Brief Explanatory Note:

This was written in the last days of 2019 and the first days of the current year. In early March, before doing an initial private circulation, I made a few additions to relate some of the argument to the emerging Pandemic which was clearly a very relevant factor that I hadn’t dealt with adequately. A few references to “Covid-19” (e.g., P. 10) were added that I certainly don’t regard as an adequate treatment of these issues. More important, the argument didn’t foresee the historic break in the culture of capitalist rule that would emerge a few weeks after it was completed and would have to be extensively reworked to take these developments adequately into account.

Whatever is clear and useful in this piece owes a great deal to the critical assistance I got from Kristian Williams.

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The past few years have not been a period of calm for global capitalism and its U.S. component. Major changes...