economy

By Dr. Kalim Siddiqui

In spite of the fundamental role that it has played in world history from the colonial period onwards, Kalim Siddiqui argues that advanced capitalism has no response to the key challenges of our times.

I. Introduction 

In recent years, long-term economic growth has fallen in all major advanced economies, which is referred to as “secular stagnation” by mainstream economists. The 2008 financial crisis was largely due to the policy of a new regime of accumulation such as neoliberalism, globalisation, or financialisation. The main factors in deepening crises in the advanced capitalist economies lie in the long historical process that began in 1973, soon after the Israel-Arab war, which culminated by ending the longest “Golden Period” in the history of capitalism (1945-72), i.e. post-war expansion, when unemployment levels were low, and also poverty and inequalities were dramatically reduced in all major advanced capitalist countries.

The “Golden Period” of capitalism, when advanced capitalism had a steady upward growth for a quarter of a century, had no such precedent in the past. This steady growth took place due to various factors, including the historical reasons for huge post-war reconstruction, increased recognition of the role of trade unions in wage disputes, and recognition of the greater role played by the fiscal policy intervention in the economy. Similarly in the UK, the Beveridge Report supported the building of a welfare state and achieving full employment as the main objective of the post-war Labour government. In other Western European countries, too, post-war reconstruction was given priority and, to achieve this objective, state intervention and the role of the fiscal policy were seen as important policy measures (Siddiqui, 2023).

The “Economic Outlook” published in January 2024 by the IMF is the most influential report for the Western media regarding the health of the global economy and the report also forecasts about future growth prospects. For this year, the IMF report projected global economic growth at 3.1 per cent in 2024 and with a small change at 3.2 per cent in 2025. The January 2024 forecast of 0.2 per cent is higher than the October 2023 World Economic Outlook. If we analyse the US growth rates of 2020-3 and compare them with the average growth rate of 2010-19, the US performance was less than satisfactory. During the previous decade, the US average annual GDP growth rate was 2.2 per cent, while in 2020-2, the average fell to 1.9 per cent annually (Tooze, 2024; Wolf, 2024).

Global inequalities among different income groups have widened for the last four decades since the adoption of neoliberalism by most countries.

If we compare China’s 5.2 per cent growth rate with the rest of the advanced economies, the gap is even greater than with the US. For instance, Japan grew 1.5 per cent in 2023, France 0.6 per cent, Canada 0.4 per cent, the UK 0.3 per cent, Italy 0.1 per cent, and Germany even witnessed a negative -0.4 per cent. Moreover, China’s growth rates were also higher than other large developing economies, such as Brazil’s 2 per cent, Mexico’s 3.3 per cent, Indonesia’s 4.9 per cent, Taiwan’s 2.3 per cent, and Korea’s 1.4 per cent. Only India and Russia performed better among the large developing economies, at 7.6 per cent and 5.5 per cent respectively (IMF, 2024; Wolf, 2024).

II. Long-Term Secular Stagnation and Rising Inequalities

The IMF forecasts that, by 2027, China’s economic growth will be 4.6 per cent, which is somewhat higher than the nearly 1.5 per cent average growth of advanced capitalist economies, of which several will most likely face recession (IMF, 2024), as shown in figures 1 and 2. As a result, the gap in growth will widen further. Moreover, it seems that the inequalities within the economies will widen further.

Figure1
Source: IMF
figure2
Source: IMF. https://www.ft.com/content/d304a182-997d-4dae-98a1-aa7c691526db

Moreover, global inequalities among different income groups have widened for the last four decades since the adoption of neoliberalism by most countries (see table 1). According to the World Inequality Report (2023), the poorest 50 per cent of the population own just 2 per cent of total net wealth, an average of US$4,100 per adult in 2021. The middle 40 per cent of people own 22 per cent of total net wealth, an average of US$57,300 per adult in 2021. In contrast, the richest 10 per cent of people own 76 per cent of total net wealth, an average of US$771,300 per adult.

