Globalisation, positive?

[Ned Kelly]

Is there anyone here that would make the case for globalisation as a positive?

The common argument (I've heard this from Marxists IRL) in favour is that globalisation is the force by which the third world nations will be modernised, rapidly at that, bringing them out of semi-feudal class relations, into a further advanced capitalist economy, with an internationalised outlook, where previously it may have even been confined to immediately local concerns.

Thoughts?

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I wouldn't call it positive as much as I would call it inevitable. Capitalism has to spread all across the world. With that in mind, its not really something to be viewed as positive or negative, it is merely the evolution of the globalization of the capitalistic mode of production. Any positives in terms of industrial modernity are just accidental by-products of the spread of capitalistic labour relations - it is also noteworthy that the list of negatives is qualitatively more profound than the positives. We know this back when Marx was writing, as we can't live in a classless and stateless society until those inevitable preconditions - an international working class and an international ruling class of capitalists - are a reality.

The fundamental positive is that modern industry will one day be in the hands of all to use it as they require, not for profit and for the good of humankind.

[Ned Kelly]

I agree with you in that regard, the eventual inevitable worldwide spread of modern industrial apparatuses can't be anything but a positive, regardless of the means by which it occurs

[SacRedMan]

Globalisation=mass exploitation :thumbdown:

[Tommy4ever]

The only benefit of globalisation is for consumers as we are able to buy stuff more cheaply, increasing our standards of living.

But at terrible moral, human and economic costs.

The bourgeiosie also benefits with much greater profits.

[jake williams]

Is there anyone here that would make the case for globalisation as a positive?
Globalization isn't a unified process, and it's only treated that way by, on the one hand, the bourgeoisie, and on the other, a petty-reactionary "left" camp that wants to talk about "globalization" instead of capitalism, generally either because of nativism, a sort of left nationalism, petty-bourgeois elements, or in some cases, outright reactionary feudal revivalism (or worse).

Globalization encompasses a series of processes. Economically and politically it entails an expansion of basically that imperialism which has been on the march for centuries, and thus it is relatively anything new. If anything imperialism of late has been on such an advance that, contradictorily, it has been generating new imperialist and sub-imperialist powers at a staggering rate. At any rate, in this sense it makes sense to talk about globalization as a euphemism for imperialism, and little else.

However, "globalization" is taken to encompass all sorts of technological innovations which are basically positive. The internet is almost unqualifiedly a good thing.

[genstrike]

globalisation is the force by which the third world nations will be modernised, rapidly at that, bringing them out of semi-feudal class relations, into a further advanced capitalist economy

Ahahahahahahah... hahahahaha :laugh:

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The only benefit of globalisation is for consumers as we are able to buy stuff more cheaply, increasing our standards of living.

But at terrible moral, human and economic costs.

The bourgeiosie also benefits with much greater profits.

This is certainly true. Although it also relocates the means of production to the third world, reducing the gap in productivity between them and the developed world. It is this gap in productivity which often makes life so hard for emerging Communist powers in the third world, since it is difficult to develop on their own and they often end up taking on national debt to develop by buying the means of production from first-world capitalist countries.

So the way I see it, globalization is a force for instability and harm under capitalist relations, but a socialist revolution could potentially invert the destructive aspects of globalization. There's no reason to think that third world workers can't seize their sweatshops.


One disadvantage with globalization though is it helps to sustain the capitalist lifestyle in first world countries. It provides people with cheaper, mass produced goods without any reduction in the working or living standards of people in the West. Aside from the fact that this ensures that Western workers can continue to live relatively easily, it alienates western people from the evils of Capitalism (the workers are now doubly alienated from the consumers!). The vast majority of the global poor are "Over there," meaning people in America are more than comfortable thinking capitalism produces high living standards because they are oblivious to the low living standards it exploits.


I would also agree with Ahmadinerjacket that it is the logical conclusion of Capitalism. It's not like there's an evil globalist conspiracy, the reason companies do it is because of the comparative advantage that they see in doing the work in other parts of the world and importing the commodities rather than producing them where they are consumed.

