Public Lecture: Imperial End Times: The Geopolitics of Class War on a Post-American World
Next week I’ll be giving a public lecture to the New Zealand Fabian Society about the proliferation of imperialist geopolitics, the end of American hegemony, and the rise of what I call “repressive capital.” It’s an ambitious argument that I’m hoping to build on, and whose diagnosis will help us better strategize within our conjuncture.
If you’re in Wellington, come in person! Registration is free. For most of you who aren’t willing to travel to hang out with me for 90 minutes, it’ll also be live-streamed.
Imperial End Times: The Geopolitics of Class War in a Post-American World
Our governments are clinging to outdated mental maps of the world—maps that obscure the pain and profit associated with their foreign-policy choices. In this public talk, Dr. Van Jackson diagnoses our moment of global “polycrisis” as a crisis of capitalism anchored to a single declining hegemon. The United States has repudiated its former global role; the world is becoming more multipolar; and prolonged economic stagnation is plaguing the global North and South to varying degrees. These forces are propelling modern national states toward “primitive accumulation”—using state power to hoard both wealth and security at the expense of the working classes. Linking America’s permanent war economy to the rentier economies of wealthy nations like New Zealand, Jackson argues that imperialist statecraft is becoming a more common mode of geopolitics—a mode that benefits oligarchs and turns the institutions of “national security” against us all. Refusing this dystopian trajectory means struggling to retain our shared humanity and construct a global order without empire.
When:
May 19th, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM
Location:
2/57 Willis Street
Wellington,
New Zealand