Describing the state of the world today, it’s gotten harder to avoid clichés. The economic warfare unleashed by Donald Trump, a rising China’s refusal to take his provocations lying down, and the ongoing war in Ukraine have generated levels of systemic uncertainty unseen since the interwar period, if not before. Fear of another great crisis, or even another great war, are understandably widespread — perhaps nowhere more so than in Europe, the region that stands to lose the most from the emerging Cold War.

How much of this turmoil is to be blamed on an erratic American leader, and how much is it the result of deeper, structural transformations? Does the emergence of powers capable of rivaling the United States point to the possibility of a more just global order, or is one hegemon simply being replaced by another? And most importantly, what does it all mean for the lives and political prospects for working people?

In an interview, Arman Spéth spoke with Marxist economist Michael Roberts, author of the books The Great Recession: A Marxist View and The Long Depression, to get his take on the increasingly fractured global economy and its political fallout.