[Agapi]

"Globalization" in the sense of the bringing of distant people closer together by means of technology and social policy is a good thing. A great thing, even, because it allows a truly international culture to begin to flourish. What we have is less that and more simply the global exportation of capital alongside whatever technology and social policy enables that to occur at the greatest efficiency (neoliberal imperialism). It is not a "good" or "inevitable" development strategy for the rest of the world, it is a means to engage in superexploitation that should be opposed.

[Jeraldi]

capitalism is the inevitable outcome of the larger global conspiracy that essentially is what we know as western civilization. Globalization is then the use of the technology and mass production capitalism has allowed to spread western control throughout the globe more efficiently.

Globalization is something to be opposed at every level. While the technology is more or less neutral the loss of the older ways is very negative.

[Obs]

capitalism is the inevitable outcome of the larger global conspiracy that essentially is what we know as western civilization.

No, no, no, Hegel, it's the other way around!

[Glenn Beckunin]

Globalization makes faroff places more interdependent and thus, more vulnerable to issues that would have been local problems. We're beginning to see more and more examples of this, such as the stalling of automotive lines in the US after the tsunami in Japan, a result of 'just-in-time' inventory and shipping practices that were designed to squeeze out a more efficiency at the behest of stability.

So I suppose it is good in that it exacerbates the underlying shortfalls and stability of capitalism, even though americans have traditionally only seen the good side of globalization and are only recently starting to feel negative effects. I also don't think the aspect of what Agapi brought up has been touched on much in this thread. There are excellent technologies that have risen alongside globalization that benefit the common people most overall, and are bringing people together and creating an international class consciousness.

[La Comédie Noire]

Globalization makes the proletariat larger and more global. While proletariatization has never been a a good thing by any stretch of the imagination, it does open up the possibility of global class conflict.

[Kadir Ateş]

Globalisation? Let's just call it capitalism. And yes, with the eradication of feudalism, yes it's bad.

[Jeraldi]

No, no, no, Hegel, it's the other way around!

Yes rome was sudo capitalist but they had to treat their gods evenly if one got out of balance there were repercussions. Add judiaism and christianity you then lose the balance allowing for more exploitation and create the base for this civilization.

and I meant western civ to be the root of our current civilization and not the full definition. I phrased it poorly in my first post.
and I want it to be understood that religion and its trappings play a major part in how this mess works.

[Rusty Shackleford]

These 3 Paragraphs explain it all. When capitalists began lauding globalization late last century, Marx and Engels wrote about it before the second half of the 1800s!


lo and behold, marx and engels were on that shit before people thought of it as a strategy.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.


Also, Obs. EXCELLENT!


capitalism is the inevitable outcome of the larger global conspiracy that essentially is what we know as western civilization.


No, no, no, Hegel, it's the other way around!


================================================== ========================

Yes rome was sudo capitalist but they had to treat their gods evenly if one got out of balance there were repercussions. Add judiaism and christianity you then lose the balance allowing for more exploitation and create the base for this civilization.

and I meant western civ to be the root of our current civilization and not the full definition. I phrased it poorly in my first post.
and I want it to be understood that religion and its trappings play a major part in how this mess works.

I think you misinterpreted Obs's (say that ten times fast) comment to your first statement.

He was in a sense calling you an idealist. Basically, when you said that capitalism was the inevitable outcome of a global conspiracy known as western civilization, you put the ideal before the material.

Capitalism: a socioeconomic system, a type of society.
global conspiracy: abstract, non material, and idea
western civilization: a sort of super society founded in greece and rome.

Basically, you said that some society has conspired to create an economic system that is one of the core elements or identities of western civilization itself today.
it just makes no sense and also it basically says you can create anything you want by just thinking about it from a perspective you are also goign to bring into existence by creating this society you are thinking of creating.

And what Obs was getting at is this: Hegel was a dialectical idealist. Marx turned it the other way, marx was a dialectical materialist. the core difference is this.

idealism: the idea before matter. example: god create the heavens and the earth. there was "the word" and man came into being.

materialism: matter exists, life comes into existence, life interacts with the material world. life gains consciousness. lifeforms now capable of producing abstract ideas(humans) because of experience and interaction with material world. now a creature is able to communicate something abstract like food.


i probably didnt do the best of explaining this but i would suggest giving "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm)" a read. its not very long and its a damn good read.

