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Marxist sociologist William I Robinson is the author of The Global Police State and A Theory of Global Capitalism: Transnational Production, Transnational Capitalists, and the Transnational State. He spoke with �鶹��ý’s Federico Fuentes about transnational class exploitation and the global police state. This is the first in a two-part series.

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You have written that “the classical image of imperialism as a relation of external domination is outdated”. Does this mean the concept of imperialism as a whole is outdated too?

Colonialism and imperialism are historic processes through which world capitalism expanded outward from its original birthplace in Western Europe and conquered the world. Capitalism by its very nature is an outwardly expanding system. It must continuously conquer new spaces and expand the frontiers of accumulation, commodifying everything and obliterating anything in its way.

By imperialism we mean this violent outward expansion of capital, with all the political, military and ideological mechanisms that this involves. Given the profound transformations in world capitalism over the past half century, it could not be clearer that we need to reconceive how we understand imperialism in this age of capitalist globalisation.

The worldwide organisation of capital has changed over the past century through the transnationalisation of the leading fractions of capital. The transnational capitalist class (TCC), as the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale, is not tethered to territory, and while it has to rely on and also contend with states it does not identify with any one nation-state.

But transnational capital is not just “Northern” or “Triad” capital. It includes the rise of powerful transnational corporate conglomerates from the formerly colonised countries that now export their capital around the world in the same way as European imperial powers did in [Vladimir] Lenin’s day.

There are countless examples. The Indian-based Tata conglomerate is the single largest employer (and therefore capitalist exploiter of labour) in Britain. Chinese-based corporations operate in every continent, including in North America, where they exploit US and Canadian workers. Mexican-based transnationals invest throughout Latin and North America and beyond, exploiting workers of all nationalities. Gulf-based capitalists export capital around the world.

Moreover, when we analyse the structure of global capital we find a very high degree of transnational integration, especially through the circuits of global finance and cross-corporate investment.

Economically, imperialism has historically referred to the appropriation of resources and the exploitation of labour across national borders, and the flow of the surplus value back across borders.

Now this takes place all over the world. It does not resemble the earlier structure where metropolitan colonial capital simply syphoned out surplus value from the colonies and deposited it back in colonial coffers.

You referred to a transnational capitalist class (TCC). Can this TCC operate successfully without an institutional anchorage in, and political backing from, an imperialist power?

Capital cannot reproduce or expand without the state. That has been true throughout the whole history of world capitalism and remains true today.

In speaking about the TCC’s anchorage in states, we need to focus on two aspects: first, how the TCC has sought to impose its class power over the past four decades of capitalist globalisation through a dense network of national and supranational institutions around the world; and second, the preponderant role to date of the US state in capitalist globalisation.

Regarding the first, as far back as the 1970s, with the formation of the Trilateral Commission and the World Economic Forum, an emerging transnational elite sought to develop transnational networks to coordinate policy and impose worldwide conditions for capitalist globalisation.

I have put forth the concept of transnational states (TNS) apparatuses, not as a “world government” but as an analytical abstraction that refers to the loose networks of inter- and transnational institutions together with national states.

Through these institutions, the TCC attempts to exercise its class power over the global working classes, leveraging the structural power of transnational capital over the direct power of states.

For instance, when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposes as a loan condition that local labour markets be deregulated or fiscal austerity be applied to assure the macroeconomic stability that transnational finance requires, the IMF is acting as a (transnational) state institution insofar as the capitalist state establishes the conditions for exploitation to take place, in this case within the larger global capitalist system.

Regarding the second, most Marxists today assume that US intervention and aggression around the world should be understood as competition with other powers. US-led capitalist globalisation, however, has sought in recent decades to open up the world to capital from all over, irrespective of national origin.

When the US invaded and occupied Iraq in the early 21st century, it opened up the country to global investors. The first two oil conglomerates that took advantage of the US military canopy to invest in Iraq were French-based Total and the Chinese state oil company — even though the French and Chinese governments opposed the invasion.

The US state has served over the past four decades as the imperial anchor to which you refer. It acts as the most powerful instrument in the arsenal of global capitalism through which the mass of the world’s poor and working peoples are contained and controlled, the world is opened for transnational corporate plunder, and states that impede the unfettered accumulation of capital are attacked.

Now, however, things are changing rapidly. There is a general crisis of capitalist rule. Any effort at transnational capitalist unity is undermined by the escalating crisis of global capitalism.

TNS apparatuses are breaking down. The World Trade Organization trade rules are being disregarded by the very US national state that so forcefully pushed for them at the height of neoliberal globalisation.

Escalating geopolitical conflict has more to do with challenges to the global capitalist order and competition among state elites as they face mounting crises of accumulation, political legitimacy, social reproduction and control, than with competition among national capitalist groups.

No one national state, no matter how powerful, has the ability to serve at this time as the anchorage that you ask about, to stabilise the global economy or control global accumulation. We are in a period of global chaos without a coherent political centre to stabilise global capitalism.

You have referred to the rise of a global police state that is increasingly dependent on militarised accumulation. What do you mean by this?

The global police state refers to the ever-more ubiquitous systems of warfare, mass social control, surveillance and repression.

It aims to contain the global working classes and criminalise surplus humanity at a time when worldwide inequalities and mass deprivation have never been so acute, when the ranks of surplus labour are swelling exponentially, and when popular rebellion is breaking out everywhere.

The ruling groups are turning towards authoritarianism, dictatorship and even fascism as consensual mechanisms of domination break down.

States may be in fierce competition over expanding the frontiers of global accumulation, yet every capitalist on the planet needs a global police state to control and discipline the working and popular classes. Every capitalist state serves this mandate.

But global police state also refers to militarised accumulation and accumulation by repression. The political goal of control and domination come together with the economic goal of accumulation.

The problem of surplus capital is endemic to capitalism but over the past couple of decades it has reached extraordinary levels. The TCC has been in a desperate search for outlets to unload its accumulated surplus.

Historically, wars have provided critical economic stimulus and served as outlets for surplus accumulated capital but there is something qualitatively new with the global police state.

The global economy has become deeply dependent on the development and deployment of systems of warfare, social control and repression as a means of making profit and accumulating capital in the face of chronic stagnation and the saturation of global markets.

In recent decades, states have seen an unprecedented fusion of private accumulation with state militarisation. The so-called wars on drugs and terrorism, the mass control of immigrant and refugee populations, mass incarceration, border walls, and so on, are enormously profitable enterprises outsourced to corporations.

An array of capitalist groups have developed an interest in generating and sustaining social conflict and expanding systems of warfare, repression, surveillance and control. Endless low- and high-intensity warfare, simmering conflicts, civil strife, policing, and so on, have helped keep the global economy afloat.

This requires conjuring up one contrived threat after another, from “drugs” to “terrorism” and, more recently, the US-instigated New Cold War. As the post-World War II international order crumbles, the game is changing.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the US-NATO response have paved the way for a more sweeping militarisation of the global economy and society. It has legitimated an expansion of military and security budgets, as well as surveillance and repression around the world, not just in North America and the NATO countries.

[Read an expanded version of this interview at .]