Globalisation

[guerrillaradio]

Incidentally, are there any capitalists left from when I used to chill here?? I don't recognise any...

Yah so globalisation aka the big one. The left seems somewhat split on this (quel surprise). The "champion" of the anti-globalisation movement, Naomi Klein, is actually expressly pro-globalisation, and claims in "Fences and Windows" that the entire movement is not campaigning against globalisation, but that it should be regulated and guarded against exploitation.

However, that no matter regulated it is, globalisation is capitalism and thus any anti-capitalist would say that it is by definition exploitative, and as such, oppose it.

Discuss.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Well I guess regulation is the key. You are right, the left is split, and it is because of this there is no point in going for an all out revolution yet. We should not become apathetic though, so I would say that campaigning within what we have is important, whilst always opening new avenues. Fairtrade, I am biased towards, but there are lots of other ways we can all become very involved. The only other option is to mope around until the world gets so bad there IS a revolution, and we still ain't had time to decide what is best.

By changing our surroundings, and people&#39;s general attitudes, i.e. installing greater responsibility, we can do a lot. Different countries may still need traditional revolutions but we must be realistic about where most of us live. We could easily be smashed by the military. Just like Vietnam. <_< So whilst globalisation rages on we must make sure that this transport and communication revolution is not at the expense of exploited workers.

The regulations that would/could be imposed on industries is more left wing tahn has happened for a long time. By being clever, but always aware we can do a lot.

[Edelweiss]

Of course Klein is very right with her stance. I can&#39;t see any proof four your claim that "globalisation is capitalism". It&#39;s of course a question of definition of "globalisation", but&#39;m not generally opposed against a globalized world, where cultures are merged and the nations and borders are vanishing. The true anti-globalists are the nationalist right-wingers, who are defending their backward national concepts. Therefore, as a leftist, I very much prefer the term "globalist critic", than "globalisation opponent".

[Iepilei]

I see globalisation as nothing more than manifest-destiny on the world scale. It breaks nationalised industries and more or less forces nations to open themselves up for buy and sell. It&#39;s an attempt to provide more sources of capital to ever-hungry middle class.

Will it bring more wealth? To a few, I can imagine. However, the largest beneficiaries will be those with the means to jump in first and cut themselves a larger part of the pie. Perhaps it&#39;s a good scenario, though, as it will unveil the bleak and utter hopelessness of American capitalism to the rest of the world... and when all the sources are purchased, everything will return to buisness as usual.

Then we&#39;ll move to other locales.

[Y2A]

How is giving people jobs "exploitive"? The fact is that if corporations did not go into these countries they would have no way to feed there families. However, I must agree that there must be international enforcement of "fair trade" policies. Far to many corporations get away with true exploitation of workers and many jobs are being lost in the states aswell. Big business must be held responsible for any wrongful actions by international law, but unfortunately this has yet to happen because of some ultra-free-traders in office.

[antieverything]

Y2A&#39;s analysis begs a good question but it is limited.

Just as capitalism is a system of power rather than an economic system (economics is part of the system but such a limited analysis misses the point) globalized capitalism is a system of power.

Is the flow of capital going from the core to the periphery as proponents of global capital claim? I don&#39;t think that it is even a question that can be argued when the correct analysis is used. No, the capital flow has been from poor to rich. From poor workers to capitalists in the third world, as well as the first.

[RevolucioN NoW]

How is giving people jobs "exploitive"?

Is this the only argument that cappies have in support of globalisation.

These "jobs" are not even enough to afford three meals a day, let alone housing, health care, clothing.

And then there is the serious threat of injury on the job (as labour practices rights are either non existant or unenforced).

I think the wold can do without jobs like that

[Iepilei]

besides... it&#39;s just an excuse to export labour to cheaper locales and have a &#39;morally clean slate&#39; and you know it. =P

[Hoppe]

Is this the only argument that cappies have in support of globalisation.


Yes, and the left has read to many Harry Potter books and think that within a short amount of time all problems can be solved if they just stick to the glorious writings of Marx.........


Is the flow of capital going from the core to the periphery as proponents of global capital claim? I don&#39;t think that it is even a question that can be argued when the correct analysis is used. No, the capital flow has been from poor to rich. From poor workers to capitalists in the third world, as well as the first.

Mostly the flow goes from less poor to poor, from the second-world to the third.

Can someone define "fair" trade for me?

