Titans of Capital

Description

Titans of Capital
by Peter Phillips

ISBN: 9781644214336
Softcover, new
Publication Date: 9/17/2024

Brief Description:
A fascinating examination of the rapid concentration of global capital,
with chapters that focus on China and Russia. Explores how fewer and larger
investment companies now manage the excess financial wealth of the world’s
40 million richest people, to the detriment of everyone else and the global
environment. In Titans of Capital, Peter Phillips, a political sociologist,
poses three key research questions: To what extent do the wealthy
influence—or even dominate—decision making that affects all of us in
society? Who are the most powerful people? And how does the accumulation of
capital work? Networks of wealthy individuals have evolved since the
COVID-19 pandemic, and Titans of Capital shows how the financial
investments of transnational elites threaten human rights and the future of
the planet. Private capital investments serve as the primary operating
funds for international arms sales, private prisons, and other socially
negative activities. These investments fuel the continued use of carbon-
based energy leading to amplified global warming and climate change.
Military spending is a critical component of continued wealth concentration
and political power in the world. Spending on arms and intelligence is a
required aspect of maintaining global power and control. Dealing with
Russia, China, Iran and other “rogue” states is a continuing agenda for
agents of the world power elites. Propaganda machines in Western capitalist
governments serve to protect elite wealth by promoting military conflicts
to open new regions for economic investment. Phillips warns that while
continued concentration of global capital increases the profits enjoyed by
the global economy’s “Titans,”, it also increases global inequality,
starvation, and civil unrest, threatening the lives of the hundreds of
millions of people living in extreme poverty. It is imperative to ask how
we can reverse the concentration of Titan wealth and revitalize grassroots
democracy unbridled by extreme wealth. Identifying 117 global Titans by
name and exposing the networks and interests that unite them provides
readers opposed to militarism and committed to economic equality with
crucial tools to directly engage the power elite who endanger life on
earth.