Karatani sees the stages of the world market system in terms of the key world commodity of each. Thus for mercantilism it is textiles, for liberalism it is light industry, for finance capitalism it is heavy industry, for state monopoly capitalism it is durable consumer goods, and for multinational capitalism it is information. Brown would call this neoliberalism, but that’s too benign a term for such an imperialistic world system. The current stage, despite appearances, is one of the weakness of the old hegemon, the United States, within the world system. It is an era of the expanded export of capital and corresponding cuts to redistributive justice by the states at the core of the old world system, as “state-capital was freed from egalitarian demands” (279).