Global finance capitalism: Rebirth or denouement?

Abstract

The rise of neoliberalism is coincident with the dominance of financial capitalism in its global form. Moreover, there are those who would argue that neoliberalism is synonymous with global financial capitalism. There is no doubt that what we have witnessed during the ascendance of neoliberalism is the dominance of global finance capital over industrial capital. Yet, while the obituary of capitalism in this form has been penned multiple times, it remains very much alive, proliferating even on a global scale creating ever sharper cleavages between the (mega) rich and the growing masses of the poor. In this paper we examine neoliberalism as a policy regime and its role in the proliferation of global capitalism. The analysis takes the form of a consideration of key texts that examine the macro, meso, and micro incarnations of global finance capitalism. The architecture of global finance capital is examined through a consideration of asset managers who exert growing influence on contemporary development. The micro aspects of the system through which extraction of capital is facilitated are examined culminating in a consideration of the future of the system.

Introduction

Neoliberalism as a policy regime has been dominant over the past half a century or thereabouts. Yet, in many ways there is uncertainty about whether it still exerts the hegemonic power which was explicitly identified through its ideological, institutional, and political forms. At a macro-level therefore, the nature of the system was identified and its historical roots and ideological underpinnings were thoroughly dissected. Geographers too contributed to the debates and offered their critique. The dawn of the millennium and the two decades thereafter witnessed a huge volume of work from multiple perspectives and many case-studies detailing the micro-impacts of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism has been criticized for transforming into something nebulous, and in consequence, attempts to engage with neoliberalism as a concept is simply an exercise in explanatory or analytical futility. However, it is a matter of perspective. For the purposes of analysis, it may be useful to interrogate the forms that neoliberalism takes during specific historical periods.

In this paper our stance is that neoliberalism is very much alive (cf. Gabor, 2021), and if anything, what we see is a neoliberalism that has proliferated and is even more dominant than ever. Furthermore, neoliberalism as class power has seen increasing levels of centralization and concentration of capital, facilitated through new forms of formal and real subsumption spewing out a global spatial formation where the islands of prosperity produce oceans of poverty. A review of the myriads of narratives in this regard may prove to be a fruitless exercise and is beyond the scope of this paper. What we seek to do in this paper is to consider the (dialectical) relationship between neoliberalism as a policy regime and the proliferation of global finance capitalism. This in itself is a daunting task though. However, there is a narrative to be related in this regard. The narrative will unfold in the following way. A number of key texts of fairly recent provenance will be considered.

Firstly, Peet's (2021) text ‘Global Finance Capitalism’ will provide a structural framework for the consideration of finance capitalism. Thereafter, we consider how global finance continues to colonize those areas which were hitherto considered terra incognita. In this regard we consider Brett Christophers (2024) text ‘The Price is Wrong’ which details how the process of formal and real subsumption operates in the Energy sector. And, how, applying Peet's (2021) policy regime structural analysis various intricate strategies are employed by global finance to deliver profit to the private sector.

Another book by Brett Christophers (2023) ‘Our lives in their Portfolios- ‘How Asset Managers Own the World’ reveals how a key shift in development has occurred from structural adjustment to privatization of society on a hitherto unimagined scale. Christophers (2023) shows how perhaps the last vestiges to fall under capitalist control – sub-Saharan Africa in particular- are being discursively colonized by key changes in the west as an architecture is developed to place this space under the control of Wall Street.

The architecture of the structure is considered by David Graeber's (2019) text ‘Bullshit Jobs’. Graeber seeks to explain the rise of jobs that serve no purpose. Moreover, they have no social value and are recognized by those who occupy these positions as such. Yet, there has been a dramatic increase in such jobs. Graeber (2019) wants to understand why? We consider the rise of bullshit jobs as a key cog to facilitate extraction by global finance capital. How would the management contracts, key to the income stream of finance companies, be justified then without managers? The more managers the more fees accrue to the finance companies. And, how do managers manage without an army of administrators? It is not a particularly sophisticated confidence trick, but it has and continues to work to such an extent that finance companies extract billions of dollars in this way.

