This paper examines global inequalities and the future of capitalism and socialism through an investigation of the oligarchic wealth on which the current global order is based and also looks at growing challenges to these social foundations of the present global system. The bifurcation of the world-system in the 1980s with the ascent of Chinese-led East Asia and fall of Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe (and other regions) is explored, as is the prospect for alternative regionalisms from Latin America to East Asia which may challenge the oligarchic wealth on which the current global system is based, through the generalization of democratic wealth across the global system.