An Analysis Of William I.Robinson's Transnational Capitalist Class Theory

The transnational capitalist class theory was put forward by William I.Robinson in the process of studying the globalization of capitalism.Capitalism itself contains an internal drive to expand on a global scale.According to William I.Robinson,the emergence of the global economy was a decisive structural factor,which laid the material foundation for the emergence of a single global society,The main features of this global society are the globalization of social life,the transnationalization of civil society and political processes,and the emergence of global culture.Globalization means that the world capitalist system has developed to a new stage of cross-country development.The emergence of transnational class is the core of capitalist globalization.Transnational class includes transnational capitalist class and transnational working class.William I.Robinson pointed out that using the nation-state as a framework for defining and analyzing classes could no longer adapt to the process of transnationalization,because the process of globalization was actually a kind of sublation of the nation-state as the main form of social organization,which was reflected in the class relations as follows:The formation of transnational classes is less restricted by the territorial and political jurisdiction of nation-states and more influenced by the history of world capitalism.Therefore,he called for breaking the analytical framework of the nation-state and getting rid of the spatial restrictions on class analysis.William I.Robinson,transnational capitalist class theory is the basis of predecessors' theory and related research results for reference on the formation and development.William I.Robinson in transnational capitalist class theory,briefly expounds the meanings of the transnational capitalist class and the class of the internal layer,at the same time,not only illustrates the transnational capitalist class to form,the empirical evidence also on transnational capitalist class in the international social economic status and political status is analyzed and summarized,and put forward the transnational capitalist class is a global ideas of the ruling class:On the one hand,it is with the help of transnational state institutions that the transnational capitalist class tries to build a global hegemonic group,that is,a globalist group,whose center is the transnational capitalist class;On the other hand,as the transnational capitalist class becomes increasingly difficult to unify in terms of global discourse,political intention and ideological consistency,the group is gradually divided into different factions.In short,William I.Robinson' s transnational capitalist class theory has certain theoretical contributions:it makes the class analysis method attract people' s attention again;Developed and perfected the new Marxism;The problems of capitalism are analyzed objectively and the prospect of the future is pointed out.At the same time,there are some defects in this theory:it overlooks the efforts of the transnational proletariat to resist the control of the transnational capitalists;Misunderstanding the relation between the in-itself class and the in-itself class;It exaggerates that class relations are no longer regulated by the nation-state;The informal control mechanisms of transnational countries have not been adequately revealed.William I.Robinson regarded the capitalist globalization as a new historical stage of the transnational development of the global economy,so he went beyond the limitations of the original nation-state in the analysis of the class problem,and then studied the class and class relations on a global scale.Although there are some shortcomings in William I.Robinson' s transnational capitalist class theory,this theory provides a certain reference for us to study the development and evolution of class relations in the process of globalization,which is the development and improvement of Marxist theory by western Neo-Marxian combining with the reality of today' s capitalist society.