globalization or imperialism?

[eremon]

OVER THE past several years, the term "globalization" has become a common way for politicians and the media to refer to the dominant trends in the world economy. Economic globalization is, it would seem, all pervasive.
On the other hand, many activists insist on saying that "globalization" is very poor word to describe the internationalization of the economy that has taken place. The appropriate word for this is imperialism and that the ruling classes use globalization as a justification for austerity measures, job cuts, spending cuts and increased workloads.

so,what is the answer?
globalization or imperialism??

[Bolshevist]

Hi

In the book "Imperialism", Lenin gives the following definition:


If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.

But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

From the Marx.org encyclopedia concerning globalisation:


Ulrich Beck defines globalisation as “the processes through which sovereign national states are criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientations, identities and networks”. According to Beck, the process is irreversible because of:

1. The geographical expansion and ever greater density of international trade, as well as the global networking of finance markets and the growing power of transnational corporations.
2. The ongoing evolution of information and communications technology.
3. The universal demands for human rights – the (lip service paid to the) principle of democracy.
4. The stream of images from global culture industries.
5. The emergence of a post-national, polycentric world politics, in which transnational actors (corporations, non-governmental organisations, United Nations) are growing in power and number alongside governments.
6. The question of world poverty.
7. The issue of global environmental destruction.
8. Trans-cultural conflicts in one and the same place.
[What is Globalisation? Ulrich Beck, 2000]

Much discussion of globalisation centres around the viability of the national state, discussion which tends to conflate the state (which is not confined in its actions to territorial borders) with government (which is legitimated only within its borders), and around free trade and protectionism.

Marx and Engels wrote a fair description of the process in 1848:

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

“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 connections 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 reactionaries, 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 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.

“The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

“The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.” [Communist Manifesto]

[Severian]

Different people mean different things by "globalization".

If you mean "the internationalization of the economy"; that's older than imperialism as defined by Lenin. It's one of the basic - and progressive - features of capitalism as described by Marx. See Section I of the Communist Manifesto, for example.

Those who oppose it are not taking a progressive stand; they are engaged in reactionary, protectionist economic nationalist. Which dovetails with anti-EU, anti-NAFTA ultrarightists like Patrick Buchanan or the BNP.

Past thread with discussion on the different meanings of "globalization" (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=40514)

[eremon]

ok, thank you for your comments!!!

[scawenb]

I think the one difference is that globalization does look at world trade as expanding and deepening which will lead to the dissolving of the importance of individual nation states - where as Imperialism is a economic stage of capitalism which divides the world into oppressor and oppressed nations and leads to inter-imperialist rivalries between nations.

[eremon]

scawenb Posted on Today at 12:58 pm

I think the one difference is that globalization does look at world trade as expanding and deepening which will lead to the dissolving of the importance of individual nation states - where as Imperialism is a economic stage of capitalism which divides the world into oppressor and oppressed nations and leads to inter-imperialist rivalries between nations.


according to the activist Alex Callinicos:

“the Marxist theory of imperialism…sets modern imperialism in the context of the historical development of the capitalist mode of production…..classical Marxist theory of imperialism affirms that capitalism in its imperialist stage is defined by two potentially conflicting tendencies: (1) the internationalisation of production, circulation and investment and (2) the interpenetration of private capital and the nation-state. In consequence, an increasingly integrated world economy becomes the arena for competition among capitals that tends now to take the form of geopolitical conflict among states….From this perspective modern imperialism is what happens where two previously distinct forms of competition merged, as they did in the late 19th century: (1) economic competition between capitals; (2) geopolitical competition between states….Imperialism represents the moment at which these two logics become integrated. Geopolitical competition can no longer be pursued without the economic resources that could only be generated within the framework of capitalist relations of production; but capitals involved in increasingly global networks of trade and investment depend on different forms of support, ranging from tariff and subsidy to the assertion of military power, from their nation-state. Another way to put it is that the competitive struggle among what Marx in the Grundrisse called ‘many capitals’ now assumes two forms, economic and geopolitical.”(international socialism.issue108.p109-110)



therefore,and according to the above quote, i think that globalization is used to explain the internalization of capital-trade,investments and workforce- or as what did you write the expansion of word trade but it is very poor to be sustained since the internalization of capital it doesnt occurs in a smooth way. it happens through geopolitical conflict-many wars and rivalties- among nation-states. through this process is that internalization of capital occurs,which is the core of the analisis and not only just internalization of capital itself. explaining just the expansion of capital beyond nation-states without analysing geopolitical conflicts is a drawback.