Globalization now and thenSelection of notes Manifesto of the Communist PartyBy Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848
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 civilized 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.
“Life at High Pressure”By W. R. Greg. 1877, p. 263
Beyond doubt, the most salient characteristic of life
in this latter portion of the 19th century is its SPEED, —what we
may call its hurry, the rate at which we move, the high-pressure at which we
work; —and the question to be considered is, first, whether this rapid rate is
in itself a good; and, next, whether it is worth the price we pay for it—a
price reckoned up, and not very easy thoroughly to ascertain.
The Economic Consequences of the Peaceby John Maynard Keynes, 1919Chapter 2 Europe Before the War
What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress
of man that age was which came to an end in August 1914! The greater part of
the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort,
yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot. But escape
was possible, for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the
average, into the middle and upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low
cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond
the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The
inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed,
the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit,
and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the
same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources
and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or
even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to
couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of
any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might
recommend. He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable
means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality,
could dispatch his servant to the neighbouring office of a bank for such supply
of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad
to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs,
bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly
aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of
all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent,
except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as
aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism
and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions,
and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little
more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise
almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life,
the internationalisation of which was nearly complete in practice.
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of CapitalismBy Vladimir Lenin, written in January — June, 1916 and first published in early 1917
X. The
Place of Imperialism in History
In regard to the rapidity of
Germany's economic development, Riesser, the author of the book on the big
German banks, states: "The progress of the preceding period (1848-70),
which had not been exactly slow, compares with the rapidity with which the
whole of Germany's national economy, and with it German banking, progressed
during this period (1870-1905) in about the same way as the speed of the mail
coach in the good old days compares with the speed of the present-day
automobile ... which is whizzing past so fast that it endangers not only
innocent pedestrians in its path, but also the occupants of the car." In
its turn, this finance capital which has grown with such extraordinary rapidity
is not unwilling, precisely because it has grown so quickly, to pass on to a
more "tranquil" possession of colonies which have to be seized — and
not only by peaceful methods — from richer nations
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bourgeois economists, in describing modern
capitalism, frequently employ catchwords and phrases like "interlocking",
"absence of isolation", etc.; "in conformity with their
functions and course of development", banks are "not purely private
business enterprises: they are more and more outgrowing the sphere of purely
private business regulation". And this very Riesser, whose words I have
just quoted, declares with all seriousness that the "prophecy" of the
Marxists concerning "socialisation" has "not come true"!
What then does this catchword
"interlocking" express? It merely expresses the most striking feature
of the process going on before our eyes. It shows that the observer counts the
separate trees, but cannot see the wood. It slavishly copies the superficial,
the fortuitous, the chaotic. It reveals the observer as one who is overwhelmed
by the mass of raw material and is utterly incapable of appreciating its
meaning and importance. Ownership of shares, the relations between owners of
private property "interlock in a haphazard way". But underlying this
interlocking, its very base, are the changing social relations of production.
When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an
exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of
primary raw materials to the extent of two- thirds, or three-fourths, of all
that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when the raw materials are
transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of
production, sometimes situated hundreds or thousands of miles from each other;
when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the
material right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished
articles; when these products are distributed according to a single plan among
tens and hundreds of millions of consumers (the marketing of oil in America and
Germany by the American oil trust) — then it becomes evident that we have
socialisation of production, and not mere "interlocking", that
private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no
longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is
artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly
long period (if, at the worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is
protracted), but which will inevitably be removed.
What an exciting time the turn of the century must
have been! The period from the late 1800s through the early 1900s was one of
rapid change, in many ways paralleling the changes that are taking place now.
In a relatively short period of time, the entire world went through rapid,
almost miraculous technological invention, forever changing the lives of its
citizens, society, business and government. In this period, the light bulb was
developed and electric power plants sprung up across the nation. Electric
motors were developed to power factories. The telegraph spanned the American
continent and the world, followed by the telephone. Then came the phonograph,
for the first time in history allowing voices, songs, and sounds to be
preserved and replayed at will. At the same time, mechanical devices were
increasing in power. The railroad was rapidly expanding its coverage.
Steam-powered ocean-going ships were under development. The automobile was
invented, first as expensive, hand-made machines, starting with Daimler and
Benz in Europe. Henry Ford developed the first assembly line for the
mass-production of relatively inexpensive automobiles. The first airplane was
flown and within a few decades would carry mail, passengers, and bombs.
