El Nuevo Imperialismo: Crisis y Contradicciones en las Relaciones Norte-Sur

Based on up-to-date evidence and a well-structured theoretical articulation (from Dependency Theory, Systems Theory and Regulation Theory), Biel observes the history of capitalism as an expanding process of exploitation of the world’s social and natural systems. His analysis concludes – among the several possible courses of action – that not only the current neo-imperialist regime of accumulation but also capitalism could be approaching a final crisis of exhaustion.

Chapters one to four analyze the dawn of capitalism to post-World War II liberalism. Capitalism is essentially expansive, first into Europe and then to the rest of the world. This process initially implied the revolutionary imposition of the “nation” and the “metropolis” as dominant political and economic paradigms, defeating alternative socio-territorial systems of organization (this is evidenced in the four phases of capitalism: colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism). However, capitalism was never merely a local phenomenon. Instead, it increasingly depends on a world system of relations that extracts resources from the South, exporting in exchange social and environmental entropy to the periphery. Without this global trade-off, capitalism could not survive.

Chapters five to seven analyze the world during the Cold War. The Soviet Union debacle was the result of a crisis of overproduction, generated more by the frenetic competition with the West and less by the limitations of their extreme planned rationality. The reasons for China’s success during this period are also analyzed. In the South, because of the momentary balance of power, Latin America, Africa and much of Asia could develop some alternative projects of autarchic economies and regional collaboration. However, these attempts, as well as the international institutions created (e.g. UNCTAD, G-77) lost relevance with the inevitable restoration of imperialism.

Chapters eight to 12 observe the global transition to a post-Fordist regime, focusing on the several political, economic, social and environmental implications of the neoliberal mode of regulation. First, neoliberalism is not static but, rather, an evolving process that “learns” to incorporate informal systems of production for the sake of accumulation. In parallel, neoliberalism discursively promotes agency and individual freedom (hiding its strong systemic political interventionism), linked with a biased manipulation of post-modern thought and a technological determinism. In the South, the international managerial system restores the former levels of political and economic intervention through the exertion of militarized state power, state roll-back and international credit and debt.

In open contrast, Chapters 13 and 14 envisage possible scenarios of alternative development in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Two forms of regionalism appear realistic: on the one hand, attempts by South–South coalitions that take advantage of the currently faster systems of communication and trade; on the other, a re-invigoration of social movements based on fragments of local culture and the vacuums left by the neoliberal dismantling of the national states. The present Spanish edition, published in parallel with an Arabic one, includes a new fifteenth chapter, whereby Biel observes recent events: e.g. the wars in Iraq and on “terrorism”, the ENRON crisis in the US, the several demonstrated fallacies of sustainable development, and the diminished roles of international managerial institutions.

In sum, the book analyzes the progressively limited capacity of imperialism to manoeuvre in this new century, hence its astonishing dependence on military power. Furthermore, the uneven global balance between energy and entropy is reaching a final momentum. Nevertheless, the dissipation exported from the North not only produces chaos but also opportunities for political contestation, the basis for a revolutionary new phase: “…in its neo