During the 1980s, when the neoliberal policy was launched, developing countries faced a debt crisis. Then the international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank proclaimed that the global economy would “converge” with the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. Table 1 shows that national income shares of the bottom 50 per cent have declined. Similar trends are seen in other large developing economies such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa. In the last four decades, rather than inequalities within the country declining, it widened and there is massive data to show that convergence did not take place (Wade, 2018; Siddiqui, 2019a).

Table 1
Source: World Bank, 2021; Freeman, 2021, pp.101.

Over the past four decades, inequalities within countries have increased and, if we exclude China, then inequality between countries has also widened. Within countries, the gap between the incomes of the top 10 per cent and the bottom 50 per cent has almost doubled. Despite the rise in GDP in recent decades, the differences in average incomes between countries (excluding China) have widened, and the world remains more unequal today than a century ago when European empires ruled the world.

Chancel and Piketty’s study (2021) on world income distribution estimates from 1820 to 2020 that the level of global income inequality has always been unequal, reflecting the persistence of a highly unequal global economic system (Amin, 1977). Global inequality increased between 1820 and 1910, in the context of the rise of Western dominance and colonial empires, and then stabilised at a very high level between 1910 and 2020 (as indicated in figure 3). Between 1820 and 1910, both between-country and within-country inequality were increasing. However, within-country inequality dropped from 1910 to 1980 (while between-country inequality kept increasing) but rose from 1980 to 2020. This was also the period when neoliberal policy was adopted by most countries. It seems that the early decades of the 21st century neocolonial capitalism involved similar levels of inequality to early-20th-century colonial capitalism, though it is based upon a different set of rules and institutions. They found that the share of global income going to the top rich 10 per cent of the highest incomes at the world level was 50-60 per cent between 1820 and 2020, while the share of the bottom poor 50 per cent of incomes was less than 10 per cent.

Figure3
Source: Chancel and Piketty, 20 https://wid.world/document/longrunpaper/

The data shows that neoliberal globalisation has resulted in a rise in inequalities within the countries. This contradicts the so-called “Kuznets Curve” hypothesis (1966), which emphasised that, as an economy develops, the economic inequality will rise in the beginning and then fall; it would be a U-shaped chart of inequality against income level. This theory is often cited by mainstream economists in support of the “trickle-down” effect. They hoped that ultimately the rise in incomes of the rich invariably would raise the incomes of the bottom section of society. But it did not happen.

Other studies on inequalities also have found that inequality has increased since deregulation, privatisation, and capital liberalisation were imposed (Stiglitz, 2024). As Freeman, on neoliberalism, emphasises, “Neoliberal policies thus operated on two fronts: their principal effect was a successful assault on the postwar gains of the developmental global South, but they became better known in the global North for their effects on the working and popular classes in the heartlands. As the state retreated, many indicators of social well-being have retreated with them, including public health, elderly care, homelessness vulnerability, access to justice, and, of course, freedom from poverty” (Freeman, 2021, p. 98). Under Keynesian policy in the 1950s after the Second World War, it was accepted that government should invest in the education and health sectors, which capitalism had failed to provide. It was largely agreed in advanced capitalism that welfare policy was a necessary concession to avert the danger of communism.

The modernisation theorists view globalisation as a panacea for global poverty and inequality, while the critiques, namely the dependency theory, claim that it will widen the gap between rich and poor countries. An analysis of the global economy points out the role of international institutions in sustaining inequality and the status quo. The neoliberal globalisation policy contributes to global poverty and inequality between countries by promoting global production and trade. Moreover, within developing countries, inequality has risen through overseas borrowing, trade liberalisation, and increasing external vulnerabilities, while undermining self-reliance and domestic resource mobilisation, thereby sustaining structural inequalities. Inequalities between countries are maintained by unfair trade laws that put poor countries in a position of disadvantage. The IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programmes forced upon the countries in seeking loans is based on the “Washington Consensus”, and the IMF conditionalities ignore the complex specific situation of individual countries.

