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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.”

[...] In Brenner’s account, however, the tech boom should be seen as only one component of the equity bubble of the late 1990s. That glorious surge was driven not by the advent of a new technological wave but rather by the codependent irrationality of markets intoxicated by the prospect of endless …

The turning point might be sought about thirty or thirty-five years ago, that is to say, somewhere in the mid to late 1970s, when an Anglo-American blend of neoconservative politics and neoliberal economics gained ascendancy and unbridled capitalist globalization took off. Whatever historical basis…