On this edition of Parallax Views, sociologist William I. Robinson returns to the program to discuss his new book Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic. Picking up where his last book, Global Police State, left off, Global Civil War explores the growing global discontent in the age of transnational capitalism and the 21st century’s emergent, high-tech surveillance society in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. Among the topics discussed on this edition of the show.
– The digital revolution, the biopolitical regime, and the transformation of global capitalism
– The transnational capitalist class and the Davos-based World Economic Forum
– Social control, surveillance, and the disciplining of the global working class
– The digital revolution and the exacerbation of global inequality and the rapid expansion of the ultra-wealthy’s fortunes since the pandemic
– The new, dramatic crisis of global capitalism and the history of crises within the capitalist system
– The emergence of a biopolitical regime
– The political crisis of state legitimacy and the global revolt
– The 1800s and the explosion of imperialism and colonialism in response to crisis
– Fordism-Keynesianism, redistributive capitalism, and welfare states in the 20th century
– The crisis of 1970s, the neoliberal counterrevolution, the redisciplining of the global working class by the global ruling class or transnational elite
– Divisions within the transnational capitalist class over how to resolve the current crisis and the right-wing authoritarian turn amongst major sectors of global capital
– The massive new round of restructuring of global capitalism based on digitalization
– The lack of national solution to the global crisis
– The role of artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, the internet of things, nanotechnology, 5G, facial-recognition technology, 3D printing, and other technologies in the current global transformation and social control
– Big tech and the biomedical-industrial complex, global financial conglomerates, and the military-industrial complex
– On-demand and remote work, automation, robotization, the threat of displacement and degradation of labor, precarious employment, and “surplus humanity”
– The automation and robotization of agriculture
– China’s 996 work regime, Taylorism, and scientific management
– The restructuring of time and place to exercise greater control over the global working class
– New technologies and the fragmentation of labor
– The need for a digital proletariat to organize in new ways and examples of global revolt occurring and the transnational capitalist class responding to it
– Emergency mobilization after the pandemic, states of exception, and the history war game-style pandemic response scenarios such as the “Lockstep Scenario”
– The problem with right-wing conspiracy theories about the transnational capitalist class, the pandemic, and other issues
– The problem of disinformation
– And much, much more!
