Globalization Cap K

Links
Globalization is just a synonym for international capitalist
expansion
January 1999, Globalization: A Socialist Perspective, James Petras,
http://www.rebelion.org/hemeroteca/petras/english/globalization_persp170102.htm
The globalization idea is itself suspect. In its most widely expressed usage, it argues for a universal incorporation to
the world marketplace and the spread of benefits throughout the world. The empirical reality is neither universal
incorporation nor the spread of benefits: there are wealthy creditors and bankrupt debtors, super-rich speculators
and impoverished unemployed workers, imperial states that direct international financial institutions and
subordinate states that submit to their dictates. A rigorous comparative analysis of contemporary world socialeconomic realities would suggest that the globalist concept of interdependence is far less useful in understanding

The rise of "globalist ideology" is found

originally in the business journals of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The major
expansion and conquest of markets by the multi-nationals was described as
globalization by business journalists searching for an alternative to the existing
Marxist vocabulary, since they sought to present the process in a favorable light.
Gradually the term was taken over by the mainstream academic world and became the
acceptable framework for talking about international capitalist expansion without having
the world than the Marxist concept of imperialism.

to deal with its origins, power relations and exploitative outcomes. What emerged from the academic recycling of
the concept was "globaloney": the embellishment of the concept by linking it to what was called the third
technological revolution and imputing to it a historical inevitability and degree of interdependence that was remote
from reality. From the business, journalistic and bourgeois academic world, the term was incorporated into the
vocabulary of the Left intelligentsia. They too began to parrot the same properties and arguments in the context of
a mindless flight from critical socialist paradigms. Thus globalization seems to have become a universal category of
analysis, through which the imperial ruling classes exercise power and paralyses mass popular opposition. The
retreat of the Left intellectuals from the imperialist theoretical approach toward globalization is intimately related to
the defeat and decline of revolutionary socio-political movements and the ascendancy of the financial and export
elites. There is a dialectical interplay between imperialist power, globalist ideology and revolutionary socialist
politics: the ascendancy of imperialism is directly related to the circulation of the globaloney discourse and the
eclipse of the revolutionary paradigm. The retreat of the Left intellectuals and the subsequent theoretical disarray
of the popular movement contributed to the further strengthening of the imperial ruling classes: objective shifts in
power resulting from political and economic successes were amplified by the ideological capitulation of the exLeftist intellectuals and the confusion sown in the popular movement. Left intellectuals and influential political
leaders, having lost their conceptual anchorage, drifted from an imperialist conceptual framework to a technological
determinism that undercut any notion of systemic transformative politics. The underlying political bases for the
ascendancy of neo- liberalism (the ideological derivative of the globalization hypothesis), including the political and
military defeats of the left, were slighted in favor of pseudo-explanations that pointed to historical economic

The political and ideological hegemony of the globalist-neo-liberal project

was further enhanced by the combined rigidity and flexibility of the neo-liberal
state: opportunities for upward mobility for private-sector professionals and exLeftist intellectuals ensconced in well-heeled NGOs and downward mobility for the
mass of peasants, and wage-salary workers, particularly in the public social
services. The project provided massive flows of capital, cheap mass-consumer imports in the expansive phase
and crises, collapse and unprecedented rates of bankruptcy and unemployment in the deflationary phase. The
Asian experience is a prototype of this process: political-economic victories for
imperialism, the ascendancy of globalist neo-liberal political economic power,
capitulation and integration of the ex-Left, followed by crisis, collapse and mass
immiseration.
imperatives.

Impacts (dont read them all)

Resisting capitalism is our ultimate ethical obligation. Status
quo modes of thought only serve to legitimize the system.

Zizek and Daly 4 Slavoj and Glyn, Conversations with Zizek, 2004 page 14-16
our ethicopolitical responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of
todays
global
capitalism
and
its
obscene
naturalization/anonymization of the millions who are subjugated
by it throughout the world. [] [Full text available] In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to
naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and
losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound
judgment in a neutral market place. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that

diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion is

That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global

poverty and degraded life-chances cannot be calculated within
the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social
exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the
exorbitant.

developing world). And Zizeks point is that this mystification is magnified through capitalisms profound capacity to ingest its own
excesses and negativity: to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation.