The modernisation theorists view globalisation as a panacea for global poverty and inequality, while the critiques, namely the dependency theory, claim that it will widen the gap between rich and poor countries.

The critics argue that the advanced countries benefit disproportionately at the cost of the poor countries, which exacerbates inequalities between countries. Within a poor country, inequality is also fostered by the process of globalisation, as it strengthens socioeconomic differences. However, the proponents of globalisation claim that it will benefit all, without any empirical evidence. It is claimed that globalisation has levelled the competitive playing field between rich and poor countries. Mainstream economists ignore the existing global unequal relationship between rich and poor countries, but the truth is that the rich countries (former colonisers) through international institutions imposed free trade, technical supremacy, exchange, and globalisation to benefit themselves (Amin, 1977).

For three decades, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the integration of the global economy under a US-led unipolar world, neoliberal globalisation has brought major structural change, and the world today is deeply integrated into the global supply chain, goods characterised by product differentiation and technical change and employment structures and services gaining more importance than manufacturing.

In recent years, China has sharply increased its share in the global economy and its performance has become critical for the global economy. Mainstream economists argue that a target of over 5 per cent of annual growth will be difficult to achieve for China, because China’s working population is falling, meaning there is less availability of cheap labour to boost output. However, the increased output does not just depend on a rising labour force but even more on technical innovation, rising productivity, and workers’ skills. It is also said that China has huge debts, including local governments and real estate sectors. This will eventually lead to bankruptcies and a debt meltdown or would compel the central government to squeeze the savings of Chinese households to pay for these losses and that would reduce growth rates.

On average in advanced economies, investment and employment in services have increased and a vast diversification of consumer goods has taken place. The share of imports has risen, reducing the impact of an increase in consumer spending on the growth rate.

In contrast, China increased investment in state-owned industries and infrastructure to compensate for any slowdown due to the over-indebted property market. Indeed, it is China’s capitalist sector (based mostly in unproductive areas) that is in trouble, while China’s massive state sector takes the lead in economic recovery. Mainstream economists argue that China’s model of development is not sustainable, as it is over-reliant on the manufacturing sector and state-led investment in infrastructure to increase household consumption. Their solutions are that China should break up too large a state sector, reduce taxes on private enterprises, and deregulate to allow the expansion of the private sector.

But the question arises, since the 1980s the advanced economies adopted the neoliberal policy which raised growth rates over the expansion of services, including real estate, resulting in the 2008 global financial crisis. It also led to a further rise in inequalities and households’ debts, while real wages stagnated in most of the advanced economies. In contrast, China’s average real wages steadily rose over the last four decades. China’s success in recent decades is much to do with its policy departure from neoliberalism to “globalisation”. China has carefully combined both state-led and market-based policies, according to its specific developmental needs. However, its rapid growth was achieved at the expense of environmental and domestic inequalities.

Figure4
Source: Financial Times; World Bank.

On average in advanced economies, investment and employment in services have increased and a vast diversification of consumer goods has taken place (see figure 4). The share of imports has risen, reducing the impact of an increase in consumer spending on the growth rate. Fixed investment share in GDP has fallen, while private spending and household borrowing have risen sharply. As Galbraith notes, in the 1980s gradually, “The share of manufacturing of consumer goods in US employment declined, with losses attributable to waves of deindustrialisation provoked by recessions and high interest rates, productivity growth, to offshore outsourcing and to changes in consumer habits and patterns of demand as incomes rose and households move out along an ’Engel Curve’ to enjoy not only higher material standards but also different patterns of expenditure. Correspondingly, shares in expenditure on purchase of material goods declined, while those devoted to healthcare and higher education increased, as well as travel and leisure time and personal services” (Galbraith, 2021, p. 350).

