The Age of Political Disincorporation: Geo-Capitalist Conflict and the Politics of Authoritarian Statism

Abstract This review essay examines two recent volumes on the clash between the USA and China: Clash of Empires by Hung (2022) and Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein and Pettis (2020). These volumes make a significant contribution to our understanding of the current strategic competition between the US and China. They have the virtue of moving beyond the sterile international relations perspectives and locating these conflicts within the broader structure of capitalist transformation. The framework of inter-imperial conflict is found useful in understanding the conflict between the USA and China. However, a serious lacuna of these approaches is their economism which neglects the political effects of emerging inter-imperial rivalry or modes of geo-capitalist engagement. In particular, this essay argues that the key effects are found in the transformation of the political forms of the state that have enabled the rise of radical right-wing forces and new forms of authoritarian rule. In this new geo-capitalist era, there is likely to be a reassertion of the national state in various new or post-neoliberal guises but such forms are likely to take on the characteristic of deeply coercive authoritarian statism or even post fascism.