Activity

Yet it is important to remember that debts and obligations shape economic prospects and life possibilities in even more fundamental ways. In the most elementary sense, debts enable economic activity by liberating present resources from the most immediate pressures of productivity or profitability. …

the various forms of “primitive accumulation” described by Marx (whereby land, labor, and natural resources are turned into commodities)

destined for hegemonic domination and financial apotheosis

For Arrighi, this alternation of material and financial expansions, anchored by a hegemonic center, accounts for the emergence of capitalism itself, yet as each cycle concentrates a greater degree of power, it also hastens its own exhaustion.

First comes a “material expansion” under the aegis of a dominant bloc powerful enough to control interstate competition and “ensure material cooperation.”