Globalisation is a euphemism for the global offensive of capital in crisis on the working people in rich as well poor nations. Viewed in another context, it is the economic, political and, as it recently turned out, military offensive of imperialism (notably the G-7 countries) led by US imperialism on what is called (no longer very aptly, for there is no second world) the third world. If we were to divide the historical stage of imperialism, which has completed a hundred years of existence, into a few distinct phases (i.e., sub-stages), we might call globalisation its latest phase.
But is not globalisation an old, inbuilt tendency of capital? Yes it is. We all remember the ever-bright and highly insightful portrayal of the globalising impulse of capital in the Communist Manifesto. In fact this impulse has manifested itself over the centuries in three distinct but overlapping “waves”:
The first, of mercantile capital on its trading and colonising spree starting from the fag end of the 15th and continuing upto early 20lh century;
The second, of industrial capital since the industrial revolution in late 18lh century, aimed principally at controlling/capturing sources of raw materials and markets for industrial products;
The third, of finance capital (which emerged at the juncture of the 19th and 20lh centuries, as the monopolistic coalescence of industrial capital and bank capital) based on the electronics revolution of the last 20 years of the 20th century.
The second wave did not end but merged into the third, which became particularly conspicuous since the early 1990s with the spread of information technology and came to be called globalisation. We must not lose sight of this thread of continuity running through the different stages and phases of capitalism, but perhaps we should pay even more attention to studying what is new in the present phase. For instance, in Lenin’s time export of capital from advanced to backward countries (as well as between advanced ones) was a growing feature of imperialism; in recent times we have also seen a reverse flow from underdeveloped to developed countries (from the peripheries to the metropolitan centres of capitalism).
- Box matter
Globalization is the accelerated integration of capital, production, and markets globally, a process driven by the logic of corporate profitability. — Walden Bello, One World, July 10, 2003
Walden Bello is Director of Focus on the Global South
Yes, many are the new features of imperialist globalisation; we shall briefly mention the more important ones:
1. Increasing integration of the global economy based on incredibly fast and massive movements of finance capital across the globe through stock and currency markets, made possible by (a) the amazing achievements in information technology (IT) and (b) dissolution of the Soviet bloc and opening up of the great China market, which have cleared the ground for a single world capitalist economy with information economy playing the most dynamic role.
2. The cult of the colossus being played out in the shape mega-mergers (Exxon-Mobil, Daimler Benz-Chrysler-Mitsubishi), mega scams (Enron) and of course, of mega bankruptcies (world.com, Daewoo). The global stranglehold and ever-deepening intrusion of mega corporations into all domains of public and private life.
The whole point is aptly driven home by Percy Barnevik, (quoted in Gerard Greenfield, The Success of Being Dangerous: Resisting Free Trade and Investment Regimes, 2000, http://www.globallabour.org/qreenfield1.htm) who is former chairperson of ABB, the third most transnationalised corporation[1]: “I would define globalization as the freedom for my group of companies to invest where it wants when it wants, to produce what it wants, to buy and sell where it wants, and support the fewest restrictions possible coming from labor laws and social conventions.”
3. Emergence of the WTO as the flagship leading the imperialist economic offensive against underdeveloped countries, razing their tariff barriers to the ground while protecting the markets of rich countries from third world manufactures. After the IMF, the WTO is imperialism’s most uncouth arm in demolishing the weaker nations’ economic sovereignty, which also results from the unrestricted cross-border flow of private (non-institutional) finance.
4. Concomitant attacks on the political sovereignty of these countries in so many ways, including the open rehabilitation of colonialism – in the “failed states” and “rogue states” (the trial of Milosevich; the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq) to start with.
5. Speculation in foreign currencies, shares, bonds etc. predominating over manufacturing sectors, which is plagued by overproduction and surplus capacity and falling profit rates. By the late 1990s, the volume of transactions per day in foreign exchange markets alone came to over $ 1.2 trillion, which was equal to the value of all trade in goods and services in an entire quarter[2].
6. The central role of speculation leading to frequent and devastating stock market crashes and currency turmoils. To cite just one example, the great dotcom collapse of 2000-2001 wiped out $ 4.6 trillion in investor wealth on Wall Street – an amount that was half of the American GDP and four times the wealth wiped out in the 1987 crash[3].
7. Rise of the anti-globalisation (and lately anti-war) movement and “new internationalism” as a powerful countercurrent to the global offensive of capital.
In these features one easily finds the elements of both continuity and change. It is the dialectical unity of the two aspects that impels us to describe globalisation as the latest phase (and of course, the most reactionary phase) of imperialism. As such, its agencies include not only the IMF-WB-WTO triad, but the Pentagon and NATO too. Above we have seen an intellectual’s perception on the role of the (not so) hidden fist, now hear an army insider who calls a spade a spade:
“… the new security paradigm that shapes this age disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein’s outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms …
“… show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and – most important – the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.
… So where do we schedule the U.S. military’s next round of away games? … in the Gap.
“The reason I support going to war in Iraq is not simply that Saddam is a cutthroat Stalinist willing to kill anyone to stay in power, nor because that regime has clearly supported terrorist networks over the years. The real reason I support a war like this is that the resulting long-term military commitment will finally force America to deal with the entire Gap as a strategic threat environment.”
This is how Thomas PM Barnett, strategist at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island and advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defence, described Pentagon’s role in the furtherance of globalisation. The speech, reproduced in Esquire, March 2003, was delivered in November 2002. In his view, the Pentagon’s task is to (1) protect the “core” (the entire developed world “where globalization is thick”), (2) help the “seam states that lie along the Gap’s bloody boundaries’ (such as Pakistan, Mexico etc.) so as to “firewall the Core from the Gap’s worst exports, such as terror, drugs, and pandemics; and, most important, (3) Shrink the Gap.”
- Notes:
1. UNCTAD World Investment Report, 2002.
2. “Capitalist crisis and corporate crime in America” by Walden Bello, Global Outlook, Issue Number 3 – Winter 2003.
3. Ibid
