by Jerry Harris, SolidarityEconomy.net
. Media competition from al-Jazeera
Al-Jazeera will start broadcasting in English having concluded a string of 87 cable and satellite distribution deals. Al Jazeera has been actively recruiting Arab journalists laid-off by the BBC and says its aim is to provide global news from a developing world perspective without “western-centric†baggage. Beaming out of Qatar, the world’s richest nation in per capita terms.
. Foreign Banks in China
There have been a lot of foreign banks eager to enter China. But even with 70 foreign banks from 20 countries setting up 238 operating branches they still account for only 0.55 percent of China’s local-currency loans.
(FT, 11/16/06, p. 1. “China paves way for foreign banks to offer more services.†Mure Dickie and Sundeep Tucker. (more...)Archive for the 'Globalization' Category
GLOBAL NOTES #8
by Jerry Harris, SolidarityEconomy.net
. Media competition from al-Jazeera
Al-Jazeera will start broadcasting in English having concluded a string of 87 cable and satellite distribution deals. Al Jazeera has been actively recruiting Arab journalists laid-off by the BBC and says its aim is to provide global news from a developing world perspective without “western-centric†baggage. Beaming out of Qatar, the world’s richest nation in per capita terms.
. Foreign Banks in China
There have been a lot of foreign banks eager to enter China. But even with 70 foreign banks from 20 countries setting up 238 operating branches they still account for only 0.55 percent of China’s local-currency loans.
(FT, 11/16/06, p. 1. “China paves way for foreign banks to offer more services.†Mure Dickie and Sundeep Tucker. (more...)Ought of Africa: A Report From the U.N. Climate Conference
Gary Braasch reports from the latest U.N. climate-change convention in Nairobi, Kenya. Braasch has been photographing and reporting on climate change since 1999. His forthcoming book, Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming Is Changing the World, will be published by the University of California Press next year.
The seasonal rains have returned to southern Kenya, greening the countryside once again. But in the north and east, near the Somalian border, refugee camps set up for those who lost everything in a deep drought earlier this year are suddenly being flooded out by this season's unusually severe rains. Many see this rapid switch from drought to deluge as global warming in action -- more searing droughts and stronger rainstorms in an intensifying cycle that affects the world's very poorest.
Not far away, in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, officials and observers from around the world gathered for this year's United Nations summit on climate change. Here, the severity and urgency of global warming should have seemed clearer to delegates than it did at last year's frigid Montreal summit.
No continent is as vulnerable to climate disruption as Africa, and none harbors more poverty. That's why it's been a big deal to African nations that the 12th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was held for the first time in sub-Saharan Africa. Many African nations sent large delegations. African luminaries like Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan shed light on the plight of Africans in the face of global climate change. Environmental groups presented papers on threats to the continent. (more...)Global Notes #7: Book Review of ‘The Political Economy of US Militarism’ by Ismael Hossein-zadeh
by Jerry Harris, SolidarityEconomy.net
Hossein-zadeh has written an essential book on US imperialism and the influence of the military/industrial complex. His effort produces two unique insights on the economic importance of military funding and divisions within the US ruling class over the strategic direction of imperialism.
On political economy Hossein-zadeh argues against the common view that the war in Iraq is mainly about oil. Instead his focus is on the economic base of the military/industrial complex itself and the need for profits via government funding. The author points to the continual pressure of the market and the need for greater accumulation as the basis for the development of militarism in US society. As he states; “The combination of private ownership and the market-driven character of the United States’ arms industries has drastically modified the conventional relationship between war and the means of warfare: it is now often the supply or profit imperatives of weapons production that drive the demand for arms, hence the need for war.†(p. 200) (more...)Global Notes #6
. What They Say
Gary Samore, director of studies at the influential Council on Foreign Relations says; “You could have Superman become the US ambassador to Baghdad now and he couldn’t fix the problems or put the pieces together again.†George W. Bush is looking a lot like Humpty Dumpty these days.
Going back into the files I came across an editorial by William Jones, former US ambassador to Haiti under Carter. Jones’ hatred and fear of Aristide and the attempt to help the poor just oozes from his writing. Says Jones, “The misguided threats of the present administration to redistribute wealth must stop. A legal code favoring capital investment should be drawn up as soon as possible by trained professionals, not by politicians… The old Marxist notions of class warfare and hostility to business – still popular in Haiti – have no place in the modern world. Foreign investment must be encouraged…Haitian political and economic leaders must accept it is in (more...)How I Was Wrong About Thomas Friedman
Last week my column was a parody of how Thomas Friedman writes about the global economy. Since then, I've learned that I was in error on a matter that shines some light on the worldview of the syndicated New York Times columnist and best-selling author.
