Marx’s prescient theory of centralization of capital: Crises and an nkrumahist response

Abstract

Karl Marx’s projection of the global centralization of capital in the hands of fewer and fewer owners through expansionary cycles is affirmed by an analysis of the IMF Financial Access Survey Data (FAS). FAS data shows the rapid incorporation of the populations of semi-periphery and periphery areas into market transactions via financial institution access, such that soon no areas external to the system will be available for new market expansion. This analysis also reveals a bifurcation process occurring, whereby control over centralized capital by the core capitalist structure in place since the start of the system is being challenged from within by the rise of China, with contending socialist principles and a different path to dominance than the European core. Based on the Nkrumahist theory of revolution, the possibilities of African peripheral isolate systems with communal principles generalizing in a period of core system collapse are discussed.