william robertson on transnational capital:
The key characteristic of this new epoch is the rise of truly transnational capital and a new globally integrated production and financial system. Production has become fragmented into countless and constantly changing phases that are decentralized and dispersed across the planet. In turn, the distinct segments are functionally integrated into vast global chains of production and distribution. Each autonomous national economy has been restructured and externally integrated, so that each “national” economy because a constituent part of the larger global production system.
(...) We also now have a truly global financial system. There is no longer any such thing as a national financial system. In fact, finance capital is the most mobile and the most transnationalized fraction of capital. This has major implications. Money capital exists in cyberspace, where it recognizes no borders and faces few, if any, state controls. Money capital subordinates fixed capital. Those who control money capital can appropriate values anywhere in the world by financial manipulation and relocate them on an ongoing basis to anywhere else in the world.
(...) I am pointing this out because it is transnational capital that stands at the pinnacle of these global networks. This means that there still may be local and national capitals but they cannot compete with transnationally mobile capital. If they want to remain competitive, if they want to continue playing the game, they must link up with transnational capital, and they must do so, structurally, in a way that subordinates them to transnational capital.
(...) [can we also speak of a global working class?]
Yes. There is a global working class that runs the factories, farms, and offices of the global economy. Their ranks can be found in the maquiladoras, in the agro-industrial complexes around the world, among the armies of service workers in global cities. However, the global working class is internally stratified. It is divided along national - as well as racial, ethnic, and gender - lines. The continued existence of the nation-state serves to distort the consciousness and subjective experience of the global working class.
[a capitalist class?] In distinction, the transnational capitalist class is a class group with a subjective consciousness of itself and its interests. Its members increasingly socialize together in their private institutions such as the World Economic Forum in Davos and develop a transnational class consciousness. In this sense it is a class-for-itself, to use Marx’s language on this matter, whereas the global working class is a class-in-itself but not yet for-itself.
(...) The question is how can the transnational capitalist class exercise its political authority? Well, one way is through utilizing existing state apparatus in each country, and we have seen plenty of that. Another is through the transformation of existing international institutions, such as the old Bretton Woods institutions or the agencies of the United Nations system, and the creation of entirely new ones, such as the World Trade Organization. Transnational capital attempts to convert the structural power of the global economy over individual countries and over working classes in each nation-state into direct political authority or influence through this transnational state apparatus. Transnational institutions attempt to coordinate global capitalism and imposing capitalist domination beyond national borders. The IMF, for instance, by imposing a structural adjustment program that opens up a given country to the penetration of transnational capital, the subordination of local labor, and the extraction of wealth by transnational capitalists, is operating as a transnational state institution to facilitate the exploitation of local labor by global capital.
(...) [on the transnational character of imperialism; nation-state less important in this process?] If by imperialism, we mean relentless pressures for outward expansion of capitalism and distinct political, military and cultural mechanisms that facilitate that expansion, then, yes, we are obviously seeing ongoing imperialism in 21st century. But there is nothing in this “new” imperialism to suggest it is a U.S. drive for empire in competition with other nation-state capitalists. Those who make this argument have frozen their historical analysis in an earlier moment. They are trapped in world of late 19th and early 20th century. They see world capitalism as still in its national “monopoly” stage of Lenin’s and Hilferding’s day, so that U.S. interv ntionism can only be a drive for “U.S.” hegemony over other states.
Recent U.S. policies such as the imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustment programs and sponsorship of free trade agreements have served to further pry open regions and sectors around world to global capitalism, to transnational capital. The IMF and other transnational state agencies have not acted as simple instruments of “U.S.” imperialism. I know of no single IMF structural adjustment program that creates conditions in intervened country that favors “U.S.” capital in any special way, rather than opening up the intervened country, its labor and resources, to capitalists from any corner of world.
(...) [and the effects?] The system is in chaos; its contradictions are explosive and, frankly, humanity is in grave danger. The global crisis is one of social polarization and social reproduction, reflecting the deeper structural problem of over-accumulation. The crisis is also of sustainability. An ecological holocaust has already begun. If we do not pull back from the precipice, and very soon, we could well be facing catastrophic consequences.
(...) [and the big picture?] Let’s step back and see the big picture. The 1980s saw a recovery of profits following the decline of the 1970s. There was a massive wave of transnational investment in the 1980s and the 1990s, leading to overcapacity and overproduction. Capital began increasingly to seek an investment outlet through financial speculation – the notorious “casino capitalism.” The volatility of financial speculation in the face of over-accumulation led to the 1995 Mexico peso crisis and its “tequila effect” elsewhere, followed by the 1997-98 Asian financial meltdown, the Russian, Turkish, and Brazilian crises, and worldwide recession in 2001-02. It is at this point that structural and political pressures building up in the system lead towards a militarization of global accumulation. The U.S. state as the guarantor of the system sought to open up new outlets for the global surplus through a military Keynesianism and a war mobilization, through the “creative destruction” of war. From the 1990s to date we seen a shift in the axis of accumulation, from computer and information technology as the cutting edge, along with financial speculation in stocks, real estate, and so forth, to a military-industrial-petroleum-construction-engineering complex.
(...) [social welfare to social control] We are seeing a transition from social welfare to social control states, the rise of police states that manage prison-industrial complexes to contain the excluded population, new forms of social and spatial apartheid, social cleansing, Katrina-type militarized control responses to disasters and other stresses. We may be heading more generally towards a global police state.
(...) [Hasn’t globalization also led many nations out from underdevelopment?] Your question is phrased within a misleading nation-state framework of analysis, as if what “develops” or what is “underdeveloped” is a nation-state. This ignores class polarization, power relations, and social inequality within each nation-state. Globalization has turned many people in the South into participants – consumers - in the global marketplace – and spread the culture of global capitalism, with its individualism, consumerism, escapism and banality. But it has generated downward mobility, marginality and immiseration for many more. Inequalities worldwide have reached unprecedented proportions. The pattern is a polarization between 20 percent of the population that is advancing, on the one hand, and 80 percent that is falling behind, on the other. There are new transnational class inequalities that cannot be understood within the North-South divide. The global South is increasingly dispersed across the planet so too is the global North. India now has 200 million middle class consumers who participate in the global market, as does China, even while majorities in those countries sink into destitution. Global social polarization is cutting across national lines in new ways.
(...) [for the future] Social justice requires a measure of transnational social governance over this global production and financial system as a necessary first step in a radical redistribution of wealth and power to poor majorities. What would such a new redistributive component involve and how would it come about? Certainly it would require a reversal of neo-liberal policies at the nation-state level. But redistribution is not enough. It must be linked to the transformation of class and property relations. Local class and property relations have global implications. Webs of interdependence link the local to the global. Pockets of counter-hegemony are now emerging more clearly, for example, in the rise of an anti-neo-liberal power bloc in Latin America centered around Venezuela. Nonetheless, the challenge is how to convert a reactive global resistance into a proactive global program. The recent experiences of Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa, and Haiti, among others, make clear the limitations to reintroduction of a redistributive project at nation-state level alone. Any challenge to capitalist state power must involve a major transnational component. Struggles at nation-state level are far from futile. They remain central to the prospects for social justice and progressive social change. But any such struggles must be part of a more expansive transnational counterhegemonic project and a program to rein in on the global market and the power of global capital. An alternative to global capitalism must be a transnational project, involving transnational trade unionism, transnational social movements, transnational political organizations, and so on.

Amilcar Cabral on class, colonization, and reclaiming the march of history (1966):
This leads us to pose the following question: does history begin only with the development of the phenomenon of ‘class’, and consequently of class struggle? To reply in the affirmative would be to place outside history the whole period of life of human groups from the discovery of hunting, and later of nomadic and sedentary agriculture, to the organization of herds and the private appropriation of land. It would also be to consider — and this we refuse to accept — that various human groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were living without history, or outside history, at the time when they were subjected to the yoke of imperialism.
(...) This means that before the class struggle — and necessarily after it, since in this world there is no before without an after — one or several factors was and will be the motive force of history. It is not difficult to see that this factor in the history of each human group is the mode of production — the level of productive forces and the pattern of ownership — characteristic of that group.
