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.

The first chapter introduces different ICRC alumni who are critics of current trends in ICRC policy. While not all alumni have the same views, some allege the organization is undermining its image as an independent and neutral humanitarian actor by such moves as allowing the ICRC president to be on the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum. Some also allege that Geneva has undertaken such broad field activities that it has weakened its reputation linked primarily to international humanitarian law and especially the protection of prisoners, including political prisoners. This introduction to claims of an ICRC in decline by experienced critics who closely follow the ICRC today, based on access to key information, sets the stage for the rest of the book. The author suggests in a preliminary way that the critics raise important points, although some may be more valid or important than others.

This chapter examines several cases of interaction between the ICRC and Bern, emphasizing ICRC President Cornelio Sommaruga’s concern to buttress ICRC independence circa 1993, an orientation continued by his successor, ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger. This is contrasted with different policies during the era of ICRC President Peter Maurer. The relationship between Bern and Geneva will always be unique, since Bern has a special status in international humanitarian law, and because Bern is a significant donor to the ICRC’s budget. But the chapter argues for more attention to the differences between ICRC humanitarian neutrality and Swiss political neutrality, whether at the United Nations or in Ukraine.

The increased but perhaps temporary tight linkage between the ICRC and the World Economic Forum, whose paying members are corporations, is examined in great detail – especially from 2014. A costs–benefits analysis, fairly constructed, shows that the issue is of relatively minor significance in the long run as facts have played out, although that could have been otherwise. The world overwhelmingly has adopted some form of capitalism, which recognizes the importance of private business actors, including in places such as “communist” China and Vietnam. But President Peter Maurer’s presence on the WEF board of trustees was indeed a mistake. The ICRC, existing for strictly humanitarian reasons, should not be endorsing or advancing any economic system, or allowing itself to be seen as part of an unelected economic elite that informally helps govern a world manifesting many negatives. The problem 2014–2022 was mainly one of optics: namely, that one could question ICRC priorities and motivations in certain situations, while the organization ran the risk of endangering ICRC staff in the field. The latter did not materialize in any major way, but it logically could have done.

This chapter answers the question of how the World Economic Fourm (WEF) constructs authority for itself in the global arena by studying the form of political action that the WEF draws upon. We argue that it constructs authority beyond itself through turning some participants from its many events into a form of members, thus partially organizing its environment. Participants at WEF activities, as well as WEF staff, would call this order a ‘network’. We acknowledge the network aspects of this order, but argue that it is foremost based on organization; it is a decided order, based on decisions taken within the WEF. Empirically, the chapter builds on interview data within Geneva staff and participants at WEF activities.

The objective of this chapter is to explore the potential of the partial-organization concept as applied to the analysis of inter-firm networks as a form of economic governance that is created, reproduced or transformed with the help of network management practices. Key insights that the partial-organization perspective can provide into the process and the outcome of organizing and managing inter-firm networks are discussed. Inter-firm networks are conceived as partial organization of more or less complete formal organizations. Under specific circumstances, inter-firm networks could even be considered, at least in some aspects, as being even more organized than organizations. With regard to insights into the dynamics of this organizational form the chapter argues that the concept of partial organization helps to understand the development of this form from initial market relationships as well as from hierarchical organizations