Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 August 2025
Global capitalism is facing a systemic crisis that will involve ongoing disintegration rather than a sudden collapse. The study has outlined a theory of global capitalism's exhaustion. The most likely scenario is a new round of capitalist expansion through digitalization that momentarily restores growth and profit rates yet aggravates the underlying contradictions that drive the crisis. Radical redistributive and regulatory reform advocated by sectors of the transnational elite may attenuate social polarization, expand markets, and mediate intra-capitalist competition and interstate conflict, but only for a time being. China will not become a new global economic anchor to world capitalism. As the crisis deepens, capitalism's extermination impulse is rising to the surface, as seen in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the spread of mega-imprisonment around the world, and the hardening of a global police state. A global revolt is underway but where it is headed is not clear. The future may involve a worldwide fascist dictatorship, a global reformism, a revolutionary rupture with capitalism, or the collapse of global civilization, depending on how collective agency and contingency play out.
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