| dbp:text
|
- As exploitation intensified, so the gap between working people and the superrich has widened enormously. In Britain today, the richest 10 per cent of the population own around half of all declared personal wealth, while the poorer 50 per cent of the population own less than one-tenth of it.
Moreover, capitalism has always utilised differences of sex, ethnicity, education, skill, employment status and mental and physical disability to divide the labour force and drive down wage levels. (en)
- New and existing international agencies and mechanisms such as the World Trade Organisation , GATT, the IMF, the World Bank and bilateral so called free trade and investment agreements are utilised to enforce neoliberal policies. The European Union has played a leading role in this process, confirming its character as an alliance led by the most powerful state-monopoly capitalist powers. It strives to overcome internal contradictions and transform itself into an imperialist 'United States of Europe', complete with its own foreign and military policies aligned with NATO. (en)
- As monopolisation and the over-accumulation of capital began to depress profitability, the finance capitalists increasingly turned to potential sources of super-profits abroad.
Thus, capitalism expanded into its imperialist stage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As competition intensified between rival monopolies backed by their respective states, so the scene was set for the inter-imperialist 'Great War' of 1914–18. (en)
|
.svg){kind=link}