(...) If we accept this conclusion, then the doubts in our minds are cleared away. Because if on the one hand we can see that the existence of history before the class struggle is guaranteed, and thus avoid for some human groups in our countries — and perhaps in our continent — the sad position of being peoples without any history, then on the other hand we can see that history has continuity, even after the disappearance of class struggle or of classes themselves.
(...) [the three stages of history - and the end of agriculture?] In politico-economic language, the first stage would correspond to the communal agricultural and cattle-raising society, in which the social structure is horizontal, without any state; the second to feudal or assimilated agricultural or agro-industrial bourgeois societies, with a vertical social structure and a state; the third to socialist or communist societies, in which the economy is mainly, if not exclusively, industrial (since agriculture itself becomes a form of industry) and in which the state tends to progressively disappear, or actually disappears, and where the social structure returns to horizontality, at a higher level of productive forces, social relations and appreciation of human values.
(...) [imperialism: colonialism and neo-colonialism] On the question of the effects of imperialist domination on the social structure and historical process of our peoples, we should first of all examine the general forms of imperialist domination. There are at least two forms: the first is direct domination, by means of a power made up of people foreign to the dominated people (armed forces police, administrative agents and settlers); this is generally called classical colonialism or colonialism is indirect domination, by a political power made up mainly or completely of native agents; this is called neocolonialism.
(...) [on imperialism arresting the march of history] While in classical colonialism this process is paralyzed, neo-colonialist domination, by allowing the social dynamic to awaken (conflicts of interests between native social strata or class struggles), creates the illusion that the historical process is returning to its normal evolution. This illusion will be reinforced by the existence of a political power (national state) composed of native elements. In reality it is scarcely even an illusion, since the submission of the local ‘ruling’ class to the ruling class of the dominating country limits or prevents the development of the national productive forces.
(...) [nationalism as that which reorients, by reinvigorating, this 'march'] On the basis of this, we can state that national liberation is the phenomenon in which a given socio-economic whole rejects the negation of its historical process. In other words, the national liberation of a people is the regaining of the historical personality of that people, its return to history through the destruction of the imperialist domination to which it was subjected.
(...) [nationalism based in this march of history] ...for us the basis of national liberation, whatever the formulas adopted on the level of international law, is the inalienable right of every people to have its own history...
(...) [on 'backwardness' and where it fits] By saying this we do not wish to diminish the importance of other internal factors which are unfavorable to national liberation, such as economic under-development, the consequent social and cultural backwardness of the popular masses, tribalism and other contradictions of lesser importance. It should however be pointed out that the existence of tribes only manifests itself as an important contradiction as a function of opportunistic attitudes, generally on the part of detribalised individuals or groups, within the national liberation movements. Contradictions between classes, even when only embryonic, are of far greater importance than contradictions between tribes.
(...) [like fanon, nationalism on the basis of shared experience] But on the other hand the necessarily repressive nature of the neo-colonial state against the national liberation forces, the sharpening of contradictions between classes, the objective permanence of signs and agents of foreign domination (settlers who retain their privileges, armed forces, racial discrimination), the growing poverty of the peasantry and the more or less notorious influence of external factors all contribute towards keeping the flame of nationalism alive, towards progressively raising the consciousness of wide popular sectors and towards reuniting the majority of the population, on the very basis of awareness of neo-colonialist frustration, around the ideal of national liberation.
(...) [in colonial situation, nationalism is to socialism, as bourgeois revolution is to revolution] The colonial situation (in which the nation class fights the repressive forces of the bourgeoisie of the colonizing country) can lead, apparently at least, to a nationalist solution (national revolution); the nation gains its independence and theoretically adopts the economic structure which best suits it. The neo-colonial situation (in which the working classes and their allies struggle simultaneously against the imperialist bourgeoisie and the native ruling class) is not resolved by a nationalist solution; it demands the destruction of the capitalist structure implanted in the national territory by imperialism, and correctly postulates a socialist solution.
(...) [on violence] We do not think we will shock this assembly by stating that the only effective way of definitively fulfilling the aspirations of the peoples, that is to say of attaining national liberation, is by armed struggle. This is the great lesson which the contemporary history of liberation struggle teaches all those who are truly committed to the effort of liberating their peoples.