ABSTRACT
System universalizing has reached an unprecedented scale with catastrophic impact, but it reflects the culmination of a long historical process unfolding over centuries. Universalizing is essential to maximize profits and control by elites. The system's extreme inequality has become a recipe for universalizing resistance on both Left and Right— based on the system's own widely shared ideals of hard work, well-paid jobs, and the American Dream for all. New forms of surveillance and policing reinforce the global universalizing of the system—carried out in the name of the war on terror and in the United States itself through militarized policing. The system creates climate change; species extinction; extreme economic inequality, frequent deep financial crises, and system-wide depressions; permanent warfare that can lead to nuclear war and extinction; and racial/religious polarization. As the system universalizes, the threats to economic and environmental life—and to personal security—intensify, creating the possibility of total extinction never imagined before.