What of the future, the endgame of global financial capitalism? For Peet (2021) we need an intensive critique of the system–a critical modernism–and its replacement by a system of popular egalitarian control. For others though, there is a pessimism that we may now have actually entered a period of rule by an even tinier minority in terms of political and economic control (cf. Graeber, 2019 ; Varoufakis, 2023) The danger here is that our very being is being is falling increasingly under the control of algorithms. For Yanis Varoufakis (2023), we have entered the age of ‘technofeudalism’ which is structurally configured to enable the extraction of rent by a minority who control technology platforms.

Neoliberalism as policy regime

Dick Peet's latest book–Global Finance Capitalism–succeeds admirably in synthesizing complex, difficult to understand concepts which have come to constitute what is referred to as global financial capitalism. Peet, a longtime Professor of Geography at Clark University, in Worcester; Massachusetts, now retired after teaching for over 50 years at the institutions’ Graduate School of Geography claims that Global Finance Capitalism probably will be his last book. The book summarizes and builds on in some respects on a critique that Peet has developed over a period of just over half a century starting off with unstable anarchic beginnings to a structuralist Marxism that remained obscured (not hidden) during the years when Marxist geography came under ‘attack’ particularly the 1980s and the 1990s. In Global Finance Capitalism Peet adopts a structuralist approach in order to elucidate the evolution of capitalist development over a period of roughly 300 years or so. For a more detailed appraisal refer to some of Peet's earlier works on for example ‘Theories of Development’. In this book Peet adopts the lens of what he refers to as ‘policy regimes’.

Peet (2021) adopts an intermediate level of analysis between the general and the particular to interrogate the capitalist mode of production over the past 100 years and a bit. Policy regimes occupy a sort of middle ground that is more general than specific strategies adopted by social formations and more specific than social formations like finance capital. Peet's argument is that the social formations are a product of social struggle specifically class struggle. Social formations emerge out of struggle around policy regimes. During a historical period, several policy regimes may exist, however, there is a hegemonic regime which reflects the dominance of the ruling class in terms of economic, political, social and cultural power. For Peet (2021, p.7) “a policy regime indicates: a systematic approach to policy formation by a set of government or governance institutions; dealing with a definable, limited range of issues; that prevails, as the dominant state-interventionary framework; over a historical period lasting at least several decades; with sets of policies applied in much the same way across a number of societies; with broadly similar categories of socio-political-economic effects.” The dominant policy regime at any one time is a product of struggle among the policy elite, who during times of crisis in social formations interpret socio-economic conditions and act in their own interest. The struggle itself is structured and coheres around a contestation over institutional-intellectual-ideological power.

Peet (2021) then applies this structure of analysis to understand shifts in the capitalist social formation identifying four key policy regimes viz. 1. (1) Classical Liberalism; (2) Global Industrial Capitalism; ((3) Keynesianism/Social Democracy; and (4) Neoliberalism. Within each policy regime there are sub-policy regimes with specific geographical variants. For example, during the Keynesian regime/phase there are two identifiable phases viz. a weaker Keynesian Liberal Democracy variant found in the US and a stronger Keynesian Social Democracy variant found in post war Britain and Europe. In broad terms up until the mid-1970s global industrial capital was the dominant policy regime. Following a transitional period into the mid-1980s and early 1990s there was a distinct shift from industrial to financial capitalism. In many ways it signaled open warfare if not the defeat of the working class with de-unionization and an alarming decline in real wage levels. Tellingly, the rise of financial capital is co-incident with the delinking of productivity and wage levels. In the United States for example, under the Keynesian policy regime, the real wages of workers kept up with productivity levels – the tacit agreement between labour and capital through collective bargaining ensured that the relationship was kept intact. And, indeed creating demand for manufactured goods. Over a forty-year period under neoliberalism productivity increased by 75 percent while workers wages rose by 9 percent.

