A Global and Unified System of Power?

The austerity policies responding to the economic crisis have given rise to questions about the nature of supranational institutions. Are they expressions of cosmopolitan solidarity to small countries’ economic problems, or forms of neocolonialism? Are they representative of an irreversible evolution toward a transnational capitalist unity, or temporary alliances? Questions such as “Who governs in the Americas and in Europe?” are bound to appear more frequently, as antagonism rages between major financial forces striving to reorganize their capital accumulation in a fragmented world market. In this condition, the Leninist analysis of imperialism regains analytical value, in contrast to theories of globalization that have analyzed contemporary capitalism in terms of a unified transnational elite that is no longer attached to the nation-state.