Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy

by Laleh Khalili

A Financial Times 'What to read in 2025' Book

'Essential reading' Françoise Vergès, author of A Decolonial Feminism

'Profound and compelling ... A book that I couldn't put down' Adam Hanieh, author of Crude Capitalism

Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trade and lucrative speculation are the hallmarks of our era, but the backbone of globalisation is still low-cost labour and rapacious corporate control. Extractive capitalism is what made - and is still making - our unequal world.

Professor Laleh Khalili reflects on the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives record-breaking profits. Piercing, wry and constantly revealing, Extractive Capitalism brings vividly to light the dark truths behind the world's most voracious industries.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Politics, Audiobook

203 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 26, 2025

About the author

Laleh Khalili is an Iranian American and Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London. She was formerly a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

She graduated from University of Texas, and received her PhD from Columbia University. Her primary research areas are logistics and trade, infrastructure, policing and incarceration, gender, nationalism, political and social movements, refugees, and diasporas in the Middle East.

Reviews

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

First expectations of a book with a title like Extractive Capitalism might be that its subject will be the despoilation caused by industries like metal and mineral mining, oil drilling and the new appetite for plundering something called rare earths on the lands where these are found in relative abundance. The wreaking of the environment is certainly one of Khalili’s concerns but the extract that really keeps here awake at night centres on the more abstract concept of value, the extraction of which is measured by the growth of poverty and inequality among human populations.
The clue as to what the book about is really in the subtitle, which lists ‘commodities and cronyism’ as the drivers of the extractive process as well as the reason why things seem to be getting so much worse for so many of us. Carbon-based fossil fuels like coal and oil cause damage by increasing the rate of global warming. The plunder of rare earth minerals like gives rise to pollution from massive toxic waste, water and soil contamination from chemicals, habitat destruction, and ecosystem disruption.
But Khalili focuses in the main on how the value of the things needed to reproduce modern society is converted into income flows for investors and shareholders and from there into things like super yachts and privately-owned Caribbean islands. Moreover, this system of extraction also sucks legitimacy out of things like the rule of law, the operation of tax systems, and the ways in which democracy is supposed to operate for the benefit of the mass of people.
Her account of the ways in which corporate interests dominate the operation of trade traces the histories of oil production in Mexico, Iran and Saudi Arabia, where the assertion of sovereign rights over the resources in the territory of nation states have been contested by commercial arbitration panels which are biased in favour of the commercial conglomerates. Yes, bold measures like the nationalisation of a resource like oil has engendered pushback by governments, but often at the considerable of risk of incitement of trade blockades and internal coups, as seen in the overthrow of Mohammed Mussaddegh in Iran in 1953, and is being threatened in Venezuela at this present moment.
Circulating across the world in the form of commodities empowers financial interests to enter the market to grab their share of value. So-called futures markets endow the traders operating in their realm with the ability to make (and also lose) fortunes based on prices that might apply across the work at indefinite points in time to come. This was seen back in the days of the pandemic when the price of oil plummeted as countries withdrew from production processes. A group of traders based in Benfleet in Essex saw this as an opportunity to buy a rapidly depreciating asset and finds find cheap ways to store it in anticipation of the end of shut-downs and a return to full-steam-ahead. The result was a blitzed profit of $700 million, all magicked up in the frothy world of finance and none returning to the countries and workforces that had got the stuff out the ground in the first place.
As Khalili puts it, commercial contracts and financial devices are the new instruments of conquest, colonialisation and commodification. Whilst the benefits of global trade are innovatively snatched up by traders, the opacity of the wheeling and dealing creates amply opportunity for the liabilities arising from bad trades to be shucked off. Some of the more heartless examples of this come from the shipping trade, a business that remains lucrative as long as there is demand for its services and a workforce is on hand which has no choice but to endure a harsh work regime.
Every year hundreds of vessels are stranded at sea when owners declare bankruptcy, or just mysteriously vanish from their trading responsibilities. Ships are not able to proceed on any voyage until liabilities are sorted out and wages due to crews will be withheld for months, and often not paid at all. At times like this the real business of extraction is revealed, with phantom owners creaming off unimaginably profits, with the workers who dig or pump up the goods and transport them across oceans being abandoned to months of hardship and squalor, waiting for the miraculous moment when privileged owners are eventually made to pay their debts.
It’s not only an overheated planet polluted by toxic slagheaps which haunts our future prospects, but also a poverty-ridden, unjust, disfigured social and economic system which we are still being made to endure.