Peet (2021) reserves his most trenchant critique for the epistemic system which has provided the intellectual rationale for the increased exploitation and immiseration of the majority, namely the discipline of economics. For Peet (2021) economics is not theoretically pure in terms of providing an objective view of (economic) reality. Rather, it is steeped in politics and is never neutral. Moreover, economics, non-heterodox, conventional economics serve the ruling class and is directly implicated in the continued hegemony of the (global) capitalist development. Authors such as Christophers (2023, 2024); Graeber (2019; and Varoufaakis (2023) are in broad agreement with this argument.

Peet (2021) demonstrates that the classical economist Ricardo in particular, arguing for comparative advantage was simply motivating on behalf of the dominant political forces acting through the rationale of economics to create a system of unequal development. Economics is ‘socially and politically constructed, not natural entities’ (p.23). The rationale for free trade was developed centuries ago and is still dominant today. Free trade like ‘free’ labour is not free but benefits an entrenched (geo) political structure. Moreover, the structure serves class interests; the social and political elites–'science expresses prejudices, theory favours interests” (p.32).

Following Keynes, Peet (2021) is of the view that consumption drives supply. The social upheaval of the 1960s translated into the neoliberalism of the 1970s onwards. The 1970s signaled a fightback by economic elites against the working class–too much had been redistributed to workers. Inequality had narrowed. The capitalism mode of production was also changing–high technology for the core countries in the context of a globalized commodity production system and the attendant rise of finance capital.

During the 1970s big business launched a counter-offensive through the aggressive funding of lobbyists and think-tanks marketing pro-business messages. Think tanks influenced every area of public policy. In effect, business had captured the center of policy formulation. From there it was but a short step to the transformation of government that governed the general interest in the interest of business.

The global financial structure has increased inequality. The poorest are found in the countries of the Global South. The structure of inequality is geographical in nature. The more geographical space falls under the influence of global finance capital, the more extraction of the surplus is directed to a small pool of the elite and their cronies, while the pool of the poor grows ever larger.

Yet, for Peet (2021) development should not be abandoned. It has potential to promote progress for the masses. Peet suggests that we adopt, what he terms ‘critical modernism’ as an updated structuralism to inform a much-needed socialist order.

Peet (2021) provides a structure of analysis and is in broad agreement with others that there has been a shift within the neoliberal policy regime. What the nature of this shift is–whether it is transitional phase or an entirely new policy regime is not entirely clear. Peet does not name this policy regime. Several authors, among them David Graeber; Yanis Varoufakis and Brett Christophers have analyzed the policy regime identified by Peet using various lenses. It may be useful to briefly interrogate these perspectives in order to better understand this policy regime.

Neoliberalism as the privatization of life

In two recent books The Price is Wrong (2024) and Our Lives in their Portfolios (2023), Brett Christophers details how finance capital has risen to a position of almost total dominance. What is interesting to note is that the ultimate objective of increased profit is achieved insidiously using a progressive message. The rabid capitalist core enabling the transfer of social wealth to a private greedy minority elite is encased in an integument that at first sight projects the protection of the public interest. Take climate change for example. Progressive action against fossil fuels, which translates in one form into support for renewable energy. The provision of renewable energy is anything but progressive in form and substance as Christophers (2024) demonstrates in his book ‘The Price is Wrong’. Climate change is a global crisis demanding a global response. The global response has to be informed by an attendant political response. There is a recognition that such a response is required as evidenced by various multi-lateral agreements and initiatives undertaken since the turn of the century. The terms of the response, and indeed the interpretation of the nature of the crisis serves vested (class) interests, as Peet (2021) argues. The private sector is identified as the primary vehicle to deliver the transition to renewables. The conceptual foundation for the neoliberalisation of the energy sector was laid by the World Bank during the 1980s. Importantly, institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF (the Washington Consensus) were primarily responsible for dictating and determining the terms of development and the development agenda on a global scale. In consequence, the policy positions adopted by the Washington Consensus ensured that vested global (western/ American) interests were served and protected.

For Christophers (2024), the history of the energy sector since the 1980s is the story of neoliberalism. The World Bank's 1993 paper on energy policy unequivocally advocated for private sector involvement and control. Private sector intervention would take the following form. Firstly, institutional specialization meant that previously vertically integrated power sector would be disaggregated and unbundled into its constituent parts viz. generation, transmission and distribution. The role of the state would therefore be redefined. The state was expected to play a regulatory role, but also underwriting the profit-making imperative of capital. We will turn to this point later on. Secondly, private sector involvement in the form of ownership or other variations such as public-private partnerships, but in the final instance overdetermination by the private sector, thirdly, competition as a key mechanism, linked to the fourth factor marketization i.e., the creation of a market in the electricity sector.

Electricity was considered a ‘natural monopoly’. However, the neoliberal onslaught during the 1980s, with economics a key driver in this regard meant that the entire state apparatus was targeted for reconceptualization in neoliberal terms. Following Karl Polanyi (1944), electricity may be conceptualized as a ‘fictious commodity’. For Polyani (1944) a fictious commodity is not meant to be bought and sold on the market as conventional commodities are. A fiction therefore had to be devised to facilitate the commodification of electricity. In the electricity sector, problems related to blackouts, unaffordable prices, failing infrastructure among others were identified as key characteristics of state ‘inefficiency’. The antidote was off course private sector ‘efficiency’. In order for the electricity sector to be opened up to private sector intervention several key changes needed to be effected. The unbundling of the electricity sector meant a separation into generation, transmission and, distribution. The purpose of the unbundling of the electricity sector was to facilitate competition among multiple actors. The rationale was that competition would bring down prices. According to Christophers (2024), it was only in the generation sector that there was any noticeable participation of the private sector. The irony is that although there was initial competition among private sector actors, over a period of time the sector reverted to a virtual state of monopoly. What about the impact on the price of electricity? How was this determined under the new policy regime?

The price of electricity under this regime was determined in a number of ways. The mechanism that facilitated the determination of electricity prices was marketization. Marketization simply means the creation of markets for the purchase and sale of electricity. In this regard, electricity was bought and sold on the ‘spot’ market. The spot market is time and space dependent. Suffice to say the contingency of the market meant that players were subject to (huge) risks. Consequently, there were times when sizeable profits were made while at other times equally sizeable losses were incurred to such an extent generation companies had to close. In such cases, the state has to step in to either bail out companies or to take over operations. It was necessary therefore to address issues of risk or create mechanism so that risk could be borne by the state or in the best-case scenario, where profits could be made at the expense of the state and the consumer. The point here is that the processes described viz. institutional restructuring (unbundling); privatizations; competition; and marketization facilitated the financialization of a sector which was hardly deemed eligible or even suitable for private sector intervention. Indeed, electricity (generation) is a key target for financialization. The crude reason is so that mega-profits may accrue to a few finance companies and their shareholders. Major global companies such as JP Morgan have more than a passing interest in the energy sector. Financial reports are published periodically on the opportunities and challenges facing the energy sector. It is quite literally financial gurus dispensing their pearls of wisdom (cf. Cembalest, 2024). How do finance companies exercise influence in the energy sector?

Control of electricity does not lie with generation rather in a maze of agreements related to the acquisition and sale of power that is generated by generators. Take for Bear Energy which was established in 2005 as an energy trading business by Bear Stearns, the global finance company which collapsed during the global finance crisis of 2008. Bear Energy entered into agreements with power producers to purchase and sell electricity. After the collapse of Bear Stearns, the business was sold to JP Morgan Chase and was subsumed under JP Morgan Ventures Energy Corporation. In short this venture netted JP Morgan hundreds of millions of dollars largely through various creative manipulations of the market mechanisms. They were found out though and had to pay back ill-gotten gains. Yet, the sale of the business, when they decided to exit, amounted to three quarters of a billion dollars (Christophers, 2024). It is the nature of financial alchemy, creating wealth out of thin (dirty) air.

The creation of the fictious commodity has a singular imperative, profit maximization. To be specific, it is the maximization of profit in the shortest possible time. Furthermore, it is the pursuit of profit to the exclusion of all else. Climate change poses an existential threat. However, (fossil fuel) energy producers are not willing to abandon their dirty business. It is simply too profitable. The price of renewable electricity derived from wind and solar in particular is now below that of electricity generated from coal. It would follow that there would be a major turn to cheaper, cleaner energy sources. According to Christophers (2024) energy generation is still dominated by fossil fuels. If price is not driver of an energy transition, then what is? Christophers (2024) answer is that the energy transition is and will continue to be determined by profit. The energy transition has been handed over to the private sector. The role of the state is to regulate the sector so that the profits of private companies are guaranteed.

