ABSTRACT
In appraising various dimensions and scenarios of hegemonic transformation, the question of a transnational capitalist class (TCC), commanding the heights of the global economy, looms large. There can be little doubt that the complex array of practices and processes falling under the rough rubric of recent globalization has created the objective conditions for such a class. In its most basic sense, the globalization of capital entails the globalization of the capitalist mode of production, a process in which capitalist classes are always directly active, but not necessarily as members of a transnational capitalist class. Indeed, Marx and Engels (1968: 38), writing in the mid-nineteenth century, provided the classic description of the bourgeoisie’s globalizing mission, without invoking the imagery of a transnational capitalist class: ‘The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.’ In this characterization, the objective need for self-expansion obliges the many capitals that compose the bourgeoisie to globalize, but there is no implication that national affinities, identities and forms of capitalist organization fall away in the process.
