Abstract
Robinson’s essay about the epochal crisis of global capitalism and its implications for Latin America is the outcome of a rich line of analysis more than a quarter century in the making. Every ten years or so, in seminal books such as A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class and State in a Transnational World (Robinson, 2004) and then Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (Robinson, 2014), Robinson has theorized and distilled what he considers the defining dynamics of global capitalism: the emergence of a transnational capitalist class (TCC) and a transnational state (TNS). Based on his 2025 book, Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism (Robinson, 2025), the essay under review lends itself to a critical appreciation both of Robinson’s contributions to our understanding about the shifting nature of contemporary capitalist power, as well as to an assessment of the shortcomings in his latest characterization of current historical conjuncture.
No one can dispute how masterfully Robinson’s essay succinctly identifies major trends shaping our contemporary world. Most of us can agree that the world capitalist system is indeed experiencing “a crisis of hegemony and a radical reconfiguration of the global geopolitical map.” Yet, paradoxically, given the level of development reached by those very historical trends Robinson has insightfully tracked for decades, and also on account of limitations in his theoretical framing pointed out by many of his critics, it seems as if the time has come for a qualitative leap, both methodological and political, towards theorizing “global capitalism from below.” In other words, the global capitalism “from above” framework developed by Robinson, dialectically, has also become exhausted and run out of steam. This becomes evident when envisioning those concrete and tangible tasks the exploited and dispossessed confront in the distinct territories where they struggle to daily produce the conditions for their lives and the spaces within which they attempt to regain historical protagonism and historical initiative. Robinson’s claim about the epochal exhaustion of capitalism, reminds me about the old yarn about how it was possible to identify Spanish exiles in France just by looking at their hands: their index finger having become crooked from forcefully banging it down on tabletops year after year while vehemently claiming “Tomorrow, I tell you! Tomorrow, Franco falls!”
Neoliberalism’s recurrent crises have spawned a growing legion of theorists announcing the imminent demise of capitalism as we know it. Of course they would be more convincing, if such claims were equally attentive not just to the “objective,” but also to those subjective, and concrete processes constituting historical subjects bringing about such desired outcome. Alas, the desiring bodies of those tens of millions of exploited, marginalized and dispossessed, collectively dreaming and marching across streets, plazas, and rural landscapes demanding, as there forebearers once did a century ago, the end of the capitalist system, are a spectral presence invoked in such considerations. If global capitalism has reached the point of exhaustion, the analysis of capitalist contradictions must be accompanied by indications of how such crisis makes possible the construction of “power from below” by the heterogeneous, gendered, and racialized masses of dispossed. The spasmodic and fragmentary nature of recent cycles of massive popular social mobilizations in 2011, again in 2019, and in a new 2026 cycle perhaps currently being prefigured in Bolivia, are indicative that a historical subject armed with the will and political program to bring about a definitive rupture with the capitalist system has not yet crystallized. In the absence of such counter-hegemonic historical block, we are left to experience the coexistance, on the one hand of Left theoretical flourishes announcing arrival of technofeudalism or technofascism, and, on the other, with a rising neofascist Right that appears everywhere to be capable of taking advantage of the crisis. Without a more granular understanding of “global capitalism from below” that deeply delves into the constitutive conditions for the historical agency of popular sectors in the current conjuncture, we shall continue witnessing how, despite its multiple contradictions, capitalism keeps limping along towards finding an exit of its latest crisis; an exit hewn thanks to a comprehensive restructuring of societies, the massive slaughter of lives and livelihoods and depredation of ecosystems.
