The Dollar and the F-35: Balance-Sheet Imperialism

Costas Lapavitsas
Additional contact information
Costas Lapavitsas: Department of Economics, SOAS University of London. Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK

No 272, Working Papers from Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK

Abstract: Contemporary imperialism is a hierarchical regime of global accumulation enforcing exploitation and subordination without colonial territories. It rests on the structural pairing of internationalised productive capital (multinational-enterprise-led production chains) with globalised financial capital, articulated through the dollar as world money. The article shows that the decisive hinge of domination lies in the monetary hierarchy itself, which became unmistakable after the Great Crisis of 2007–09 as the financialisation of capitalism shifted into a new phase – Financialisation Mark II. Balance-sheet discipline, hierarchical liquidity allocation by the Federal Reserve, payment system control, sanctions, and collateral exactions now function alongside territorial coercion as mechanisms of surplus transfer and crisis adjustment, with monetary instruments predominating at critical moments. Absent a rival world money, productive ascent by peripheral challengers cannot dislodge US hegemony prolonging a coercive interregnum and raising the risk of world war.

Keywords: Contemporary imperialism; Financialisation Mark II; Dollar hegemony; Surplus transfer coercion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 F02 F51 F65 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16343
Date: 2026-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.soas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2026-02/economics-wp272.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:soa:wpaper:272

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chandni Dwarkasing ().