Because international finance capital requires stability at the core, all the important capitalist powers endorse the crucial political and economic positions taken by the United States. But the Americans are not providing stability to world markets, even as the countries of South fall prey to predatory capital. As the global economy crushes the poor beneath its heel, the welfare states of the underdeveloped world are further weakened, public services less accessible, employment more insecure and income disparities accentuated. The contradictions of a rapacious imperialism are making themselves felt more acutely, but the ground needs to be prepared for a resistance movement across the countries of the South.
Two features define the capitalist world economy at the start of the 21st century. The first is the continuing, indeed overwhelming, significance of imperialism as the defining feature of global economic relations, with the term broadly defined as the struggle by large capital over control of economic territory of various types. The second is that this current imperialism is different in several crucial ways from that described by Lenin nearly a century ago as the monopoly stage of capitalism. To some extent the differences are simply the result of history, the evolution of both the institutions and processes of capitalism. But they are also the result of the effects of the recent processes of deregulation of trade and capital markets as well as other forms of economic liberalisation (constituting the essence of what is typically called 'globalisation'), which have given the new imperialism its cutting edge.
In terms of the current world economic trends, therefore, we can identify a number of important differences from the imperialist globalisation of the late 19th century. These include: the implications of accentuated internationalisation, the concentration of both production and finance, the greater domination and changed nature of finance capital, as well as the effects on inter-imperialist rivalry (or the lack of it). Further, in the present day multilateral institutions and rule-based regimes are used to further the aims that in earlier periods of history were resolved through more direct militaristic or political means. There is also the changed nature of the systemic instability of global capitalism and the new forms of economic territory that are currently being contested. Technological changes have furthered the process of global corporate dominance as well as allowed for the possibility of confronting it at an international level. The implications of the global spread, privatisation and concentration of media industries, meanwhile, adds another dimension to the current imperialist regime.
It is obvious that the processes of concentration and centralisation of capital, as well as the internationalisation of production, have gone much further, with some important implications. The recent phase of globalisation has been marked by some of the strongest and most sweeping waves of concentration of economic activity that we have known historically. Looking at the multinational firms, vertical disintegration of production has allowed parts of the production process to be relocated and geographically separated, but this has been associated with greater vertical integration of the control (and ownership) of production. In addition, the past decade in particular witnessed a wave of cross-border mergers and acquisitions across not only major manufacturing industries but even in the service sector and in utility provision. The increased concentration of economic activity in general could reflect the recession and slump in recent years: concentration is always more marked in the downswing phase of economic cycles.