Class oppression is uniquely terrible - and structures other

forms of oppression
Kovel, 02 (Alger kovel, Prof of social studies at Bard, Fellow at John Guggenheim
foundation, The Enemy of Nature, pages 123-124)
If, however, we ask the question of efficacy, that is, which split sets the others into motion, then priority would have to be
given to class, for the plain reason that class relations entail the state as an instrument of enforcement and control, and it

class is both logically

and historically distinct from other forms of exclusion (hence we should not talk of 'classism' to
go along with 'sexism' and 'racism,' and `species-ism'). This is, first of all, because class is an essentially manmade category, without root in even a mystified biology. We cannot imagine a human world
without gender distinctions although we can imagine a world without domination by gender. But a world
without class is eminently imaginable indeed, such was the human world for the great majority of our
species' time on earth, during all of which considerable fuss was made over gender. Historically, the difference
arises because 'class' signifies one side of a larger figure that includes a
state apparatus whose conquests and regulations create races and shape
gender relations. Thus there will be no true resolution of racism so long as class
society stands, inasmuch as a racially oppressed society implies the activities of a class-defending state.' Nor
can gender inequality be enacted away so long as class society, with its state, demands the
super-exploitation of woman's labour. Class society continually generates gender, racial,
ethnic oppressions and the like, which take on a life of their own, as well as
profoundly affecting the concrete relations of class itself . It follows that class politics
must be fought out in terms of all the active forms of social splitting. It is the management of these
divisions that keeps state society functional. Thus though each person in a
class society is reduced from what s/he can become, the varied reductions can be
combined into the great stratified regimes of history this one becoming a fierce
is the state that shapes and organizes the splits that appear in human ecosystems. Thus

warrior, that one a routine-loving clerk, another a submissive seamstress, and so on, until we reach today's personifications of capital and captains of industry. Yet no matter how functional a class society, the profundity of its ecological

violence ensures a basic antagonism which drives history onward. History is the history of class society because no
matter how modified, so powerful a schism is bound to work itself through to the surface, provoke resistance (`class

The relation of class can be mystified without

end only consider the extent to which religion exists for just this purpose, or watch a show glorifying the police on
television yet so long as we have any respect for human nature, we must recognize
that so fundamental an antagonism as would steal the vital force of one person for
the enrichment of another cannot be conjured away.
struggle'), and lead to the succession of powers.

Capitalism cant solve inequality structural contradictions are

inherent
John Bellamy Foster, editor of the Monthly Review, December 2001, Imperialism
and Empire, The Monthly Review, Vol 53, No 7,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1201jbf.htm

the period of capitalisms historic

ascendance has now ended. Capitalism has expanded throughout the
globe, but in most of the world it has produced only enclaves of capital.
There is no longer any promise of the underdeveloped world as a whole
According to this analysis,

catching-up economically with the advanced capitalist countriesor even of

sustained economic and social advance in most of the

periphery. Living conditions of the vast majority of workers are
declining globally. The long structural crisis of the system, since the
1970s, prevents capital from effectively coping with its
contradictions, even temporarily. The extraneous help offered by the state
is no longer sufficient to boost the system. Hence, capitals destructive
uncontrollability its destruction of previous social relations and its inability to put
anything sustainable in their placeis coming more and more to the fore (pp. 19, 61).

Capitalism is the root cause of wealth disparity

Tony Wilsdon, writer for the Socialist Alternative, 2005, Accessed May 28, 2008,
http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2005/09/26us.html
Today, we see a world economic slowdown, with U.S. corporations shutting down
production here in search of areas that produce higher rates of profit. The economic
engine of jobs, which helped some workers in previous generations to get out of the
ghettos, will not be reoccurring. The vast majority of jobs created under Clinton and
Bush have been low-wage jobs, which have replaced higher-wage jobs. Under the
rule of capitalism, the majority of the public faces further sharp attacks on their
living standards and quality of life, with a growing number being forced into dire
poverty, homelessness, and destitution. Capitalism is a system designed to
produce for private profit, not for public need. It is only by taking decision-making
out of the corporate boardrooms and placing them under the democratic control of
the majority that the economy can provide for our needs. To do that, we need to
bring into public ownership the largest 500 corporations and financial institutions.