[Rasta Sapian]

I think that developing nations need running water, sewage, doctors, and teachers before they need nike factories which exploit the workers more than they will ever know&#33;

Forcing indiginous peoples out of there natural environment dependant on natural resources to the cities where many find death, disease, corruption, and an overall loss of cultural identity&#33;

Capitalism is providing more money to the poverished people, however it is also polltuting their environments, and pushing people to conform into impirialist slaves&#33; It&#39;s sad but true :(

In addition industrialized nations are losing jobs, forcing hundreds of thousands of people out of work&#33;

[LSD]

Yes, and the left has read to many Harry Potter books and think that within a short amount of time all problems can be solved if they just stick to the glorious writings of Marx.........

Better than Ayn Rand...

[Hoppe]

Originally posted by Lysergic Acid [email protected] 6 2004, 10:13 AM
Better than Ayn Rand...
You must be quite dyslectic as I seem to have said on many occassions that Rand is not the thing to read.


Capitalism is providing more money to the poverished people, however it is also polltuting their environments, and pushing people to conform into impirialist slaves&#33; It&#39;s sad but true

Very unfortunate, but if the choice is between eating and not polluting the environment it&#39;s an easy one. Societies first need to have a certain level of development before they can start thinking about pollution. We can help them with technology to decrease it a bit, but if we use the same standards for them as here in the first world, you&#39;ll keep starvation and poverty.

[cubist]

it is not globalisation that is capitalist but the theory which runs the corp that is globalising,

if the global corp acted with 100% honesty and paid better than it does and didn&#39;t order mono cultivation, or raise demand in order to decrease price to pay, then there wouldn&#39;t be a problem. if they acted with honestly to raise the social standard of the lesser countries at a faster rate than they are.

[Hoppe]

Hmm, you cannot "simply" raise the standard of living by giving them more money. If it were that easy, why not give everyone in the world twice the amount they now have?

And as far as I know, a lot of Dutch companies do a lot of things besides "exploitation", i.e. providing education for children while parents work, provide healthcare if necessary. It&#39;s easy to pick Nike and say "look what they are doing, those horrible capitalists". All those so called Asian Tigers were third world countries 30 years ago, now look at them. They managed to overcome all the horrible things the West had to endure in a much shorter time. I never hear any of you about this.

An enormous amount of things can be said about the Worldbank, IMF, protectionist policies etc and I certainly agree with a lot of the critique. Nevertheless you don&#39;t provide a viable alternative, since Cuba is the "best" you have come up with.

[Wenty]

Having read a fair bit on globalisation yet not gone out and seen the affects it has i can only give a rehased, tentative opinion (like most here i suspect). I would take naomi klein&#39;s view of better regulation for globalisation though.

Phillipe le grains book &#39;open world:the truth about globalisation&#39; dispels some of the myths about the problems of globalisation so i suggest those who haven&#39;t read it, read it along with &#39;fences and windows&#39; too.

It seems the problem is assessing the problem of something which has only really exploded in the last 20 years or so. The very nature of capitalism ensures there is always going to someone worse off, i think we should do everything to ensure those who produce for the first world get what they have earnt.

[Hoppe]

Capitalism is not a zero-sum game.


i think we should do everything to ensure those who produce for the first world get what they have earnt.

This could easily result in nationalistic policies, which is far far worse.

[Sabocat]

Yes, bringing jobs to the third world that pay 33 cents an hour is a real bonus for the people living and working there. :lol:

It&#39;s exploitation plain and simple. It&#39;s CEO&#39;s increasing margin and profitabiltiy at the expense of the poor. Nothing more.

Pay particular attention to the actual and living wage comparisons in this article below.

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How do we know that Hanes are really made in sweat shops?

Sweat shop activism has only really taken off in the past 10 years and over that time there have been numerous reports of Hanes apparel, and other Sara Lee clothing, being made in sweatshops in various companies. Sara Lee was taking advantage of Burma&#39;s slave labor camps until public pressure caused them to pull out last year - a move which was greeted with many press releases and much celebration by human rights activists. If Sara Lee had given up sweat shops, you can be quite sure we&#39;d all hear about it&#33;

The salary of the CEO of Sara Lee, manufacturer of sportswear labels Champion and Hanes, is nearly &#036;7 million a year. The average salary of a Sara Lee sweatshop worker is 33 cents an hour.

There are numerous documentations of Sara Lee&#39;s sweatshop activities dating from 1995 to 1999; recent campaigns have focused more on big-name brands such as Nike and the Gap. There is, unfortunately, absolutely no evidence that anything has changed in the past two years. Indeed, a report published by Global Policy on April 4, 2002 specifically mentions Hanes and Sara Lee: "In Haiti, workers for these transnational corporations earn barely enough to cover 60% of their costs of living, relegating them to a life of abject poverty, while the top CEOs of the very companies they work for rake in salaries to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The Hanes/Sara Lee Corporation, Disney, Nike, Addidas, Reebok, JCPenney, Sears, and WalMart are just a few examples of U.S. companies that actually seek out Third World countries with high unemployment rates and weak environmental and labor laws in order to set up shop and maximize profits."

Last year a documentary on "Life and Debt" in Jamaica showed as Tommy Hilfiger and Hanes benefited from the tax-free labor of Jamaican workers earning the equivalent of &#036;30 every two weeks in the country&#39;s Free Trade Zones. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the film, "The Hanes clothing division of Chicago&#39;s Sara Lee company was one of the beneficiaries ... until it pulled out to find even cheaper workers elsewhere."

But what is a sweat shop? Sure, they earn around 33 cents an hour, but isn&#39;t that a good wage in those countries?

The answer to that is no. Sweat shops do not pay a living wage - they do not pay enough for the workers to buy food and cover basic health care. According to the National Labor Committee, the approximate hourly wages for apparel workers around the world include:
China -- 23 cents (Living wage: 87 cents an hour)
El Salvador -- 59 cents (Living wage: &#036;1.18 an hour)
Haiti -- 30 cents (Living wage: 58 cents an hour)
Honduras -- 43 cents (Living wage: 79 cents an hour)
Nicaragua -- 23 cents (Living wage: 80 cents an hour)

In many cases, sweatshop workers, employed by large multinational corporations, are trapped in a system of modern day indentured servitude comparable to slavery and denied basic human freedoms like the right to join a union, attend religious services, quit or marry. Menial wages and reports of physical abuse in addition are typical of a new economic world order in which the poor are getting poorer and the rich growing richer.

Workers in sweatshops have been forced to have abortions to keep their jobs, denied any bathroom breaks, sexually abused, and even killed for trying to organize protests. They typically work 12 and 16 hour days, with no overtime - and no choice.

Even companies who use sweat shops have admitted that sweatshop jobs are not, in fact, better than no jobs at all. Doug Cahn, the vice president for human rights programs at Reebok International, wrote a letter to the press answering an article defending sweat shops, saying the author was "wrong when he suggests that sweatshop jobs are better than no jobs at all." "Mr. Kristof&#39;s argument," Cahn wrote, "ignores the cycle of poverty that occurs when child labor, and other violations of internationally recognized standards, deny each new generation a chance at better jobs at higher wages. When companies improve standards in factories in poor countries, workers learn skills, earn wages, that typically exceed those paid in the informal sector, and often receive other benefits, like health care. Multinational companies, together with development agencies, human rights and labor rights groups trade unions and governments, have the opportunity to improve the quality of life for tens of millions of workers." The irony is that Reebok themselves still use sweatshops&#33; Yet even they admit that the arguments used to support them are false.

Isn&#39;t Sara Lee/Hanes a member of Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production? Doesn&#39;t this mean they don&#39;t use sweatshops?

Sara Lee is indeed a member of Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production or WRAP, a clothing industry front founded in June 2000 to undermine the growing anti-sweatshop movement. WRAP purports to be a global network that monitors labor conditions in garment factories around the world. WRAP is the creation of the American Apparel and Footware Association.

However, WRAP is widely viewed by human rights groups as little more than a distracting public relations effort--neither comprehensive nor independent. According to Terry Collingsworth, attorney with the Washington-based International Labor Rights Fund, a major force behind child labor and sweatshop monitoring, WRAP was "set up as an industry-dominated project to avoid outside, legitimate monitoring. In short, it&#39;s a dodge, and is so regarded by everyone except the industry."

An April 2000 report by the Canada-based Maquila Solidarity Network notes that the WRAP program has a number of glaring deficiencies:
- Its board is dominated by industry representatives.
- It has no provision for public disclosure of any problems found in factories, or even where the factories are located.
- Its labor code is similar to anti-union right-to-work legislation in some U.S. states.
- It only encourages manufacturers to apply self-imposed "environmentally conscious" practices.

http://www.she-net.com/nosweat/hanessweatshops.htm

[Iepilei]

The trouble with the globalisation theory is that you cannot have external industrialisation. Ok, so you open factories in Asia and Latin American countries - do the people in the country occupy control / concent over what happens? Are they national chains, these &#39;Nike&#39; shoppes? No. You don&#39;t create a bourgeoise in the nation to rule over the proletariat - instead you have a nation of proletariat working for a bourgeoise whom rests thousands of miles away.