Photography was in its prime and motion pictures were on the way. And soon to
come was radio, allowing signals, sounds, and images to be transmitted all
across the world, without the need for wires. It was a remarkable period of
change.
It is difficult today to imagine life prior to these
times. At nighttime the only lighting was through flames: candles, fireplaces,
oil and kerosene lamps, and in some places, gas. Letters were the primary means
of communication, and although letter delivery within a large city was rapid
and efficient, with delivery offered more than once each day, delivery across
distances could take days or even weeks. Travel was difficult, and many people
never ventured more than 30 miles from their homes during their entire lives.
Everyday life was quite different from today. But in what to a historian is a
relatively short period, the world changed dramatically in ways that affected
everyone, not just the rich and upper class, but the everyday person as well.
Light, travel, entertainment: all changed through
human inventions. Work did too, although not always in beneficial ways. The
factory already existed, but the new technologies and processes brought forth
new requirements, along with opportunities for exploitation. The electric motor
allowed a more efficient means of running factories. But as usual, the largest
change was social and organizational: the analysis of work into a series of
small actions and the belief that if each action could be standardized, each
organized into "the one best way, " then automated factories could
reap even greater efficiencies and productivity. Hence the advent of
time-and-motion studies, of "scientific management," and of the
assembly line. Hence too came the dehumanization of the worker, for now the
worker was essentially just another machine in the factory, analyzed like one,
treated like one, and asked not to think on the job, for thinking slowed down
the action.
The era of mass production and the assembly line,
resulted in part from the efficiencies of the "disassembly line"
developed by the meat packing factories. The tools of scientific management
took into account the mechanical properties of the body but not the mental and
psychological ones. The result was to cram ever more motions into the working
day, treating the factory worker as a cog in a machine, deliberately depriving
work of all meaning, all in the name of efficiency. These beliefs have stuck
with us, and although today we do not go to quite the extremes advocated by the
early practitioners of scientific management, the die was cast for the mindset
of ever-increasing efficiency, ever-increasing productivity from the workforce.
The principle of improved efficiency is hard to disagree with. The question is,
at what price?
Frederick Taylor thought there was "the one best
way" of doing things. Taylor's work, some people believe, has had the
largest impact upon the lives of people in this century than that of anyone
else. His book, The principles of scientific management, published in 1911,
guided factory development and workforce habits across the world, from the
United States to Stalin's attempt to devise an efficient communist workplace in
the newly formed Soviet Union. You may not have ever heard of him, but he is
primarily responsible for our notions of efficiency, of the work practices
followed in industry across the world, and even of the sense of guilt we
sometimes feel when we have been "goofing off," spending time on some
idle pursuit when we should be attending to business.
Taylor's "scientific management" was a
detailed, careful study of jobs, breaking down each task into its basic
components. Once you knew the components, you could devise the most efficient
way of doing things, devise procedures that enhanced performance and increased
the efficiency of workers. If Taylor's methods were followed properly,
management could raise workers' pay while at the same time increasing company
profit. In fact, Taylor's methods required management to raise the pay, for
money was used as the powerful incentive to get the workers to follow the
procedures and work more efficiently. According to Taylor, everybody would win:
the workers would get more money, the management more production and more
profit. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The only problem was that workers hated
it.
Taylor, you see, thought of people as simple,
mechanical machines. Find the best way to do things, and have people do it,
hour after hour, day after day. Efficiency required no deviation. Thought was
eliminated. First of all, said Taylor, the sort of people who could shovel
dirt, do simple cutting, lathing, and drilling, and in general do the
lowest-level of tasks, were not capable of thought. "Brute laborers"
is how he regarded them. Second, if thought was needed, it meant that there was
some lack of clarity in the procedures or the process, which signaled that the
procedures were wrong. The problem with thinking, explained Taylor, was not
only that most workers were incapable of it, but that thinking slowed the work
down. That's certainly true: why, if we never had to think, just imagine how
much faster we could work. In order to eliminate the need for thought, Taylor
stated that it was necessary to reduce all work to the routine, that is all the
work except for people like him who didn't have to keep fixed hours, who didn't
have to follow procedures, who were paid literally hundreds of times greater
wages than the brutes, and who were allowed &emdash; encouraged
&emdash; to think .
Taylor thought that the world
itself was neat and tidy. If only everyone would do things according to
procedure, everything would run smoothly, producing a clean, harmonious world.
Taylor may have thought he understood machines, but he certainly didn't
understand people. In fact, he didn't really understand the complexity of
machines and the complexity of work. And he certainly didn't understand the
complexity of the world.
•
Political economy, that
branch of political science or philosophy which treats of the sources, and
methods of production and preservation, of the material wealth and prosperity
of nations.
Political
economy. A branch of the social sciences that takes as its
principal subject of study the interrelationships between political and economic
institutions and processes. That is, political economists are interested in
analyzing and explaining the ways in which various sorts of government affect
the allocation of scarce resources in society through their laws and policies
as well as the ways in which the nature of the economic system and the behavior
of people acting on their economic interests affects the form of government and
the kinds of laws and policies that get made.
•
Peter Dicken, Global Shift (1998, 5):
• Internacionalization processes involve the simple extension of
economic activities across national boundaries. It is essentially, a quantitative
process which leads to a more extensive geographical pattern of economic
activity.
• Globalization processes are qualitatively different from
internationalization processes. They involve not merely the geographical
extension of economic activity across national boundaries but also—and more
importantly—the functional integration of such internationally dispersed
activities.
•
Richard Higgott and Simon Reich. 1998. “Globalisation and Sites of
Conflict: Towards Definition and Taxonomy.” CSGR Working Paper No. 01/98, March.
(A) Globalization as a historical epoch. In this context, globalisation is a specific period of
history--rather than a sociological phenomenon or a theoretical framework. It
is broadly dated from the beginning of detente and the end of the Cold War, and
is immortalised in the destruction of the Berlin wall. It is in effect the
first clear historical phase after the end of the Cold War. This is a temporal
definition--time is the crucial factor. Whether causally related or not,
globalisation as a period might be said to ‘succeed’ the Cold War historically.
The economic counterpart to the bi-polar strategic conflict of the Cold War was
the post world war two, post colonial ‘developmentalist project’ through which
the capitalist economy was stabilised. Like the Cold War before it the term
‘globalisation’ serves as a time bound template for describing a context in
which events occur. Globalization might be considered (retrospectively) as a
historical period.
(B) Globalisation as a confluence of economic phenomena: Alternatively, globalisation, rather than being seen
historically, might be characterized functionally as an intrinsically related
series of economic phenomena. These include the liberalisation and deregulation
of markets, privatization of assets, retreat of state functions (particularly
welfare ones), diffusion of technology, cross-national distribution of manufacturing
production (foreign direct investment), and the integration of capital markets.
In its narrowest formulation, the term refers to the world-wide spread of
sales, production and manufacturing processes, all of which reconstitute the
international division of labour. This is what we might call an economically
defined, process, definition of globalisation.
While
it focuses on the distribution of finance, production, technology, regulation, and
authority as indicators of change, it argues that many of these activities are
not historically 'new' Rather, their volume scope and clustering makes them
significant. They have never occurred with such depth, breadth and speed in the
past. 1970 and beyond is not similar to the period prior to the outbreak of
world war one in 1914. Market reform and the retreat of the state may have
occurred previously, but never in combination with the explosive growth of FDI,
multilateral institutions and the spread of a single ideology. A corollary of
this definition is that globalisation leads to convergence.
(C) Globalization as the hegemony of American values: An understanding of this definition is best captured
in the triumphalist tone inherent in the title of Frances Fukayama's book The
End of History and the Last Man. The end of the 'cold war' represented the
outcome of an ideological battle that had began at the end of world war two. It
stresses the diffusion and assimilation of western--for which read 'American'--technological
capability, finance and institutions (political and economic ones in the public
sector, and ‘best business practices’ in the private sector.) In this
definition, globalisation is a normatively good thing that represents the
triumph of modernisation and democracy defined as industrialized economic
development involving the characteristic features of a limited state apparatus,
representative government and a liberal concept of freedom and choice. In this
regard, current proponents of globalisation hardly sound distinct from their
intellectual forebears in the modernisation tradition in American political
thought according to which a homogenisation of values occurs around the
principles of capitalism and democracy.
(D) Globalisation as technological and social revolution. This view directly contradicts the second definition
of globalisation as being but a new cluster of activities. Rather this view
argues that globalisation is a new form of activity in which a decisive shift
from industrial capitalism to a post-industrial conception of economic
relations is taking place. This shift is driven by a revolution among
techno-industrial elites that will eventually consolidate a single global
market. It is a comprehensive process of globally integrated production; of
specialised but interdependent labour markets; of the privatization of state
assets; and of the linkage of technology across conventional national borders.
Unlike definition A, time has no meaning and space has been compressed as a
result of technological and communication revolutions giving rise to the
'networked economy.'