Panic Capitalism: The impasse of U.S.-led Neo-Liberalism, and the Return of the Global South

This paper revolves around three axes: 1) U.S.-led neo-liberalism is at an impasse; 2) there have been important developments outside the core zone of advanced capitalism, best put under the rubric “return of the Global South,” developments which are intimately linked to the current impasse of neo-liberalism;1 3) all of this sheds light on agency in modern capitalism, an agency that is too often mistakenly placed in the conscious actions of the capitalist class in the Global North, missing the pragmatic, ad hoc and often panicky nature of those actions. The paper will look at each of these in turn, and then draw some preliminary conclusions, centred on the limitations of a Global North political economy which – through a kind of “OECD-centrism” – often fails to incorporate the dynamics of the Global South into its analyses.