William I. Robinson - Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic

William I. Robinson elucidates the terrifying configurations of a new type of global dictatorship, that imposed by transnational capital. By seizing control of national economies and imposing the most sophisticated forms of surveillance in human history these transnational entities are cementing into place a dystopian world that serves the interests of a global elite at the expense of liberty, freedom of expression, democracy, and economic security. This is the future, unless we rise up to wrest power back from our corporate overlords.

Chris Hedges, author of America, the Farewell Tour

As an axis of rampant capital and wondrous technology grows by the day and liberal democracy sheds its last illusions, William I. Robinson describes a true enemy of humanity that is close to home. And yet nothing is inevitable. Read this urgent book.

John Pilger, journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker

A novel and important analysis of how global capitalism is being transformed by the pandemic. Robinson skillfully maps out how expanding digitalization, growing government intervention, and emerging movements across the political spectrum all reflect and reshape ongoing capitalist crises.

Nick Srnicek, program director, MSc Digital Economy, Kings College London, and author of Platform Capitalism

Globalizations first episode in the history of our species was the out-migration of Homo sapiens from Africa to the rest of the planet. Todays globalization builds on the out-migration that resulted in colonialism and neocolonialism, imperialism, and neoliberalism. Those who once cheered the colonialist onslaught are now reeling from what neoliberalism is bringing to their bodies: literally a war for survival that takes place in their own bloodstreams. Thus, the rapacious greed that put a banker between a student and a professor wants to turn health professionals into agents of repression. From the 2001 Dark Winter bio-terror war game to the 2010 Lockstep report that presaged todays coronavirus pandemic, to 2019s Event 201, to 2021s Cyber Polygon, agents of global capital have been unequivocal about what is in store for us. The true question is: What are we prepared to do to stop them? Professor Robinson is clear that there are many possible futures. Readers of this book will also understand that they have the power to reject reformist revolutions from the top that include Inclusive Capitalism within a global police state. Now is the time for the people to organically reject the offers of the global capitalist class and make real the revolution of our values; that is, one of truth, justice, peace, and human and earth dignity.

Cynthia McKinney, author, activist, six-term member of the United States Congress

Karl Marx aspired to a world in which our animal needs would be satisfied and our human needs could be addressed. It is a realistic possibility now, as William I. Robinson outlinesor the alternative that is taking shape before our eyes: a global police state controlled by narrowly concentrated capital, with surplus humanity left to survive somehow on its own. The choice is in our hands. There could hardly be a more compelling one.

Noam Chomsky, Institute professor emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), author of Who Rules the World?

For the last twenty years, William I. Robinson has been one of the most important analysts of global capitalism and the dynamics of globalization. In this new work, Robinson turns his attention to the emergence of a twenty-first century global police state that has developed as a corollary to growing inequality, climate collapse, and intensifying migration movements of the dispossessed. As Robinson warns, with great deprivation comes great repression, policing, and potentially war. Robinson writes pointedly and with urgency for a broad audience with an interest in mobilizing for a just world.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, professor of African American Studies, Princeton University, author of From #BlackLives Matter to Black Liberation

This book is a treasury of big-picture insights from our leading theorist of the emerging system of global capitalism. William I. Robinsons projectto understand the political economy in order to change itstands as the preeminent successor to Marxs project from an earlier epoch. For readers perplexed about our changing world and apprehensive about its future, here is your primer and call to action.

Paul Raskin, founding president of the Tellus Institute, author of Journey to Earthland

William I. Robinson offers those engaged in the struggle against global capitalism a remarkable and compelling insight and framework in order to both understand our opponents and to better grasp the strengths and weaknesses of the oppressed and dispossessed. This is the book for which I have been waiting, and I could not put it down.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., trade unionist, author of Theyre Bankrupting Us: And Twenty Other Myths About Unions

In ancient Greek philosophy, kairos signifies the right time or the moment of transition. We believe that we live in such a transitional period. The most important task of social science in time of transformation is to transform itself into a force of liberation. Kairos, an editorial imprint of the Anthropology and Social Change department housed in the California Institute of Integral Studies, publishes groundbreaking works in critical social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, geography, theory of education, political ecology, political theory, and history.

Series editor: Andrej Grubai

Recent and featured Kairos books:

Taming the Rascal Multitude: Essays, Interviews, and Lectures 19972014 by Noam Chomsky

A New World in Our Hearts: Noam Chomsky in Conversation with Michael Albert

Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter by Noam Chomsky and James Kelman

Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin, illustrated by N.O. Bonzo

Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry edited by Siobhn McGuirk and Adrienne Pine

Building Free Life: Dialogues with calan edited by International Initiative

The Art of Freedom: A Brief History of the Kurdish Liberation Struggle by Havin Guneser

The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, Volume III by Abdullah calan

Facebooking the Anthropocene in Raja Ampat by Bob Ostertag

In, Against, and Beyond Capitalism: The San Francisco Lectures by John Holloway

For more information visit www.pmpress.org/blog/kairos/

CAPITALISM POST-PANDEMIC

William I. Robinson

Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic