Globalization and the Human Condition

I doubt it.

Globalization isn't just a matter of a struggle between Capital and Labor. Modern communications and transportation systems are still in the process of revolutionizing how human beings relate to one another. As time and distance between communities shrink, the virtually all differences between peoples are called into question. Traditions and expectations that have lasted for many thousands of years are shaken as they come into contact, and in many cases conflict, with other traditions and cultural expectations. Where once cultural chauvinism went unchallenged, we have witnessed jarring interactions between societies. China is no longer the Middle of the World, and the United States is no longer a fabled land across distant oceans.

What it means to be a nation is evolving, and indeed multinational corporations are ONE of the variables. Less than one hundred years ago the idea that France, Germany, and Great Britain would form a European Union was the stuff of dreamers. The Axis Powers dream of world domination was beyond their reach. Communism had an expanded reach, but was also unable to establish a world-wide Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Those Utopian idealogies, and other attempts at world conquest, quite rightly makes many of us nervous of trends that appear to be leading the world toward homogeneity. Roman and Chinese Emperors could order critics to commit suicide because outside their Empire was only barbarism. In a fully globalized world there wouldn't even be a choice between suicide and life outside the civilized world. Scary stuff, and good reason not to rush blindly into such a different world.

The thing is, that globalization is a process that is far from completed, and it may never get to the extremes. Any number of events/processes may alter the equation. We may live to see a reduction in human populations on the order of the worst calamities in history. The Black Death brought a thousand years of relative stability to an end, and the mortality rate was only 25-30% over several hundred years. Today disease and famine alone could reduce our numbers by as much as 80%, and do it within a decade, or less. That would pretty much be the end of globalization dangers, wouldn't it? The political and religious differences and chauvinism of Southern Asia aren't likely to be fully resolved until long after I'm dead and forgotten. Wars and conflicts aren't going to suddenly vanish, though the threat of nuclear extinction have been greatly reduced.

The Industrial Revolution was an essential development that made our world and the possibility of global integration possible. The technology that has transformed the lives of human-beings grew out of the Industrial Revolution (as did anti-Capital movements like Communism and Socialism). What will happen when petrochemical energy is no longer available, or becomes so expensive that the wheels of Industry and technology are forced to slow ... perhaps to a stop? We can't just simply go back to pre-Industrial Revolution technology. A sudden loss of abundant energy would be the end of any concern over globalized capital, and it would at the same time be the end of civilization as we know it.

If we are able to avoid catastrophe, and I think we will, there is no reason to suppose a linear progression to the extremes you suggest. As capital becomes concentrated, the market for products, goods and services becomes more and more constrained as the market shrinks. In order to maintain the trends and the standard of living which drives the effort to accumulate wealth, Labor must be adequately compensated so as to remain a serviceable market for the products, goods and services desired by the wealthy ... and aspired to by the lowest socio-economic cohorts.

Re: Globalization and the Human Condition
Yes, A world wide two party system, Rich and poor and everything they need to enforce it.

It's time to globalize a labor movement. No more boarders only classes.

ebrown started a similar thread a few weeks ago; you might find it interesting:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=79496&highlight=



It may be that the reason you hate capitalism so much is that, as you state here, you're only willing to define it in terms of its most extreme cases.

The "Wal-Mart" issue was taken up some weeks ago in an article from The American Enterprise. You might find it an interesting read. While there is a bit I disagree with in this guy's presentation, he does cite some statistics and numbers and that need to be reckoned with if you want to build a case against the "logic of capitalism." It would be a useful exercise to start by tackling this guy's data, and not from a purely conceptual (and therefore deliberately evasive) point of view.

One thing he points out is that what you're calling the "logic of capitalism," for all that it is taken to represent the armies of Satan, is also precisely what enables a more acceptable alternative to have a decent shot at taking its place; as statistics show, a newly built Wal-Mart will frequently stimulate the productivity, and therefore the effectiveness, of its local competition.



That is quite frequently the view from those on the "imposing" side--the side that is seen as encroaching on defenseless, exotic cultures. Here's an opinion from someone on the other side who believes that globalization is about a lot more: The Case for Contamination

Shapless says--"It may be that the reason you hate capitalism so much is that, as you state here, you're only willing to define it in terms of its most extreme cases."

One does not need to hate capitalism to focus attention on its failings. A mother often focuses attention on the negative things that her son does. By critical examination of his behavior she hopes she can help make of him the man she wants him to be.

I am retired engineer because I once owned a corporation and was a partner in another and was an small business entrepreneur for many years.

Corporations have most of the power in America and when people do not understand how things are then people cannot correct things that need to be corrected. Ignoranace is not a solution for anything.

None of that actually addresses what I wrote except



for which you won't find any argument from me. Certainly, one does not need to hate capitalism to focus attention on its failings. But my point was that you are spending a disproportionate amount of time focusing on the failings of what you noted yourself is capitalism's most extreme logical form, which undermines your goal to help people "understand how things are." True understanding--the kind that can help bring about change--comes from focusing attention on the entire spectrum, not just the most extreme and abstract (and therefore easiest) targets. It's in the details that you will find the "things that need to be corrected." You're right that ignorance is not a solution for anything; neither is abstraction, the romanticized jargon behind which ignorance frequently hides.

The Case for Breaking Up Wal-Mart http://alternet.org/workplace/39251/

For those who are interested in this problem the above article will be very interesting.

The following are a few excerpts from this article.

There is an undeniable beauty to laissez-faire theory, with its promise that by struggling against one another, by grasping and elbowing and shouting and shoving, we create efficiency and satisfaction and progress for all. This concept has shaped, at the most fundamental levels, how we understand and engineer our basic freedoms -- economic, political, and moral. Until recently, however, most politicians and economists accepted that freedom within the marketplace had to be limited, at least to some degree, by rules designed to ensure general economic and social outcomes.


It is now twenty-five years since the Reagan Administration eviscerated America's century-long tradition of antitrust enforcement. For a generation, big firms have enjoyed almost complete license to use brute economic force to grow only bigger. And so today we find ourselves in a world dominated by immense global oligopolies that every day further limit the flexibility of our economy and our personal freedom within it. There are still many instances of intense competition -- just ask General Motors.

But since the great opening of global markets in the early 1990s, the tendency within most of the systems we rely on for manufactured goods, processed commodities, and basic services has been toward ever more extreme consolidation.

The stakes could not be higher. In systems where oligopolies rule unchecked by the state, competition itself is transformed from a free-for-all into a kind of private-property right, a license to the powerful to fence off entire marketplaces, there to pit supplier against supplier, community against community, and worker against worker, for their own private gain. When oligopolies rule unchecked by the state, what is perverted is the free market itself, and our freedom as individuals within the economy and ultimately within our political system as well.

Popular notions of oligopoly and monopoly tend to focus on the danger that firms, having gained control over a marketplace, will then be able to dictate an unfairly high price, extracting a sort of tax from society as a whole. But what should concern us today even more is a mirror image of monopoly called "monopsony." Monopsony arises when a firm captures the ability to dictate price to its suppliers, because the suppliers have no real choice other than to deal with that buyer. Not all oligopolists rely on the exercise of monopsony, but a large and growing contingent of today's largest firms are built to do just that. The ultimate danger of monopsony is that it deprives the firms that actually manufacture products from obtaining an adequate return on their investment. In other words, the ultimate danger of monopsony is that, over time, it tends to destroy the machines and skills on which we all rely.