Terra Incognita–the proliferation of neoliberalism and the rise of the asset managers

The design of contracts needs to ensure that extraction of profits is legitimized and that investments by the private sector not only guarantee healthy returns but are also de-risked. The de-risking of investments refers to the transfer of risk from the private sector to the state. Indeed Gabor (2021) identified de-risking as a new paradigm in development. Seemingly, de-risking is but one aspect of the movement to a deeper financialization of development. The elements or contours of at least a transition to another stage of capitalist development or as Peet labels it a transitional policy regime is visible. In some ways there is a discursive maturation taking place, in other words, discursive power is being exercised in a sophisticated way to facilitate (almost) complete control of the state. Indeed, the state is rendered the handmaiden of capital through regulatory capture and through monetary and fiscal control. The question arises: how has/does this process unfold(ed)? The proliferation of neoliberalism on a global scale was facilitated through multi-lateral institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO, collectively referred to as the Washington Consensus. A key feature of the Washington Consensus was austerity in its many and varied forms. The impact of the Washington Consensus was uniformly disastrous, particularly for the Global South which was simply viewed as a market to be opened up for global corporations. Over the years austerity has slowly eroded to be replaced (not completely) by a ‘softer’ approach based on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). The terms in such partnerships favour the private sector. The policy regime was facilitated through the change in the policy regime of the Washington Consensus itself with a movement to what Gabor (2021) refers to as the Wall Street Consensus. This movement was in turn influenced by stances outlined in the Billions to Trillions document which linked the private sector to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Maximizing Finance for Development; and perhaps overtly Infrastructure as an Asset Class. The intention was to redirect or perhaps more specifically, open up new markets for finance capital to ‘invest’ the many trillions dammed up in the sector. The target here is public infrastructure (cf. World Bank identification of US$12 trillion in public infrastructure). It is a key moment because it signaled in many ways the collapse of the last vestiges of what constituted the public and the private and the rise of what Christophers (2023) following Benjamin Braun has labelled asset manager capitalism. In 2020, assets under management were estimated to be some US$103 trillion (Heredia et al., 2021). Little wonder that Christophers (2023) titled his book: Our lives in their Portfolios; Why asset managers own the world.

In the book Christophers (2023) makes a convincing argument detailing the rise of finance, specifically asset finance, from virtually zero during the early 1980s to the eye-watering amounts listed in the BCG report published in 2021. And, this was during the COVID pandemic. In parenthesis we could conclude that the huge amounts under management were a consequence of capital which found its way into the stock markets instead of the built environment. The decline in consumer spending during the pandemic meant that more money was available for the wealthy to invest in the stock exchange. A key reason for the increase in stocks was the liquidity pumped into financial markets by the central banks. The wealthiest in society became even wealthier while at the other pole, the lives of the poor became even more tenuous. The statistics produced by organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank and, Oxfam revealed the extent of the inequality between the rich and the poor. Estimates of those who have been pushed into extreme poverty range from 90 million to 160 million people (Ferreira, 2021; Oxfam, 2022; World Bank, 2022).

The increase in asset management finance is concomitant with the liquidity which flooded financial markets during the pandemic. In effect it was a massive transfer of public money into private hands. The Oxfam (2022) report on inequality details the obscene wealth of the minority elite. Yet, this is only part of a narrative which has unfolded over time–the centralization and concentration of wealth controlled by an ever declining minority at one pole and an ever-growing mass of the poor at the other pole. According to Christophers (2023), there are three global asset managers–Blackrock; Vanguard Capital, and State Street–which own significant stakes in all major corporations–20 percent on average.

