Originally posted by
[email protected] 17 2006, 03:34 AM
Like Severian said, there are different definitions of globalization. But generally globalization means economic interdependence between different countries and a free international capital flow.
If that's what you mean by globalization:
"Economic interdependence" is an objective tendency of capitalism - Marx talked about it in the Manifesto, how the bourgeoisie batters down all Chinese walls with the cheap prices of its commodities and so forth.
And it's one of the progressive tendencies. Among other things, it's creating millions of wage-workers all over the world. More gravediggers of capitalism.
Also, communism can only be realized as a world system, based precisely on economic interdependence. By promoting economic interdepence, the workings of capital are preparing the groundwork for communism.
National self-sufficiency is a reactionary utopia, which points backward towards the pre-capitalist past.
"free international capital flow." is partly an objective tendency and partly a particular policy. The workings of the market tend to create a situation where capital flows across borders. The export of capital is one of the features of the present phase of capitalism, as Lenin pointed out in "Imperialism."
But there's also particular policies and trade agreements, often mislabelled "free trade", which are promoted by imperialist powers to soldify their domination of Third World countries. Those often are opposed by working people in the Third World for this reason. And because they require Third World countries to lower all import barriers and place fewer conditions on imperialist investment. While the imperialist countries, especially the U.S., practice a double standard by retaining many of their import barriers.
These agreements are opposed by many in the imperialist countries for the opposite reason. Under the banner of "anti-globalization", they promote reactionary economic nationalism, oppose imports from the Third World, claim the national sovereignty of imperialist countries is being violated by the WTO and other international organizations they reify, etc.