Paul M. Sweezy co-founded Monthly Review in 1949, and, with Paul A. Baran, developed the fundamental analysis of accumulation under monopoly capitalism. Baran’s The Political Economy of Growth, published in 1957, set the template for understanding imperialism in the latter part of the twentieth century—an argument that was to be further developed in Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital (1966). Harry Magdoff, who would become the co-editor of Monthly Review, carried this project forward in The Age of Imperialism (1969) by investigating the historical trajectory of imperialism and tracing the contours of monopoly capitalism as a world system of exploitation. Their collective effort helped form a current of independent socialist thought of increasing importance on a global scale.

      Today, the struggle continues against a global capitalist system that has created conditions of increased exploitation in the countries of the global South, alongside a vast transfer of wealth to imperialist centers of the global North. While untold profits accrue to imperialism’s ruling elite—the 1 percent of society at home and abroad—the 99 percent of the world’s population experience greater hardship and misery. The imperial system of the twenty-first century is one marked by growing uncertainty, instability, and ecological disaster. The promise of national emancipation through independence has not been fulfilled in general. Capitalist globalization is in fact imperialism without colonies.

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      IMPERIALISM

      in the Twenty-First Century

       Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis

      John Smith