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Transnational Classes and International Relations presents an original analysis of class formation in the global political economy. It deals with the growth of an integrated, transnational capitalist class, from Freemasonry in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution to contemporary planning groups with a class orientation such as the World Economic Forum. The study provides the student and academic reader with the first systematic overview of the theory and concepts developed in the Research Centre for International Political Economy at the University of Amsterdam. Among its many areas of focus are: * the processes of commodification and socialisation * class formation under the discipline of capital and its transnational integration in historical perspective * International Relations between the English-speaking heartland of capital and successive contender states. More specifically, the author develops an understanding of class by discussing such notions as the imagined-communitynature of class, Vergesellschaftung (socialisation), fractions of capital, comprehensive cencepts of control, the Lockean heartland versus the Hobbesian contender states and the cadre stratum as a lever of socio-political transformation. With its breadth of scope and thorough examination of the agents actively involved in the process of globalisation, this study offers researchers and advanced students, in addition to its own findings, a treasure trove of research hypotheses.

"This paper argues that we are in the midst of a conflict-ridden convergence towards oligarchic, authoritarian rule across the globe. Today's global power structure is the result of very different processes of class formation on both sides of the historic divide between a liberal West and a series of contender states. This structure is itself dissolving as a result of the demise of the Soviet Union and the conversion of China to state capitalism and the mutation of liberalism to authoritarian oligarchic capitalism. The paper argues that corporate liberal capitalism, based on class compromise in the 1980s, was displaced by neoliberalism, which initially intended to restore systemic market discipline but increasingly degenerated into speculative, predatory forms which undermine the forces of stability in the global political economy and foster oligarchic enrichment. A contradiction is identified between global oligarchic convergence on the one hand and conflict at the level of political (governing and state) elites on the other, which explains the current turbulence in the global political economy." (author's abstract)

This paper argues that we are in the midst of a conflict-ridden convergence towards oligarchic, authoritarian rule across the globe. Today's global power structure is the result of very different processes of class formation on both sides of the historic divide between a liberal West and a series of contender states. This structure is itself dissolving as a result of the demise of the Soviet Union and the conversion of China to state capitalism and the mutation of liberalism to authoritarian oligarchic capitalism. The paper argues that corporate liberal capitalism, based on class compromise in the 1980s, was displaced by neoliberalism, which initially intended to restore systemic market discipline but increasingly degenerated into speculative, predatory forms which undermine the forces of stability in the global political economy and fosteroligarchic enrichment. A contradiction is identified between global oligarchic convergence on the one hand and conflict at the level of political (governing and state) elites on the other, which explains the current turbulence in the global political economy.