Five Characteristics of Neoimperialism - Neoimperialism and the Neoliberal State

Table of contents

1. The New Monopoly of Production and Circulation
2. The New Monopoly of Finance Capital
3. Minority of Financial Institutions Control Main Global Economic Arteries
4. The Globalization of Monopoly-Finance Capital
5. From Production to Speculative Finance
6. The Monopoly of the U.S. Dollar and Intellectual Property
7. The Spatial Expansion of the Capital-Labor Relation: Global Value Chains and the Global Labor Arbitrage
8. Monopoly-Finance Capital and Multinational Corporate Dominance
9. Neoimperialism and the Neoliberal State
10. U.S. Dollar Hegemony, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Plundering of Global Wealth
11. The New Monopoly of the International Oligarchic Alliance
12. The G7 as the Mainstay of the Imperial Capitalist Core
13. NATO and the International Monopoly-Capitalist Military and Political Alliance
14. Cultural Hegemony Dominated by Western “Universal Values”
15. The Economic Essence, the General Trend, and the Four Forms of Ideological Fraud
16. Economic Hegemony and Fraud
17. Political Hegemony and Fraud
18. Cultural Hegemony and Fraud
19. Military Hegemony and Fraud
20. Neoimperialism Is a Parasitic and Decaying Late Imperialism
21. Neoimperialism Is a Transitional and Moribund Late Capitalism

Since the mid–1970s, economic stagflation has seen Keynesianism abandoned by governments, or employed much less. Neoliberal approaches such as modern monetarism, the rational expectations school, and supply-side theories are hits among economists, and dominate economic theory and policy in the neoimperialist countries. This is because these approaches accord with the expanding globalization and financialization of monopoly capital. Neoliberalism is a superstructure that has arisen on the basis of financial monopoly capital; essentially, it represents the basis for the ideology and policies required to maintain the rule of neoimperialism. In the 1980s, U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher were the world standard-bearers of neoliberalism. Advocating the ideas of modern monetarism and the positions of the private property and supply-side schools, they implemented privatization and market-oriented reforms, relaxed government supervision, and weakened the power of labor unions to defend working-class rights. After taking office, Reagan immediately approved the establishment of a special group of CEOs, with vice president George H. W. Bush as its director, to revoke or relax regulations. The changes advocated by the group related to job safety, labor protection, and the protection of consumer interests. The Reagan administration also joined forces with big capitalists to crack down on labor unions in the public and private sectors, dismissing union leaders and organizers and leaving the working class, already in a weak position, even worse off. The so-called Washington-Wall Street Complex argued that the interests of Wall Street and those of the United States were identical; what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The U.S. government had in practice become a tool for the financial oligarchy to pursue its economic and political interests.27 Therefore, it was not the votes of citizens, or even the democratic system of the separation of powers, but the Wall Street financial oligarchy and the military-industrial complex that ultimately controlled the government. Wall Street influenced the political process and policy formation in the United States by providing campaign contributions and manipulating the media. Held captive by monopoly interest groups, the U.S. government had little power to promote the sound development of the economy and society and to improve people’s livelihood. The list of Wall Street executives with annual salaries of tens of millions of dollars features numerous matches with the people holding top U.S. government posts. For example, the seventieth U.S. secretary of the treasury, Robert Edward Rubin, had previously spent twenty-six years working for investment bankers Goldman Sachs. The seventy-fourth secretary of the treasury, Henry Paulson, had earlier served the Goldman Sachs Group as its chairman and CEO. Many senior officials of the Donald Trump administration also had histories as executives of monopoly enterprises. The existence of this “revolving door” mechanism means that even if the government were to introduce relevant financial regulatory policies, it would be hard fundamentally to shake the interests of the financial chaebols of Wall Street.

Whenever a financial crisis occurs, the government provides emergency assistance to the monopoly oligarchs of Wall Street. U.S. scholars have found that the Federal Reserve has used secret emergency loans to meet the needs of large Wall Street interest groups, in some instances providing strong support to bankers who are board members of regional Federal Reserve banks. In 2007, the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis broke out. Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street’s top five investment banks, was acquired by JPMorgan Chase. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America. Goldman Sachs, however, survived; the main reasons include a decision by the government to urgently grant Goldman Sachs the status of a holding company, allowing it to obtain massive life-saving funds from the Federal Reserve. In addition, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission banned the shorting of financial stocks.28

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