III. The US Economic Decline

US economic performance declined in comparison with that of its chief rivals, the EU and Japan. The chief measure of competitiveness is a country’s ability, under fair market conditions, to “produce goods and services that meet the test of international markets, while simultaneously maintaining or expanding the real income of its citizens”. According to Competing Economies, the US fails on both counts. Its share of world manufacturing exports has declined since the 1980s, while its share of imports has risen (Siddiqui, 2020b). The US share in the international markets has declined, given that the US began in post-1945 as the world’s richest country. During this period, Western Europe and Japan performed better than the US and began challenging the US global economic hegemony, while the US focused on fighting and isolating the Soviet Union. Only in the late 1980s, US manufacturing improved, thanks to huge investments in computers, biotechnology, and aerospace (Siddiqui, 2020a).

Figure 5

The recent past showed that the global economy suffered due to the pandemic, two ongoing wars (in Ukraine and the Middle East), an unexpected surge in inflation, and an associated “cost of living crisis” (Siddiqui, 2022c). Moreover, these disturbances followed not long after the multiple financial crises of 2007-15. The IMF (2024) revised its own GDP growth forecast for Russia to 3 per cent this year, a 1.5 percentage point rise over what it had predicted last October (see figure 5). The Russian economy’s resilience has stunned many economists, who had believed the initial round of sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago could cause a catastrophic contraction. Now the IMF argues that Russia has spent its way out of a recession by evading Western attempts to limit its revenues from energy sales and by ramping up defence spending.

The environment is being destroyed and it is an irreversible experiment with the biosphere, largely, but not exclusively, concerning climate. As the human economy grows, so does its impact on the biosphere likely to expand, too. It will take a big effort to avoid the destruction of the environment (see figure 6). So far, capitalism has failed to reverse the trends and so the environmental crises will deepen (Siddiqui, 2024c).

Figure 6
Source: Hadley Centre, Our World In Data.

Over decades, debts, both public and private, have risen sharply. If anything causes a big shock to such expectations, mass bankruptcy might trigger deep depressions, with extreme economic and political consequences. Current high indebtedness (see figure 7) for an extended period may lead to high interest rates, which might trigger economic chaos.

The market can only absorb the commodities at prices that are below their cost prices. Overproduction is relative; there is “an excess at particular prices”. Mainstream economists argue that there could be overproduction in a short period but, in a long period, there could be no overproduction. Say’s law states that production creates its own demand, since every producer is as much a buyer as a seller. The colonisation of other countries solves market questions, where it cannot resolve the fundamental conflict between limited purchasing power and unlimited productivity at home. Purchasing power depends upon the distribution of income. Given the anarchy of production, the individual entrepreneur may not know how much others are producing, so he may end up overestimating the demand and producing too much. The declining share of the working class in the national product, relative to the share of the capitalist class, results “in a chronic disproportion between production and consumption”.

Figure 7
Source: IMF

“Modern militarism” is one of the ways through which the surplus can be realised. The home market gets constricted because capitalist production destroys the peasant economy and small-scale enterprises. The law of capitalist production is constantly growing profit (Luxemburg 2003: 49). Capital’s real purpose of existence is to direct profits into capitalisation and accumulation. Accumulation is extending capitalist production to non-capitalist countries to provide a market for capitalist production and provide raw materials for extended capitalist production (Luxemburg, 2003).

Globally inequality in income and wealth has increased phenomenally since the 1980s. Financial globalisation and the freer mobility of capital lowers the bargaining power of workers, with the threat that industries would move overseas. This means that there is a tendency for capital’s share in total product to rise, and correspondingly the share of wages to fall. And there is a demand constraint in advanced capitalist countries as well as in developing countries, where the existence of a huge reserve army of labour keeps wages low.

IV. Historical Relationship between the Global North and the Global South

The Brandt Commission’s Report (1980) presented the relationship between the rich Global North and the poor Global South countries, and how these poor countries are dependent on the North for their development. The report emphasised crucial issues such as food, aid, energy, trade, and the international monetary system. The Commission popularised the terms “Global North” and “Global South”, the former mainly comprising those countries where capitalism has been established and accounts for less than 18 per cent of the world’s population, and the remaining 82 per cent are the “Global South” (as shown in figure 8). In 1980, the North’s average income was 11 times higher than the South, which was twice as high as in 1950 (Brandt, 1980) and, excluding China, since then the average income gap between rich and poor countries has further widened.

