WITHOUT IDENTIFYING THE NATURE OF THE CURRENT PERIOD WE ARE IN IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CONSTRUCT PERSPECTIVES. Revisiting 2008.
September 26, 2024 4 Comments
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THEPLANNINGMOTIVE.COM 
As I’ve pointed out before, the process of automating skilled jobs has been going on for the past 40+ years and in fact since the birth of Numerically Controlled Machines, lathes and milling machines etc, (NCM) during WWII. All LLM has done is apply the vast computing power of the latest chips, to increase the speed and sophistication of computation. Thus it has all the appearance of thinking but it’s still driven by mathematics, algorithms if you will. As thinking beings, we have to dispel the myth that machines think. They don’t and they never will.
I find this article very interesting. I agree that the unit of analysis should be the global capitalist economy. However, for an accurate analysis, it’s essential to differentiate between capitalist countries based on their relative levels of development and their positions in the global economy (hegemonic, subordinate, or intermediate).
In this regard, I believe it’s important to consider three key points: (1) how the main variables evolve in imperialist countries, which, so to speak, “create” or set the trends of the global economy; (2) how peripheral countries adapt to these trends; and (3) the overall impact of these changes on the global economy.
Here, I might slightly differ from your view. I don’t think analyzing the shifts in the trends of imperialist countries necessarily reflects a “Eurocentric” perspective. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that the major shifts in the global economy are typically driven by the imperialist struggle against declining profitability. For that reason, I believe the most suitable approach to periodizing “globalization”—or more precisely, the current phases of acceleration and deceleration of capital globalization—should involve: (1) identifying the turning points that lead imperialist capital to expand globally to counter the general fall in profitability; (2) determining when globalization compensates for this decline and revitalizes accumulation in imperialist countries; and (3) pinpointing when globalization no longer offsets the decline in these countries.
In summary, couldn’t we say that the 2008–2009 crisis was indeed a turning point for imperialist countries, one that was only temporarily compensated until 2016, as you mention in your essay?
Lastly, I agree that the kind of work most at risk from the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence is intellectual work. I believe AI will reinforce the long-term capitalist trend of deskilling the workforce, though, of course, there are always counteracting tendencies.
There is little I disagree with in your comment. I also agree with the need to be granular with analysis or concrete. With the regard to the inter-relation between imperialist and dominated economies what strikes me about 2008 is this. Could the FED have prevented a full scale financial crisis breaking out by having bailed out Lehman Brothers rather than making an example of it? Probably. Would China have embarked on such a large scale investment drive were it not for 2008? Probably not. Here then lies the significance of 2008. It slowed down the USA while it speeded up China bringing us to where we are today. In a chaotic world that is how history is made.
I agree that China’s growing importance in the global capitalist economy has been, and continues to be, a double-edged sword for imperialist countries.
On the one hand, China’s rise in the global economy since 1980 has clearly been positive for global capitalism, as demonstrated when comparing global GDP per capita growth rates with and without China’s contribution. During the period 1951-1973, GDP per capita growth was higher without China, as its contribution to the denominator outweighed that to the numerator. However, from 1974 to 2003, this trend reversed. Since 2004, global economic expansions have been more significant thanks to China’s involvement, while crises would have been deeper without it. In fact, in 2008, without China, global GDP per capita growth would have been negative, meeting the World Bank’s definition of a global recession. In 2009, GDP per capita would have dropped about one percentage point further without China’s influence.
On the other hand, as China’s industrialization process advances into more complex stages, it erodes the absolute advantage imperialist countries held in key areas of capitalist production. It is clear that China has never been content with the role imperialism initially assigned it in the “new international division of labor”: being a hub specialized in industries with medium to low organic composition of capital, leveraging cheap labor and economies of scale. It is likely that India now occupies this role.
It’s also interesting to note that the participation of the “rest of the world” (excluding the G7 and China) in global GDP (in 2015 dollars, according to the World Bank) has remained virtually unchanged between 1980 and 2020. In fact, the per capita GDP of the rest of the world, which includes some wealthy countries, dropped from 14.23% of the G7’s in 1980 to 12.05% in 2020, while China’s GDP rose from 1.69% to 22.16% of the G7’s in the same period.
When analyzing the period from 1960 to 2023, three distinct phases emerge:
1960-1973: GDP grew above the period’s average.
1974-2007: GDP grew slightly below the overall average and 40% below the 1960-1973 period.
2008-2023: GDP grew 25% below the average and 50% below the 1960-1973 level.
The slowdown in global economic growth is largely due to the decline of the imperialist world. Historically, it seems that the crisis within the imperialist bloc must be profound, given that, despite reversing the geographical contraction of global capitalist accumulation after the implosion of the USSR, the decreasing trend in economic growth—both globally and within the imperialist bloc—has deepened. Therefore, capitalist “globalization” did not fully reverse the profitability crisis that began in the 1970s, nor did it initiate a new golden age like the one after World War II. It was, at best, a temporary fix. Moreover, for the imperialist bloc, the negative effects of China’s rise now outweigh the positive ones, which explains why the U.S. is resorting to protectionism and sanctions to contain China’s rise and deal with its own decline.