"Let's face it - at this point I'm a rich guy, and I work for a newspaper run by guys who are even richer than I am," the satirical version of Friedman said in my article. But actually, Friedman is not just "a rich guy."
Days ago I read a long feature story that appeared in the July issue of The Washingtonian magazine. It provides some background on the world of Thomas Friedman - and the personal finances that have long smoothed his path.
Much of Friedman's emphasis in recent years has revolved around economic relations. He's been a strong supporter of "globalization": the international trade rules and government policies allowing corporations to function with legal prerogatives that routinely trump labor rights, environmental protection and economic justice. (more...)Global Notes #5
. Middle East investments soar
Flooded with money from soaring oil prices there has been an explosion of investment banks, private equity funds and venture capital coming out of the Middle East. But unlike the 1970s and 1990s when both governments and investors relied on international banks to handle their wealth local transnational capitalists are now guiding their own funds. That means petrodollars aren't being recycled through New York and London but through such firms as Dubai's Istithmar and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Funds are expect to hit $10B by 2007. David Jackson, chief executive officer at Istithmar says, "In 2003, people hardly understood what private equity and alternative investments really were; now every other day we get wind of another fund." Says another banker, "In the past, they would just give the money and put it in the US. Now they want to do their own deals…" (more...)
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Flooded with money from soaring oil prices there has been an explosion of investment banks, private equity funds and venture capital coming out of the Middle East. But unlike the 1970s and 1990s when both governments and investors relied on international banks to handle their wealth local transnational capitalists are now guiding their own funds. That means petrodollars aren't being recycled through New York and London but through such firms as Dubai's Istithmar and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Funds are expect to hit $10B by 2007. David Jackson, chief executive officer at Istithmar says, "In 2003, people hardly understood what private equity and alternative investments really were; now every other day we get wind of another fund." Says another banker, "In the past, they would just give the money and put it in the US. Now they want to do their own deals…" (more...)Global Notes #4
. Financial Times concedes world to China and India
“Over the next 30 years, China and India will grow to dominate the world economy. They will give birth to great industrial companies that own plants all around the world. National pride may suffer a little but economic nationalism and imperialism have had their day and that can only be a good thing.†Wow, UK globalists really need to talk to George W. and clue him into the future. What brought the former colonialists of England to accept their national decline; Tata of India is buying Corus, or what is the entire steel industry of the UK and the Netherlands. As the Financial Times points out, the historic tables have turned, not only has the British East India Company disappeared but “the current wave of globalisation, in contrast to that of the 19th century, is led by the developing as much as the developed world.†Moreover, no one in the UK, not politicians nor workers, raised an alarm. Transnational capital has truly become global. (FT, 10/21/06 Empire strikes back as Tata bids for Corus, p. 6) (more...)
GLOBAL NOTES #3
.What They Say...
Globalists have been fighting against the increase in bilateral trade deals since the failure of the Doha round of the WTO. They much prefer multilateral deals that lay the foundation for globalized business. Says Michael Treschow, chairman of Ericsson, “We make source components from dozens of countries. What good is a deal with India if India does not have the same kind of deal with China? It just cuts across the supply chain. It is not countries that do business with countries but companies that do business with companies.†Goodbye to commerce nationalism, for transnational capitalists it just gets in-the-way of business. (more...)
Global Notes #2
.China, the US and Goldman Sachs
Hank Paulson’s appointment to be secretary of the Treasury is a major concession by the Bush White House to the globalist fraction of the US ruling class. Weakened by the debacle in Iraq, Bush needs to shore up support in elite circles. The President’s nationalists and unilateralist policies have been a blow to the transnational capitalists whose ideas and wishes dominated during the first Bush and Clinton administrations. The Treasury was a symbol of globalist hegemony run by Wall Street stars Robert Ruben and Lawrence Summers. Those were the days when Washington’s strategy focused on the IMF, WTO and World Bank rather than Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
As former head of Goldman Sachs, Paulson comes from the world’s biggest investment bank, and many say the most (more...)Global Notes #1
.High Road Takes a Hit An internal United Nations study uncovers that corporations reporting on their environmental impact and labor practices remains a “niche practice†with a “very limited†role in promoting sustainable development. It predicts that by 2020 only 11 percent of transnationals will provide social and environmental data. (more...)This is the first of Jerry Harris' new "Global Notes" column, providing readers with a review of recent globalization-related news and analysis. The column will appear exclusively on SolidarityEconomy.net [eds.]
