I ran across this passage a few weeks ago and forgot about how much I dig it, even if he sounds a little populist at times ("lazy annuitants") and even if, contra Arrighi (who seems almost wholly inspired by the paragraph below), it's a mistake to reduce the history of capitalism to the rise and fall of empires.
^^^^^ CB: It has some amazingly fresh and current discussion, like "bankocracy".
"Populism" has a substantial rational kernel from the standpoint of socialist consciiousness, despite anti-semitic shell. We can be confident that any "populism" in Marx like the above is the rational kernel of it. Nothing wrong with exposing the parasitic or lazy nature of most annuitants.