Figure 8

Karl Marx in his writing did not elaborate on imperialism in detail, i.e., about the core-periphery relationship and its importance in capitalist accumulation. In Capital, Volume 1 (1976), Marx discussed how under-price raw materials from the colonies were important sources for the capital accumulation process. Furthermore, Marx presented a more detailed view on the importance of colonies for Britain’s capital accumulation in his articles in the second half of the 19th century in the New York Herald Tribune.

Capitalism is about the accumulation of capital, but this is not straightforward and is subject to recurrent crises arising from its contradictions. State assistance is needed as, when capital accumulation is not possible through markets, then such market interventions by the state could lead to tension, even if such intervention aims to restore capital accumulation and rescue capitalism from the brink of disaster.

Capitalism needs exogenous stimulus to save from decline and instability. The extraction of surpluses through unequal exchange and often using brutal force was visible in the early phase of capitalist development. Rosa Luxemburg (2003) discussed in detail the role of the periphery in providing markets through the destruction of their local industries, which became an external source of demand and was a prerequisite for accumulation under capitalism (Perelman, 2000). State expenditure and innovations could be other sources of stimulus to capitalism. Innovations and changes in technology could be an important source of exogenous stimulus to capitalism. Schumpeter (1961) recognised the importance of innovation in taking capitalism out of downturns. Investments in R&D for new products and technology could be carried out by private businesses and the state. The role of the state in innovation means rejecting Say’s law that “supply creates its own demand” and recognising that capitalism is prone to deficiency in aggregate demand and the state has taken active measures to invest and raise aggregate demand. This means that achieving growth would require exogenous stimuli to increase the size of the economy, including the size of capital stocks.

Capitalism needs exogenous stimulus to save from decline and instability. The extraction of surpluses through unequal exchange and often using brutal force was visible in the early phase of capitalist development.

A more recent study by Patnaik and Patnaik (2021) argues that the expansion of capitalism and relative stability cannot be fully understood by ignoring the role of primitive accumulation and imperialism in its development. The expansion of capitalism was driven by the requirements for markets and supply of raw materials to continue accumulation and, for this, colonies were used for new markets by destroying their handicraft industries and plundering their natural resources. They argue that capitalism inherently by its nature needs underdeveloped/ non-capitalist regions to sustain expanded reproduction. According to them, “not only has capitalism always been historically ensconced within a pre-capitalist setting from which it emerged, with which it interacted and which it modified for its purposes, but additionally … its very existence and expansion are conditional upon such interaction” (Patnaik and Patnaik, 2021, preface). Under imperialism, primitive accumulation can indeed proceed through non-economic mechanisms implemented by the state (taxes and debt servicing, wars, etc.), or with the help of the state (privatisation, property speculation, crony capitalism, etc.). It also involves market mechanisms such as unequal exchange between petty commodities and capitalist production. Unequal exchange was one of the first forms of primitive accumulation in pre-capitalist economies, largely due to the skills of experienced merchants and usurers (Perelman, 2000; Siddiqui, 2022b).

Dos Santos, a dependency theorist, argues that the global capitalist system is characterised by unequal exchange, where the Global South relied on exporting primary commodities while importing high-value industrial products. The Global South is trapped in a cycle of poverty and dependence. “The relation of interdependence between two or more economies, and between these and world trade, assumes the form of dependence when some countries (the dominant ones) can expand and can be self-sustaining, while other countries (the dependent ones) can do this only as a reflection of that expansion” (Dos Santos, 1970).

Nonetheless, the claim that there has been a reversal implies that capital and technology from the Global North are being transferred to the Global South through capital investment, transfer of technology, and expansion of the industrial sector. However, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik (2021) argue that the key feature of contemporary capitalism is asymmetrical, including rising costs of supply, currency value fluctuations, and income erosion. At present, capitalism is marked by increased financialisation of the economy, where finance dominates productive capital (Siddiqui, 2019b).

