GEOPOLITICS AND THE UNIVERSALIZATION OF DESTRUCTIVE PRODUCTION

Abstract

The text analyzes the relationship between geopolitics and the current forms of accommodation of the contradictions of global capitalism (Harvey, 2005), within the context of the structural sociometabolic crisis of capital (Mészáros, 2011). It seeks to demonstrate how geopolitics, as an expression of power relations among states and their extranational interests, has become one of the principal mechanisms for the universalization of destructive production. It argues that, within the dynamics of the structural crisis—marked by the activation of the absolute limits of accumulation —the productive system ceases to function as a mediator of the expanded reproduction of capital and becomes an immanent and systemic force of destruction. In this scenario, geopolitics ceases to be merely a manifestation of power and becomes a self-negating and self-destructive instrument. It concludes that, in light of the current geopolitical context—characterized by the reconfiguration of power blocs, the importance of China, the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and imperialist incursions in Venezuela and Greenland—a generalized dynamic of systemic self-destruction becomes evident, expressed on two fronts: waste-intensive destructive production and the material destruction produced by warfare.