The twilight of neoliberal globalization

Abstract

The author employs contemporary Marxist theory and methodology, and its theoretical concept of finance monopoly capital in particular, to analyze the decline of the neoliberal globalization currently under way. The paper shows that offshoring and financialization that developed during the neoliberal era have reinforced monopolistic dominance by mature imperialist states (namely, the “triad” of USA, EU and Japan), leading to the new division (or recolonization) of the periphery. As a result, the geo-economic space has become rigidly structured in a hierarchy of the groups of nations, with production having become increasingly organized within global production networks controlled by transnational corporations based in the “triad”. However, mass transfer of the labor-intensive industries to low-wage countries of the periphery, and to China in particular, has resulted in geopolitical and economic rise of the latter, thus intensifying competition and struggle between national imperialisms. Deglobalization that emerged and evolved during the post-crisis period appears as a manifestation of a new redivision of the world, with unfolding redrawing of the geo-economic map, creeping degradation of supranational institutions and spike of trade wars between the world's largest economies.