Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis

Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a seminal examination of the relationship between the core capitalist countries and the rest of the world in the age of neoliberal globalization. Smith begins by tracing the production of certain iconic commodities-the Tshirt, the cup of coffee, and the iPhone – and demonstrates how these generate enormous outflows of money from the countries of the Global South to transnational corporations headquartered in the North. Deploying a Sophisticated Marxist Methodology, Smith argues that these countries increasingly are able to extract profit from workers in the Global South through market mechanisms and, aggressively favoring places with lower wages, the phenomenon of labor arbitrage.