V. Conclusion

Imperialism is defined as a period of capitalism in which capital accumulation does not simply take place by dispossession but spread on a world scale. This led to a more polarised world with more unequal and uneven development. Beyond accumulation by dispossession, to the draining of a significant fraction of the surplus value that results from the “super-exploitation” of wage workers in the periphery, where there exists a huge reserve army of the unemployed labour force, particularly in the production of raw materials, plantation and low-wage industrial production which is a central strategy of the big global corporations to make super profits. According to David Harvey, we are presently witnessing “a shift in emphasis from accumulation through expanded reproduction to accumulation through dispossession … at the heart of imperialist practices” (Harvey, 2003, pp. 176-7).

For the last four decades, neoliberalism has been a predominant policy measure, according to which, if the markets are left alone, it will operate efficiently and will achieve prosperity for all. They support policies such as deregulation, privatisation, and trade liberalisation. This is also known as market fundamentalism, which is a new version of the more than a century old laissez-faire. However, over-reliance on market forces does not take account of market imperfections, distribution, and matters of social justice. The results of neoliberalism over the last 40 years have been disastrous in achieving a stable economy, high growth, low unemployment, and increasing prosperity for all through the “trickle-down” effect. As Stiglitz notes, “Neoliberalism did not deliver. Rather, it was associated with lower growth than during the pre-neoliberal era; and what growth did occur went to those at the top of the economic ladder. Predictably, in the advanced countries, trade liberalisation between advanced countries and developing countries led to increased inequality. Financial liberalisation led to the deepest downturn in three-quarters of a century – again the predictable outcome of deregulation, showing that unfettered markets were not only inefficient but also unstable” (Stiglitz, 2024, p. 2).

The study finds that since the early 1980s, the adoption of neoliberalism saw a rise in inequality within the country, and the worst impact was witnessed in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia.

The 2008 global financial crisis triggered by US mortgage securities led to the economic collapse in 2009, following which President Obama committed to increasing the role of the state to sustain growth. The state took measures to bail out Wall Street banks. Soon after, the US brought the largest fiscal stimulus in US history, which was coordinated with other advanced economies. Despite all these measures, the world’s economic growth by 2016 was modest and did not show any sign of recovery (Siddiqui, 2022a). In the EU, the euro crisis led to a severe austerity measure imposed on Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. There was a sharp fall in global commodity prices in 2014, which led to a dramatic fall in the export incomes of many developing countries. The global economy continued to face recession and only returned to pre-financial growth level a decade later by 2017 (Tooze, 2024).

In recent decades, advanced capitalist economies have witnessed huge structural changes, which was only possible after the defeat of workers’ unions, curtailing worker rights, and corporations threatening to move overseas. The financial gap between capital spending and internal funds for big corporations, which had averaged 1.2 per cent of the GDP over the two decades (i.e., 1980-2000) has disappeared due to lower wage costs globally. These big corporations slowed investments, which was far less than their high profit rates, and as a result, a corporate saving glut emerged. On the other hand, since the late 1990s in the US and the EU, high household consumption continued, despite stagnation in real wages, through increased indebtedness, which inflated housing markets, and these proved to be important reasons for the deepening crisis.

The study finds that since the early 1980s, the adoption of neoliberalism saw a rise in inequality within the country, and the worst impact was witnessed in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia. The Keynesian policy focus on full employment was replaced by targeting inflation, which led to “stagflation”. Thereafter, capitalism entered a new phase known as “secular stagnation”. In this new phase, the growth has been very low, accompanied by a rise in inequalities and an environmental crisis and, to all these challenges, advanced capitalism has no solution. 

About the Author

kalimDr. Kalim Siddiqui is an economist specialising in International Political Economy, Development Economics, International Trade, and International Economics. His work, which combines elements of international political economy and development economics, economic policy, economic history and international trade, often challenges prevailing orthodoxy about which policies promote overall development in less-developed countries. Kalim teaches international economics at the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, University of Huddersfield, UK. He has taught economics since 1989 at various universities in Norway and the UK.

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