Global asset managers have switched from managing purely financial assets like bonds and other securities to ‘real assets’. Real assets are those assets which are tangible–like housing and infrastructure. Global asset managers like Blackrock and Macquarie lead in massive assets under management in housing, water, sanitation, education, agriculture, energy supply, transportation, telecommunications, education, among others. These are what are termed asset classes. The asset classes are linked to monetary and fiscal policy. It is what animates the present global finance capital policy regime.

The scope of asset manager capitalism leads Christophers to the conclusion that global finance capitalism in its present incarnation has led to the creation of ‘asset manager society’. It is process driven–an insidious colonization of the very fabric of the social metabolism. The aspect of control is important. Control over society is exercised by asset managers via their control of physical assets imbues them with the power to map the contours of everyday life. Asset managers through their control of infrastructure thus possess the power to determine the way in society functions. Theirs is not an egalitarian function, if anything quite the opposite: the rapacious extraction of rents and the creation of a social spatial formation that is exclusive rather than inclusive. (cf. Peet, 2007, in his book The Geography of Power, argued that a handful of investment managers are responsible for directing global finance capitalism). In many instances, asset managers are pure rentier – they have no interest in service provision for example other than short term extractivism and maximization of profit. The concept of the ‘long term contract’ is purely a ruse.

The extraction of rents is dependent on marketing. To be less generous it is a confidence trick and the architecture of asset management is engineered to facilitate the flow of profits from the public into private pockets. The ruse for the transfer of public assets to private control is simply ‘efficiency’. Yet, there is no conclusive evidence that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector in the management of public services. Asset managers rarely use their own money and when they do contribute equity, they are rarely the majority partner. However, when all is said is done, it is the asset manager who extracts the maximum whether a profit is made or not. The asset manager extracts upwards of twenty percent through management and performance contracts. In cases where equity is contributed asset managers also take their slice as shareholders. So, the relationship is a parasitic one–the parasite literally sucks the host dry, leaving in the main, destruction in its wake. It is the poor and the vulnerable who are left with the crumbs–the majority of pensioners who contribute a lifetime of savings; minority shareholders, and the public. It is still a minority who make the largest contributions and reap the largest rewards though. Take a look at the Wikipedia pages of Blackrock; Vanguard and State Street for a peek at the assets under management and the profits earned.

The architecture of extraction–the rise of bullshit jobs

David Graeber (2019) in his book ‘Bullshit Jobs’ describes the phenomenon of such jobs which are pointless, having little or no social value. Graeber (2019, p.9) defines bullshit jobs as follows: “a bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.” Graeber identifies a trend that is synchronous with the increase in pointless employment–a key shift away from productive/production jobs to administrative type positions. Graeber, estimates that anything up 40 percent may be bullshit jobs. Bullshit jobs serve the extractive imperative of global finance capital. In the FIRE sector (Finance; Insurance and Real Estate) “it creates money (by making loans) and then moves it around in often extremely complicated ways, extracting another small cut with every transaction” (p.167). Note the extraction of megaprofits by global asset management companies is facilitated through management contracts. There is also the addition of performance contracts. The reams of useless/pointless paperwork (now the digital equivalent) are used to justify ‘management’ and ‘performance’. For Graeber (2019) a lot of what the finance sector does is so much smoke and mirrors. The attendant rise in information sector jobs is similarly based on smoke and mirrors. Efficiency for example is exemplified through the proliferation of managers; supervisors and like whose essential role is to throttle the life out of actual producers. For Graeber (2019, p.191) “there seems to an intrinsic connection between the financialization of the economy, the blossoming of information industries and the proliferation of bullshit jobs.” Graeber goes a bit further by suggesting that the rise in finance capitalism and the attendant rise in meaningless jobs, in the finance sector signals not so much capitalism in motion but rather a merger between politics and economics. He likens this movement more akin to feudalism than capitalism.

Global financial capitalism–Quo Vadis?