A Theory of Global Capitalism
William Robinson has made a name with key writings on democratic struggles in Latin America, on the propagation of electoral democracy as a tool of US contemporary foreign policy and, more recently, with a range of articles on the transnational capitalist class. In A Theory of Global Capitalism he presents his core argument on the process of globalisation of class and state in the contemporary period. The book is set up with a didactic purpose, ‘in a manner accessible to the student of globalization and to concerned members of the lay public’ (p. xiii). In this aim the author succeeds admirably, for the book is a model of accessibility and clarity, a pleasure to read. Robinson develops his argument in three steps. First, it is not ideas, or politico-military factors which underlie globalisation, but the rise of a global economy (p. 10). Second, ‘transnational capital has become the dominant, or hegemonic, fraction of capital on a world scale’ (p. 21). Third, this entails the formation of what Robinson terms the transnational state. States in his view are not actors as such. ‘It is classes and groups acting in and out of states [that] do things as collective historical agents.’ ‘State apparatuses are those (more...)Kees Van Der Pijl reviews Willian I. Robinson's A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class and State in a Transnational World
To Be Or Not To Be: The Nation Centric World Order Under Globalization
The major dialectic in the present period is the contradiction between the nation/state system and the transnational world order. This conflict between nationalism and globalization contains the main economic, political and social divisions in today’s world. It is manifested in both internal class conflicts and as a struggle between classes. Underneath this dialectic there are further contradictions within nationalism and within globalization. But to interpret the deep structural moment of today one must grasp the central transformation around which all else revolves, the universalization of capitalism to a globalized system of accumulation based on a revolutionary transformation of the means of production.
Most schools of thought, whether Marxists or mainstream, still define the international system as one centered around nation/state competition based on the struggle for supremacy among (more...)Exploitation Without Borders
I am waiting to board the train in San Diego when I notice the Border Patrol agent making his way down our line. He stops by each person who looks 'Latino' and asks them to present their legal documents. As the people standing next to me rummage for their identity papers, I stand by, angry, embarrassed and ashamed. In that moment, I don’t know what to say or do to protest.
My mind suddenly travels back in time. I 'remember' what it must have been like during slavery for Black people who made it to the North. If they had no papers, they were doomed to live each day in fear. If they were 'legalized' by free papers, they still always needed these documents, no matter who they were or how old they were or how long they had lived in their community. These papers were all that stood between them and being 'deported' and returned to their slave status.
(more...)Resource Wars
Two forms of accumulation characterize the current world capitalism system; the old nation-centric Fordist model, and the emerging transnational system of production. This is a historically determined and dialectical process filled with tension and politically represented by different hegemonic blocs. (see Harris, “Science & Society,†Vol. 67, #1).
In brief, the nation-centric system is characterized by: guarding home markets for national capital, export competition, bi-lateral trade agreements, state-directed and protected economic development, expanding the national job base while incorporating large sections of the working class into a social contract, and using the state to advance the position of national monopolies while securing their access to international resources and markets.
The transnational mode of accumulation is characterized by: cross border mergers and acquisitions, FDI, rapid speculative cross border flows of capital, global production chains, foreign affiliates, outsourcing labor, global best practices, multilateral trade agreements, a common global regulatory structure for finance, trade and investment, and use of the state to rearrange national structures to serve global practices.
(more...)SolidarityEconomy.net Exclusive: An Interview with Waldent Bello on Globalization
JH: One of the debates on globalization is whether or not it’s a new era of capitalism. One argument is that digital technology has revolutionizing the means of production creating important changes throughout the system. Historically globalization has become to information capitalism what imperialism was to industrial capitalism. Others say that nothing has essentially changed. That to emphasize the newer aspects blinds us to the principals necessary to understand world capitalism. How do you see this debate?
WB: I think what characterizes the period of globalization is that national economies are being disarticulated by the processes of global capital and rearticulated mainly as production sites and financial nexus (more...)[SolidarityEconomy.net is proudly powered by WordPress.]