[bricolage]

seriously though, there are so many conflicting definitions of globalisation it's hard to know what we are actually talking about; finance capital? interconnectivity? cultural flows? transport? telephones? Susan Strange was right when she said it describes 'anything from the Internet to a hamburger', I'd add she should have put [and nothing] in there too.

[Zav]

Globalisation is not inevitable. It has already happened. Money already rules the world. There isn't an international working class yet due to Statism.

[bricolage]

Globalisation is not inevitable. It has already happened. Money already rules the world. There isn't an international working class yet due to Statism.
Eh? How is there not an international working class?

[Jeraldi]

Basically, you said that some society has conspired to create an economic system that is one of the core elements or identities of western civilization itself today.
it just makes no sense and also it basically says you can create anything you want by just thinking about it from a perspective you are also goign to bring into existence by creating this society you are thinking of creating.



no I am saying that western civilization is the conspiracy capitalism is only one aspect of the problem, religion is the other major aspect.

and yes I have read volume 1 of capital

[Rusty Shackleford]

The common argument (I've heard this from Marxists IRL) in favour is that globalisation is the force by which the third world nations will be modernised, rapidly at that, bringing them out of semi-feudal class relations, into a further advanced capitalist economy


the capitalist mode of production dominates all but a few places on this planet today. But, by no means has it brought other nations into equal footing with imperialist powers. It may bring about a bit of industrial and infrastructural improvement but its mostly so that commodities can be shuffled to other parts of the world to be molded into other commodities. most of the time, raw materials are sent to countries with far more advanced industries. For example, i think Iran actually imports more refined petroleum products than it actually produces locally, not to mention exports. Even though it exports oil, it doesnt have the capability to produce vast amounts of refined products like gas, motor oil, plastics and so on.

In large parts of africa, the old colonial relation still exists under the mask of capitalism and globalism. Instead of growing crops for local sustinance, cash crops are grown in fields owned by multinational corporations there because of the low cost of labor. The products arent the property of the nation it is produced in, or the property of the people who actually produced it. In the end, it ends up getting exported to major consumer markets like the EU, the US, Japan, and China. Though there may be advanced threshing machines and seed mills, its geared towards producing a specific crop for export.

In Mexico, US agribusiness has plundered the country. Mexico's corn market was eviscerated by NAFTA which dismantled Mexican trade protectionism. A major part of it was the fixing of corn prices at a higher rate than they are worth on the market internationally or compared to US corn so that it was actually something to actually produce and live off of. Another aspect is the Ejido. A sort of communal farm that existed pre-1994 in Mexico. Basically, whole towns farmed the same land together on state owned property. that was also dismantled. The land was then pieced out to each farmer in each town and village and then bought up by US corn producers. Also, there are whats called Maquiladoras which are basically auto plants owned by the likes of Ford, Chrysler, GM, and all that that are barely ten miles across the border. These factories may resemble a growth in Mexican industrial capacity but they are nothing of the sort. They are simply assembly plants. not foundries or mills. Since NAFTA, US corporations could waltz right across the border to hyper-exploit labor there, then quickly ship the finished commodities back into the US.


the point is, yes the global spread of capitalism has led to a general increase in industrialism(and along with it, the proletariat). but it hasnt led to any form of base industry being spread to these nations. Ore may be mined, but it isnt made into steel or aluminum. Its shipped off to US foundries. Steel isnt used to make heavy machinery like tractors or industrial parts. Thats made in the US and EU. What is made in places like honduras is really nothing. Finished parts are shipped into countries to then be assembled and shipped right back out.


There is no good or bad, it was an inevitability of capitalism. But, it certainly doesnt help with the development of capitalism or a local or national bourgeoisie in other countries like some may think.

[Kamos]

Globalisation is good, in a way. The capitalistic aspects are bad, but it makes it easier to extend the revolution to the whole world, and that's what matters in the long term.

[Obs]

no I am saying that western civilization is the conspiracy capitalism is only one aspect of the problem, religion is the other major aspect.
No, religion is just a symptom of exploitative class relations, and-

and yes I have read volume 1 of capital
Fuck it, there's no helping you.