Robinson’s essay has the merit of offering a “big picture” and establishing those key signposts that can serve both as compass and azimut for understanding possible future directions for Latin America. Robinson in this regard makes five key claims, a dark but not inexact guide on how to read the emergent present. First, the roots of the current conjuncture lie in an unparalleled crisis of overaccumulation, stagnation, and declining rate of profit (not in the mass of profits). Second, “Global Trumpism” has surfaced as the Transnational Capitalist Class’s (TCC) chosen predatory tool to unload overaccumulated surpluses. Third, the digital revolution has become central to the historical conjuncture as digital technologies, led by AI, expand the ability of ruling classes for surveillance and repression, while simultaneously augmenting the ranks of the surplus population. The digital revolution and AI amplify inequality and intensify ongoing crises of social reproduction, leading to further erosion of political legitimacy. Fourth, the TCC has no need for the social reproduction of the excluded global working classes, and through Global Trumpism, it seeks to contain, expel, and exterminate those not needed, “especially if they stand in the way of valuable resources.” Fifth, the brutal US imperial offensive underway in Latin America, fuses economic, political, and military power “to expand TCC access to energy resources and minerals needed for the digital technologies that are to drive global economic restructuring and transformation and to repress popular resistance from below.” Turbocharged fascism, unapologetic militarism, and naked imperial grabbing of Latin America’s natural resources, hence, are defining traits of the current historical conjuncture.
The coherence and dire prospects outlined by Robinson’s essay, deserve careful attention as it poses important and urgent theoretical, methodological, and political questions.
The TCC and the “Transnational State” in the Morbid Era of Monsters
How well have events of the last decade and the epochal exhaustion of capitalism posited by Robinson, interact with his TCC and Transnational State framework developed over the past decades? As anyone familiar with Robinson’s work knows, two of the major points of contention raised by critics in the past have been around, first, the existence of the TCC, and second, the rise of a “transnational state” in its service (now guided by Global Trumpism) that supersedes the role of national state formations in articulating and managing class domination. At this point, given the research of the past decade on inequality, inter-locking capitalist elites, and financialization, it is ludicrous to dispute that something akin to a TCC has emerged. Nonetheless, there remain significant murky areas about political mediation and modes of intervention through which the TCC relates to concrete class dynamics and class struggles in Latin American societies and elsewhere. Though Robinson’s essay offers illuminating generalizations, a more detailed analysis of how inter-capitalist class interests, nodes of accumulation, and value creation, appropriation, and distribution currently unfold, remain frustratingly vague and absent.
Indeed, with surprising celerity, the current historical conjuncture has opened crevices of such magnitude that the relevance of a putative transnational capitalist class and role of a transnational state at its service need to be reconsidered. Do these categories continue to be useful for ascertaining the driving forces behind geopolitical shifts and identifying specific political tasks at hand? The limits of an analysis of “global capitalism from above” are becoming too apparent. Even Robinson constructs his characterization of present conjuncture by belatedly conceding ground to his critics. Robinson indicates, “[t]his disjuncture between a globalized economy and a nation-state-based system of political authority generates enormous geopolitical tensions that are now being played out in the Americas. As the U.S. position as a hegemonic anchor” of world capitalism declines so too does the ability of the U.S. state to determine outcomes.” I interpret this as an acknowledgement that if “Global Trumpism” embodies the interests of the TCC, then Robinson’s “top down” analysis reveals its drawbacks when pinpointing those fissures, openings, contradictions, and strategic opportunities that working class and popular forces must be able to scrutinize and seize upon. In other words, if Robinson’s Global Capitalism/TCC/Transnanational State apparatus, has been able to bring us to understand the general contours of the current conjuncture, paradoxically it is also showing itself myopic in terms of answering key questions: What is to be done? By whom? How?
As a result, I suggest that we do not need to necessarily abandon Robinson’s “global capitalism from above” approach, but that we require constructing and complementing it with a “global capitalism from below” perspective. Only thus will we deepen our understanding of at least five sets of contradictions that become increasingly important as we struggle against global fascism. Robinson’s framing fails either to bring these into focus or, at best, offers us a blurry vision of their contours and constitutive components of fundamental contradictions.
Towards a “Global Capitalism from Below” Framework
Akin to the corrective optics which remedied the spherical aberration of the Hubble Telescope’s primary mirror, the current historical conjuncture indicates Robinson’s grand vision also needs an adjustment. Without any pretension of offering a definitive solution, I tentatively enumerate below what I consider could be important tentative steps in that direction. First, I identify five dimensions that require greater attention because they are where power relations are being constituted, and second, I give two examples of work carried out by colleagues that significantly enrich Robinson’s framing, giving it a much clearer vision about the possibilities of the present.
