Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy

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. (Aug.)