Extractive Capitalism
How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Essential reading for the Iran Crisis - what happens when the seas close, and oil stops flowing?
'Urgent and polemical' Financial Times
'A brilliant explainer of how the world works' Simon Kuper, author of Chums
'The real stuff of the economy - blood, dirt, oil and violence' Dan Davies, author of The Unaccountability Machine
'Profound and compelling ... A book that I couldn't put down' Adam Hanieh, author of Crude Capitalism
Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trade and lucrative speculation are the hallmarks of our era, but the backbone of globalisation is still low-cost labour and rapacious corporate control. Extractive capitalism is what made - and is still making - our unequal world.
Professor Laleh Khalili reflects on the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives record-breaking profits. Piercing, wry and constantly revealing, Extractive Capitalism brings vividly to light the dark truths behind the world's most voracious industries.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this incisive survey, international studies scholar Khalili (Sinews of War and Trade) examines the environmental and human toll of resource extraction, and pinpoints a troubling new ethos it has generated among global capitalism's elites. Everything from the "spires of skyscrapers" to our "handheld devices," Khalili notes, "depend on the extraction of raw materials from the earth." These are first traded as commodities, thereby channeling "vast profits from all corners of the world to a narrow pool of investors." Khalili outlines examples from the 19th-century competition to secure bird guano, used as fertilizer, to today's staggering global trade in sand, used in construction and electronics. She zeroes in on the "tight control of the entire.... production cycle" exercised by the oil monopolies of the early 20th century as a lodestar for modern capitalists, suggesting that it spawned an elite yearning for eliminating workers from the picture wherever possible. Elite consulting firms are engaged in making this vision a reality, Khalili astutely notes, pointing to McKinsey & Company, which drafted 2016 plans for a "fantasy city" for the Saudi crown prince replete with "robot maids" and "hologram teachers," and for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to cut costs by reducing food budgets for detainees. The result is a startling vision of a world in which elites have begun to consider "ordinary humans" an "inconvenience" within the supply chain.
