Understanding the Economic World War

Here’s what’s underway. The capitalist world-system has now broken in an historic way for the 4th time in 700 years.

These “Terminal Crises” always represent the last gasp of the prevailing hegemon to maintain power over the current order in the face of the system demanding a reconfiguration.

The system never loses. Hegemony always moves after a terminal crisis on to a new “systemic cycle of capital accumulation”:

Genoese-Iberian financial empire in 1627. Dutch United Provinces in 1781. British Empire in 1931. And now the United States in 2025.

We now enter a period of anarchy—global economic anarchy—defined by the system searching for the global capitalist reconfiguration that will meet the requirements of the 5th cycle of accumulation, which is always a novel configuration for capital to continue its growth:

• greater geographic coverage,
• more people under its scope,
• greater differentiation of products and services, and
• more complex institutional arrangement that solve for the contradictions and limitations of the prior cycle.

There will be only one of two intermediate-term (10-20 years) tendential trajectories for this reconfiguration search: 1) competitive anarchy of blocs and bilateral relationships, or 2) emergence of a new world order. Either an anarchic pluralism or the emergence of a new integrative pluralism.

Ultimately the latter is inevitable, the only question is whether it will happen relatively quickly from here, slowly, and under what terms and what level of conflict.

Join Robb Smith on Tuesday, April 8th for a special episode of Big Picture Mind, where together we will explore the economic world war that has just begun — and where it may take us in the months, years, and decades to come.

About The Big Picture Mind

The first ever series by Integral Life and Institute of Applied Metatheory founder Robb Smith, the BPM aims to be an ongoing master course of integral thinking to help its participants build a mind capable of the holographic, cross-paradigmatic cognition characteristic of the most advanced of the ten stages of consciousness in the world today.

Combining personal reflections with seminar-like participation — with a special eye toward helping the next generation build a BPM — each discussion will explain real-world events and dynamics by drawing on the leading-edge of integrative models, while exploring the kinds of challenging issues that the Institute of Applied Metatheory wrestles with every day across dozens of social impact arenas.

Be sure to join Robb for a new episode, every third Thursday of the month!