Five dimensions where contemporary contradictions are reconfiguring power relations that need to be theorized “from below’ so as to yield more grounded strategic and tactical orientations for socio-political and socio-territorial struggles are the following: (1) the role of inter-capitalist contradictions cutting across the global-national scale but also across different economic sectors; (2) the on-going recalibration of the state and domestic political systems as transnational capital attempts to impose its interests over society; (3) the contours of the new spatio-ecological fix with which capital and capitalists attempt to take advantage of the current climate crisis and energy transition; (4) the new modes of subjection and subjectivity making shaping desires, aspirations and their contradictions; and finally and most importantly (5) the new repertoires of territorial and class based resistance emerging from collective popular learning process and that are fueling popular “horizons of desire” and social protests likely to intensify given the US-led imperial offensive in the region (Leiva 2026). Robinson does not ignore these, but the vantage point from whence he theorizes, dilutes and glosses over important folds, rugosities, and particularities. More than finger pointing at “theoretical sins” or “analytical flaws” as some of his harshest have done in the past, Robinson’s rich contributions to critical theory should be evaluated by submitting it to the only test that truly matters: the fires of unfolding inter-elite, social, socio-territorial, and socio-ecological conflicts, or what, with a holistic understanding, we could call as the “horizontal” and “vertical” class struggles unfolding today. And this is possible only by paying closer attention to some of the five dimensions of unfolding contradictions mentioned above. Envisioning these in their fullness, requires theorizing “global capitalism” desde abajo.
Some creative intellectual work currently being performed by intellectuals from Latin America and beyond exemplify, what a “global capitalism from below” framework entails. It certainly does not mean abandoning a systemic or structural historical perspective; it requires dialectically more attention to the gendered and racialized livelihoods, spatialities, and ecologies, where life and the conditions of life are produced by the working and popular classes under the current historical conditions. The self-expanding valorization of capital is not the only or preferred starting point for understanding the dynamics of global capitalism. A much more detailed, finely grained, historically and geographically rich framing is required, and here Robinson’s essay falls short.
A reinvigorated Latin American Dependency Theory: Drawing from the latest Latin American elaborations on dependency theory (López and Barrera Ensua 2026; López 2026) as well as from the literature on financial subordination in the periphery (Wainer and Bona, 2025; López and Converti, 2026), it is possible to obtain a much more nuanced understanding of the architecture of “global capitalism.” Colleagues in the Tricontinental Political Economy team at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Emiliano López, Facundo Barrera Ensua, and Lucia Converti, among others, have mapped the architecture global capitalism by producing a Structural Dependency Index that traces six different channels through which the surplus is concretely produced and appropriated. Extending Ruy Mauro Marini’s analysis of circuits of capital in the periphery, these colleagues trace in detail specific forms of financial, technological, productive, network, distributive, and commercial dependency specific to each country. Being able to identify these dynamics with greater precision and detail is today fundamental.
A Socio-Ecological Fix and the Emergence of Planetary Finance: Another example of what “global capitalism from below” looks like is the work on planetary financialization being done by Socoloff, Shimbo, Adisson, and Halvert (2026).Their research manages to bring together the role of financial markets, socioecological relationships, and the production of space. They draw from different literatures on planetary urbanization, geographical studies of financialization, and Marxist political ecology, to argue that planetary financialization integrates these three into a single cross-cutting analytical framework that allows them to move from “local ecosystems to the entire earth and back” (Socoloff, et al., 2026). In doing so, they provide a richly detailed framing for understanding, beyond Robinson’s “Global Trumpism,” how capitalist attempt to overcome the crisis by integrating financialized financial infrastructures, processes of assetization, socioecological fixes, and the exploitation of labor and expropriation of the commons.
While Robinson’s essay has the indisputable distinction of offering a general overview of the moment, the lack of concrete grounding on the historically, geographically, culturally-socio-ecological specific conditions of historically determined socio-spatial territories of different Latin American social formations, limits the impact of his analysis for concrete struggles. Encouraging encounters and dialogues between Robinson’s work and efforts of colleagues, such as those mentioned above, should be a priority. The moment is critical enough so that the egos and implacability often found in theoretical debates, shouldgive way to a more generous acceptance of differences while finding commonality in praxis. This is more essential now than perhaps at any moment in recent dedades. Robinson’s essay brilliantly explains why this is so; colleagues working with a “global capitalism from below” framework show more clearly how it could be done.
