Panitch himself saw the Register as playing a major role in developing Marxism's conceptual framework for advancing a democratic, co-operative and egalitarian socialist alternative to capitalist competition, exploitation, and insecurity.

Panitch saw globalization as a form of imperialism but argued that the American Empire is an informal one in which the US sets rules for trade and investment in partnership with other sovereign but less powerful capitalist states.

[14] His father, Max Panitch, was born in the southern Ukraine town of Uscihtsa, but remained behind in Bucharest, Romania, with a fervently religious uncle when his family emigrated to Winnipeg in 1912.

[15][16][additional citation(s) needed] Panitch's mother, Sarah, was an orphan from Rivne in central Ukraine who had come to Winnipeg in 1921 at the age of 13 accompanied only by her older sister, Rose.

Panitch told the conference that its first declaration of principles, adopted in 1901, began with the words: "The spirit of the Workmen's Circle is freedom of thought and endeavour towards solidarity of the workers, faithfulness to the interests of its class in the struggle against oppression and exploitation."

[17][page needed] The 1960s generation of the New Left, Panitch writes, was impelled towards socialism by "our experience with and observation of the inequalities, irrationalities, intolerances and hierarchies of our own capitalist societies.

[8][21][22] He was politically active in the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada and the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, the two main organizational successors to The Waffle after it was expelled from the NDP in the early 1970s.

He was inducted as an Academic Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1995, and was also a member of the Marxist Institute and the Committee on Socialist Studies as well as the Canadian Political Science Association.

[8][23][24] In addition to the 33 annual volumes of the Socialist Register he edited from 1985, he was the author of over 100 scholarly articles and nine books, including From Consent to Coercion: The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms; A Different Kind of State: Popular Power and Democratic Administration; The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labour; American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance; and In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives.

[25] At the "Globalization, Justice and Democracy" symposium at Delhi University on 11 November 2010), Panitch drew on his book In and Out of Crisis (with Greg Albo and Sam Gindin).

They write that although it is always highly volatile, the robust and globally dominant US financial system facilitated this economic restructuring while making pools of venture capital available for investment in new, high-tech firms.

[27][30] According to Panitch and Gindin, the institutional foundations for American-led global capitalism were laid during the Great Depression of the 1930s when the Roosevelt administration strengthened the US Federal Reserve and the US Treasury while establishing a wide range of economic and financial regulatory agencies.

[33]Although the US dominates in this informal, imperial system, Panitch and Gindin argue that other advanced capitalist states maintain their sovereignty, but must defer to American wishes when it comes to military interventions abroad.

As the authors point out, capitalism is prone to crisis, and the 1970s produced "stagflation", simultaneously high rates of inflation and unemployment, stagnant economies, and declining profits.

[36] According to Panitch and Gindin, the neoliberal era ushered in a second, highly-profitable "golden age" but this time only for the capitalist class, not for workers whose wages stagnated while union membership declined.

[37] The final chapter in The Making of Global Capitalism is devoted to a detailed examination of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, bringing an end to high corporate profits as millions lost their homes and consumer spending fell.

As they write: The roots of the crisis, in fact, lay in the growing global importance of US mortgage finance – a development which could not be understood apart from the expanded state support for home ownership, a long-standing element in the integration of workers into US capitalism.

The decisive role of American state agencies in encouraging the development of mortgage-backed securities figured prominently in their spread throughout global financial markets.

Garrod argues that such treaties transform, reframe, and alter conceptual categories such as national political spaces, modes of production, and property relations.

At the same time, Konings notes that Panitch rejected much of "value theory, a label that refers to Marxist debates about what determines the value of commodities and other objects traded on markets, and in particular, what the role of labour is in this process."

His essay in honour of Panitch describes the evolution of his own thinking on the development of a capitalist economy in which increasingly indebted households generate income from precarious employment constantly choosing from a menu of least-bad options, yet nonetheless becoming emotionally invested "in the provocative logic of capital".

[43] In a memorial tribute, Panitch's York University colleague Reg Whitaker writes that the Making of Global Capitalism represented the "capstone" of his "academic achievements" written in collaboration with his "intellectual comrade" Sam Gindin.

Whitaker notes that Panitch and Gindin contrast the 21st century capitalist crisis with the Great Depression of the 1930s, which led to competition and rivalry between nation states, the spread of fascism, and another world war.