Yanis Varoufakis (2023) takes the argument further by claiming that we have now entered an era of technofeudalism. In his book Technofeudalism- What killed Capitalism’ Varoufakis argues that we have moved beyond capitalism to life controlled by a handful of owners of technology companies who draw their power from ownership of various technology platforms. Here he is referring to companies like Amazon; Apple; Google; Meta among others. Varoufakis (2023) provides his take on the evolution of the capitalist mode of production from industrial capitalism to finance capital arguing that the demise of the Bretton Woods system and the decoupling of the dollar from the gold standard freed up the dollar to assume global hegemonic power – as the currency of choice governing global trade. Varoufakis agrees with others such as Graeber and Peet that instead of flowing back into production and the built environment, capital flooded Wall Street. This, for Varoufakis, is how finance capital came into a position of dominance. Accompanying this rise to dominance was the revolution in computing which facilitated the circulation of capital at superspeed and the creation of unimaginable volumes of (fictional digital) money.

Varoufakis (2023) claims that capitalism has been replaced by technologically driven feudalism. Technofeudalism is structurally similar to feudalism in the sense that it is based on hierarchy and the extraction of rent rather than profit. The structure consists of various components: the cloud proles or cloud proletarians i.e., workers who work for the Amazon, the Googles, and the Ubers. There are then the vassal capitalists. The vassal capitalists produce goods to be sold online. In order to do that they have to pay rent to the owner of the platform on which it is sold. A third component is the cloud serf. The cloud serf supplies free labour through the volunteering of content e.g., uploading videos on YouTube. Capital is produced by cloud serfs for accumulation by the (techno) feudal lord i.e., owners of cloud capital. There is a one-way flow of capital in the form of rents to ‘cloudalists’. For Varoufakis there is delinking from the real economy as more and more rent accrues to the owners of cloud capital and less is available for workers in production. Yet, the new feudal lords simply can’t keep everything for themselves. The accumulated capital goes back into keeping the system going and enabling its proliferation. It is a creation of an increasingly privatized world where morals, values, ethics are determined by algorithms developed and controlled by a minority for power and control over the majority–desire is manufactured to serve uncontrolled consumerism. The ‘progressive’ is appropriated and repackaged to serve reactionary ends. For example, some of the biggest investors in renewable energy are Google and Amazon–the technology business is energy intensive. The inequalities in resource consumption continue apace as technology companies enter into long term contracts with producers of renewable energy. They also employ more cloud proles increasing the size and scale of the gig economy. The system which Varoufakis (2023) describes is a product of finance capital. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis central banks flooded markets with liquidity. The liquidity went to the rich who used the capital to buy back company shares further increasing their share price. (These companies seemingly defy market logic–under loss-making conditions or unfavourable economic data on these companies, their share price … rises!). The spiral was out of control – share prices skyrocketed. It was in this context that the owners of cloud capital built up the physical infrastructure of their companies. For Varoufakis, capital manufactured its own demise.

Conclusion

What we have witnessed over the past 40 to 50 odd years is the rise of finance capital as a social formation and the institutionalization of neoliberalism which has entrenched class power producing an uneven geography of inequality. The creation of a (neoliberal) global geography of inequality is exemplified by the dialectical connection between Global Finance Capital in London and New York with its consequence, abject poverty in Burundi, Mozambique and the Congo–emaciated brown hands grasping for a share of a handful of grain as illustrated on the cover of Peet's Global Finance Capitalism is the reality for the majority of the poor occupying the margins yet fully connected to the universe of extraction. Thus, the geography of global finance capitalism is a geography of inequality, exploitation, and poverty. Not much different from colonialism and apartheid, just on a much larger scale though.

The writers reviewed in this paper are in broad agreement about the link between neoliberalism as an economic project and neoliberalism as a political project. For Peet, Christophers, Graeber and, Varoufakis, neoliberalism is a political project. The objective therefore is to control, transfer and maintain, and increase the wealth of a minority. The latest restructuring is seemingly a transitional phase to renewed accumulation based on the exploitation of resources essential to techno-capitalism. Just as structural adjustment opened up new markets for western bankers to solve the accumulation crisis of the time, so too does the latest emphasis on PPP and infrastructure solve the accumulation crisis of global finance capitalism. Together with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure renewal (building back better) is now the focus to facilitate extraction of rare earth minerals found in the Global South. Whatever the outcome of the struggle between the neocolonialists the ramifications for the majority are increased immiseration, poverty, and inequality.