Grounds for revolutionary action, as we&#39;ve seen in the past. But of course I don&#39;t see this as a bad thing, though many globalisation-prone capitalists and corporatists do. The problem is you can&#39;t do the work for nations, you must allow them to build up their own markets if they&#39;re going to compete. At the present, these nations are nothing more than pools of cheap-labour resources scrounged up by at-home buisness and industry who don&#39;t wish to pay an American worker full-price.

But of course, who can blame em?

[guerrillaradio]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2004, 11:04 PM
Of course Klein is very right with her stance. I can&#39;t see any proof four your claim that "globalisation is capitalism". It&#39;s of course a question of definition of "globalisation", but&#39;m not generally opposed against a globalized world, where cultures are merged and the nations and borders are vanishing. The true anti-globalists are the nationalist right-wingers, who are defending their backward national concepts. Therefore, as a leftist, I very much prefer the term "globalist critic", than "globalisation opponent".
By globalisation, I mean the spreading of trade, labour etc from the West to the world as a whole, which is what the globalisation has kinda come to mean in current affairs. But yes, I see your point in that globalisation&#39;s a very non-specific term and is a good thing in many, many ways. I&#39;m surprised that you agree with Klein&#39;s stance, since she is not calling for the dismantlement of capitalist globalisation, only that it should be regulated in order to protect the worker from exploitation, yet surely capitalism is exploitation by definition.

[Saint-Just]

I think that the problems with globalisation lie in the fact that it is done entirely for the benefit of developed economies. Also, the cultural homogenisation in globalisation is of the American culture being spread around the world.

The trouble with the globalisation theory is that you cannot have external industrialisation. Ok, so you open factories in Asia and Latin American countries - do the people in the country occupy control / concent over what happens? Are they national chains, these &#39;Nike&#39; shoppes? No. You don&#39;t create a bourgeoise in the nation to rule over the proletariat - instead you have a nation of proletariat working for a bourgeoise whom rests thousands of miles away.

This is true. However, the developed countries bring skills and technology to developing countries that enables the developing countries to create their own industries. For example, the manufacture of technology products in Asia. For example, Malaysia and Singapore were exploited for their cheap labour, but now they have their own firms manufacturing technology to sell to developed countries. I do not know masses about this subject though, I may be wrong.

I think the problem is not globalisation but capitalism itself. I think globalisation will make the world richer, it is the logical result of capitalism. I think that it is not globalisation that is undesirable but capitalism. I think globalisation makes the poorest classes in the developing countries richer, but that there is still massive inequality and brutality inherent in the capitalist system.

Also, I do not think this place is boring. If anyone is bored here it is because of themselves. This board is functioning as well as it usually does, in my opinion.

[dark fairy]

globalisation is something ironic to a certain point i mean look at nike... {i your latin american, hispanic, whatever you want to call it}


they go to cental emerica to make shoes that are worth &#036;5 and come and sell them here for &#036;105... when our second cousins are making these fucken shoes and since everyone is starving and has little shelter the little they make feels fair to them... this is just how i think at this momemt... i can&#39;t spell

[Wenty]

granted and i agree with you entirely but globalisation is more than that. Its becoming a byword for a lot of other evils.

[mentalbunny]

I&#39;m afraid I don&#39;t have much time so I haven&#39;t read all the comments.

Even so I&#39;ll add my little contribution.

Globalisation cannot be taken back, the technology for communication, etc, is here and will stay unless for some reason it gets destroyed. I don&#39;t think we should detroy it however, if it ever goes it would be an accident, because the communication capabilities are very useful.

In No Logo Klein seems to be advocating decentralisation, but still globalisation in terms of communication. And I think that she makes a good point here. Globalisation as it stands is a poison, driving East and West further apart, but it also offers a chance for people to change it, to mould it. Right now it&#39;s the multinationals and the world bank that have the power, but through the internet and news we can see how globalisation affects the new global proletariat: the workers in the sweatshops, etc.

Thus it&#39;s easier to education people. However dismantling the exploitative machine that is globalised neo-imperialistic capitalism is difficult, and I can&#39;t answer how to do that.

However, globalisation offers opportunites. When we succeed we can use current communication tenchnology to keep in touch with the rest of the world, but we can also shrink the size of individual "units" if you get me. There will be no real national borders, the world will be a huge network. From where I&#39;m standing one major flaw of the Soviet Union was that it relied on centralised power, which meant that corruption was so easy. It was stupidly easy to invent a factory that didn&#39;t exist, cargo trains rattled around the country empty, it was a mess. But decentralisation could solve these kinds of problems. However I don&#39;t know enough on this topic and this post has been a bit of a ramble, sorry.

Please can anyone who knows of any good texts on globalisation in all its forms please PM me to tell me, because I&#39;m down for doing a talk on globalisation next term for a large chunk of my school.