Summary

The real conflict over what kind of economic and political system the Global Majority will have is just gaining momentum.

Global South countries and others have been driven so deeply into debt that they have been obliged to sell off their public infrastructure to pay its carrying charges. Recovering control of their natural resources and basic infrastructure requires the fiscal right to impose an economic-rent tax on their land, natural resources and monopolies, as well as the legal right to recover environmental cleanup costs caused by foreign oil and mining firms, and to implement financial cleanup costs (i.e., write offs and cancellation) of the foreign debt burden imposed by creditors who have not taken responsibility to ensure that their loans can be paid under existing conditions.

U.S. evangelistic rhetoric describes the imminent political and economic fracture of the world economy as a “Clash of Civilizations” between democracies (i.e., countries that support U.S. policy) and autocracies (i.e., nations acting independently).

It would be more accurate to describe this fracture as a fight by the United States and its European and other Western allies against civilization — assuming civilization entails, as it seems it must, the sovereign right of countries to enact their own laws and tax systems for the benefit of their own populations within an international system that has a common set of basic rules and values.

What Western ideologues call democracy and free markets has turned out to be an aggressive rentier-financial imperialism. And what they call autocracy is a government strong enough to prevent economic polarization between a super-rich rentier class and an impoverished population at large, such as is occurring within the Western oligarchies themselves.

How the Global Majority can free itself from US financial colonialism

Economist Michael Hudson describes how China created an alternative to the Western neoliberal order, and how the Global South can challenge the rent extraction of US-centered financial colonialism.

By Michael Hudson

July 17, 2025

Industrial capitalism was revolutionary in its fight to free Europe’s economies and parliaments from the hereditary privileges and vested interests that survived from feudalism. To make their manufactures competitive in world markets, industrialists needed to end the land rent paid to Europe’s landed aristocracies, the economic rents extracted by trade monopolies, and interest paid to bankers who played no role in financing industry. These rentier incomes add to the economy’s price structure, raising the living wage and other business expenses, thus eating into profits.

The 20^th century saw the classical aim of clearing away these economic rents rolled back in Europe, the United States, and other Western countries.

However, today, land and natural-resource rents in private hands are still rising and even receiving special tax advantages. Basic infrastructure and other natural monopolies are being privatized by the financial sector — which is largely responsible for carving up and de-industrializing economies on behalf of its real estate and monopoly customers, who pay out most of their rental income as interest to bankers and bondholders.

What has survived from the policies by which Europe’s industrial powers and the United States built up their own manufacturing is free trade. Britain implemented free trade after a 30-year fight on behalf of its industry against the landed aristocracy, aimed at ending the protectionist agricultural tariffs, the Corn Laws, which had been enacted in 1815 to prevent opening the home market to low-priced food imports, which would have reduced farming rents.

PDF: MH17.7.2025

******

Amir Mortasawi (alias Afsane Bahar) (امیر مرتضوی (افسانه بهار

How the Global Majority can free itself from US financial colonialism. By Michael Hudson (July 17, 2025)

How the Global Majority can free itself from US financial colonialism

See also:

How the Global Majority can free itself from US financial colonialism

See also:

Teilen mit: