Berberoglu, Globalization of Capital and the Nation State (Boulder, CO:

Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). See slso Berch Berberoglu (ed.), Beyond the Global Capitalist Crisis:

The World Economy in Transition (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012) and Berch Berberoglu (ed.), The

Global Capitalist Crisis and Its Aftermath (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014).
2
2. Nick Beams, The Significance and Implications of Globalization: A Marxist Assessment

(Southfield, MI: Mehring Books, 1998); James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Beyond Neoliberalism: A

World to Win (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). See also Lucia Pradella, Globalization and Critique of

Political Economy (New York: Routledge, 2016).

3
3. Dimitris Stevis and Terry Boswell, Globalization and Labor: Democratizing Global

Governance (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); Cyrus Bina and Chuck Davis, “Dynamics

of Globalization: Transnational Capital and the International Labor Movement” in Berch Berberoglu

(ed.), Labor and Capital in the Age of Globalization (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers,

2002).
4
4. Bill Warren, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism (London: Verso, 1980); Albert J.

Szymanski, The Logic of Imperialism (New York: Praeger, 1981); Berch Berberoglu, The

Internationalization of Capital: Imperialism and Capitalist Development on a World Scale (New York:

Praeger, 1987).
5
5. James F. Petras, Critical Perspectives on Imperialism and Social Class in the Third World

(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978); Berch Berberoglu, Class and Class Conflict in the Age of

Globalization (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009).

6
6. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, System in Crisis: The Dynamics of Free Market

Capitalism (London: Zed Books, 2003) and Henry Veltmeyer (ed.), Imperialism, Crisis, and Class

Struggle: The Enduring Verities and Contemporary Face of Capitalism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2012).
7
7. Michael Amaladoss (ed.), Globalization and Its Victims As Seen by Its Victims (Delhi, India:
Vidyajyoti Education and Welfare Society, 1999); Leslie Sklair, Globalization: Capitalism and Its

Alternatives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

8
8. Helmut Wagner (ed.), Globalization and Unemployment (New York: Springer, 2000).

9
9. Berch Berberoglu, The Legacy of Empire: Economic Decline and Class Polarization in the

United States (New York: Praeger, 1992) and Berch Berberoglu (ed.), Labor and Capital in the Age of

Globalization: The Labor Process and the Changing Nature of Work in the Global Economy (Boulder,

CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).

10
10. James Petras, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2009).

11
11. Beams, The Significance and Implications of Globalization.

12
12. Albert J. Szymanski, The Capitalist State and the Politics of Class (Cambridge, MA:

Winthrop, 1978); Berch Berberoglu, Political Sociology in a Global Era (Boulder, CO: Paradigm,

2013); Peter Knapp and Alan J. Spector, Crisis and Change Today: Basic Questions of Marxist

Sociology (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011).

13
13. Stephen K. Sanderson, Revolutions: A Worldwide Introduction to Political and Social

Change (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2005).

14
14. Andrew Howard, “Global Capital and Labor Internationalism: Workers’ Response to

Global Capitalism,” in Berch Berberoglu (ed.), Globalization and Change: The Transformation of

Global Capitalism (Lenham, MD.: Lexington Books, 2005); Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World:

Unions in the International Economy (London: Verso, 1997).

15
15. Donatella Della Porta and Sidney Tarrow (eds.), Transnational Protest and Global

Activism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan

Smith, Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000);

William K. Tabb, “Neoliberalism and Anticorporate Globalization as Class Struggle,” in Michael

Zweig (ed.), What’s Class Got to Do With It? American Society in the Twenty-first Century (Ithaca,
NY: ILR Press, 2004); Christina Flesher Fominaya, Social Movements and Globalization: How

Protests, Occupations, and Uprisings Are Changing the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2014).
16
16. Peter Waterman, Globalization, Social Movements, and the New Internationalisms

(London: Mansell, 1998); Ronaldo Munck, Globalization and Labor: The New Great Transformation

(London: Zed Books, 2002); Stevis and Boswell, Globalization and Labor.

17
17. Beams, The Significance and Implications of Globalization; Walda Katz-Fishman, Jerome

Scott, and Ife Modupe, “Global Capitalism, Class Struggle, and Social Transformation,” in Berch

Berberoglu (ed.), Globalization and Change: The Transformation of Global Capitalism (Lanham, MD:

Lexington Books, 2005).

18
18. Szymanski, The Capitalist State and the Politics of Class; Knapp and Spector, Crisis and

Change Today; Berberoglu, Political Sociology in a Global Era; Stevis and Boswell, Globalization

and Labor.
19
19. James Petras, The End of the Republic and the Delusion of Empire (Atlanta, GA: Clarity

Press, 2016).