ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 analyses whether contemporary capitalism is a new kind of imperialism and the new imperialism is an informational imperialism. It uses statistical analysis of macroeconomic data along five dimensions of analysis that characterize imperialism: (1) the concentration of capital, (2) the dominance of finance capital, (3) capital export, (4) the economic division of the world among big corporations and (5) the political division of the world. The results of this chapter allow concluding that contemporary capitalism is a new kind of imperialism. One cannot conclude, however, that the new imperialism is a media imperialism or informational imperialism because this would mean that media and information are today the most important features of capital concentration, capital export, world trade and warfare, which clearly is not the case. Media and information do play an important role in new imperialism, but they are subsumed under finance capital and the continued importance of fossil fuels.
