Michael Hudson argues that today’s crisis is not just economic but civilizational. He traces how classical political economy sought to minimise unearned income from landlords, monopolists and bankers, and contrasts this with modern finance capitalism, where rent-seeking dominates GDP, public infrastructure is privatised, and debt replaces production as the driver of growth. The result, he contends, is a widening divide between Western oligarchy and state-led industrial models in China and Russia, with energy, credit and economic rent at the centre of the struggle.