[Peter Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A description of how the wealthy rule the world.
Some of the book seemed quite muddled, making it hard work to read.
Apart from a list of books in a Selected Bibliography, there are no specific references (other than to a particular book now and then). However, I suspect many of the books in the Bibliography do - does that make the stories less true? Probably not, as I have read a number of other books that tell similar stories.

Is it worth reading?
It is short, and “illustrates” that political advantage, power and money trumps morals and ideology.

[Diane Bryden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book provides examples of patterns of capitalism and extraction in different industries, especially shipping going back to the 17th century and up to today. This is a “big picture” kind of topic and it can be hard to wrap your head around this way of looking at things. Given that, it probably isn’t the easiest read. But if you enjoy history and have some familiarity with how capitalism functions economically, it offers some interesting insights on how these things work.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat disappointed by this one. It looks and advertises itself (in name and introduction) as an exploration into the exploitation underpinning resource extraction. In other words, as an account of the colonial and neocolonial policies of developed countries with respect to key resources like sand, iron ore, coal and oil. For the first ~50 pages you get an excellent account of exactly that.

The rest of the book proceeds to unwind this central thesis via a myriad of somewhat random case studies, seemingly added purely on the basis of the author's extensive knowledge in one matter or another, rather than in aid of a cohesive whole. At least that's how it felt. I don’t really understand how this was not flagged during the editing process.

Interestingly, I found the discussion of the book (https://www.patreon.com/posts/427-man...) much more effective at painting a more cohesive picture. I'd probably recommend just listening to that instead.

[John Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a shame it was a bit muddled, switching and changing to air personal grievances with some useful facts. Lacking a conclusion as well, found this frustrating as the topic is ever more relevant in these murky Trumptonian times.
This would have made a great first rough draft which with better editing could deliver the much needed hammer blow to the 1% who control and exploit the world and the economy.

[Tom Lewandowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt more like a collection of essays than a unified narrative. Nonetheless a useful compilation of stories of the corrupt way that western companies and countries stripmine the world for resources

[Matthew Gibb · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a really brief book,so one cannot expect to learn a great deal about oil and so-called clean energy in depth. Nevertheless,the chapters are short and can be quickly read or listened to. What's funny is how to writer references much better,longer books and perhaps I'll read the book,The Have and Have Yachts,which makes the world's asymmetry and how it benefits just a few people a little bit clearer. The chapter about how the US took the Chagos Islands,which are just below the Maldives for bird guano and later oil palm was totally new to me. Diego Garcia is the name given to the US military base there seems to harken back to Spanish colonization. Another chapter titled,Hell on Earth,is about how Saudi Arabia is spending a trillion dollars to build an ultra-modern city,which is sometimes called the Line,since it is long and straight called Neom.These three stories are at the middle of this book,which could have been much more,but instead merely introduces a few interesting ideas without ever getting into more satifying depth.

[Jay Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author is clearly knowledgeable, and the references to different books, the importance of certain commodities, and machinations of private equity and commoditiy trading were all interesting. I wanted to like this book, However, this reads like an undergraduate essay, there's no sources cited (just a selected bibliography at the end), the narrative jumps around with unclear direction, and the conclusion was so abrupt and forgive me but non-conclusioney that it felt like it was missing pages.

I've listened to interviews with her and they were great, almost feels like this was written by a different person. Really surprised at Verso or whoever edited this. Would only recommend for looking at the selected bibliography at the end.

[Samoyes · Rating 1 out of 5]

This take a macro level view of extractive capitalism with a focus on shipping and containerisation. However, there was too far of an assumption of previous knowledge on matters for this to be a good read. I needed more explanation in order to really enjoy this and glean a full understanding of the topic.

[Johannes S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am fond of Khalili as a writer, this collection of essays is a look into global flows of commodities and their ruthless extraction. Though I would say it's a collection of vignettes that one shouldn't expect too much from. In themselves each chapter highly readable, it's a quick and easy read all in all.

[Mate Veres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thi book represents an improvement over her previous work, Sinews of War and Trade. However, it ultimately reads as a collection of disparate case studies examining economic exploitation by certain elites across various global contexts. The book lacks a cohesive analytical framework or clear thesis, leaving me questioning the actual purpose of this book.

[nin. · Rating 3 out of 5]

i didn’t really understand the way the book was structured.

[Tyler Wilding · Rating 1 out of 5]

Desperately needs more editing and focus. Some anecdotes were interesting but otherwise a surface-level critic of capitalism. Didn’t finish the last third.