By Cliff DuRand 

With globalization, capitalism has undergone an epochal shift. No longer rooted in national economies, capital has become transnational. Large corporations roam the globe looking for cheap, compliant labor and resources, establishing production chains running through many nations. Similarly, investors can move their capital from country to country with a few keystrokes on their computers. We can now see a truly transnational capital controlled by a transnational capitalist class that owes no allegiance to any nation. 

Nevertheless, there are progressive forces opposing elite domination of the system. They are rallying around a green new deal program that responds to the challenge of catastrophic climate change. Allied with them are activists struggling for the third reconstruction against racialized capitalism. However, moving in the opposite direction is a growing right-wing populism. It is on this contested terrain that the class struggle for global hegemony is being fought. 

Social critics Jerry Harris and Carl Davidson will explore these ongoing struggles. Harris is the national secretary of the Global Studies Association. He has published “Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy” and “The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Struggle in a Transnational Era.” Davidson was a student leader of the New Left in the 1960s. Today he is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, advocating market socialism with worker ownership. With Harris, he co-authored “CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age.” 

They will speak August 10 in a webinar on “The Struggle for Global Hegemony.” This is a weekly program on a variety of social issues featuring thought-provoking thinkers. The Center for Global Justice is devoted to research and learning for a better world. We offer these webinars every Monday at 1pm Tune in at www.globaljusticecenter.org. You can also view past programs there.