Capitalism causes extinction from environmental collapse

Smith 13 Richard. Sleepwalking to Extinction: Capitalism and the destruction of

life and earth.
Information Clearing House. November
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36870.htm

16 th,

2013.

Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary

ecological collapse From climate change to natural resource
overconsumption to pollution, the engine that has powered three
centuries of accelerating economic development, revolutionizing
technology, science, culture and human life itself is, today, a
roaring out-of-control locomotive mowing down continents of
forests, sweeping oceans of life, clawing out mountains of
minerals, pumping out lakes of fuels, devouring the planets last
accessible natural resources to turn them into product, while
destroying fragile global ecologies built up over eons of time.
Between 1950 and 2000 the global human population more than doubled from 2.5 to 6 billion. But in these same decades, consumption
of major natural resources soared more than sixfold on average, some much more. Natural gas consumption grew nearly twelvefold,
bauxite (aluminum ore) fifteenfold. And so on. At current rates, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson says that half the worlds great forests
have already been leveled and half the worlds plant and animal species may be gone by the end of this century.

Corporations arent necessarily evil, though plenty are

diabolically evil, but they cant help themselves. Theyre just doing what theyre
supposed to do for the benefit of their shareholders. Shell Oil cant help but loot Nigeria and
the Arctic and cook the climate. Thats what shareholders
demand. BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other mining giants cant resist mining Australias abundant coal and exporting it to China
and India. Mining accounts for 19% of Australias GDP and substantial employment even as coal combustion is the single worst driver of
global warming. IKEA cant help but level the forests of Siberia and Malaysia to feed the Chinese mills building their flimsy disposable
furniture (IKEA is the third largest consumer of lumber in the world). Apple cant help it if the cost of extracting the rare earths it
needs to make millions of new iThings each year is the destruction of the eastern Congo violence, rape, slavery, forced induction of

Monsanto and DuPont and Syngenta

and Bayer Crop Science have no choice but to wipe out bees,
butterflies, birds, small farmers and extinguish crop diversity to
secure their grip on the worlds food supply while drenching the
planet in their Roundups and Atrazines and neonicotinoids. This
is how giant corporations are wiping out life on earth in the
course of a routine business day. And the bigger the corporations grow, the worse the problems
child soldiers, along with poisoning local waterways.

become. In Adam Smiths day, when the first factories and mills produced hat pins and iron tools and rolls of cloth by the thousands,
capitalist freedom to make whatever they wanted didnt much matter because they didnt have much impact on the global
environment. But today, when everything is produced in the millions and billions, then trashed today and reproduced all over again

The
worlds climate scientists tell us were facing a planetary
emergency. Theyve been telling us since the 1990s that if we dont cut global fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions by 80tomorrow, when the planet is looted and polluted to support all this frantic and senseless growth, it matters a lot.

90% below 1990 levels by 2050 we will cross critical tipping points and global warming will accelerate beyond any human power to

Yet despite all the ringing alarm bells, no corporation and

no government can oppose growth and, instead, every capitalist
government in the world is putting pedal to the metal to
accelerate growth, to drive us full throttle off the cliff to collapse.
Marxists have never had a better argument against capitalism
than this inescapable and apocalyptic contradiction. Solutions
to the ecological crisis are blindingly obvious but we cant take
the necessary steps to prevent ecological collapse because, so
long as we live under capitalism, economic growth has to take
contain it.

priority over ecological concerns .

We all know what we have to do: suppress greenhouse gas

emissions. Stop over-consuming natural resources. Stop the senseless pollution of the earth, waters, and atmosphere with toxic
chemicals. Stop producing waste that cant be recycled by nature. Stop the destruction of biological diversity and ensure the rights of
other species to flourish. We dont need any new technological breakthroughs to solve these problems. Mostly, we just stop doing what
were doing. But we cant stop because were all locked into an economic system in which companies have to grow to compete and
reward their shareholders and because we all need the jobs.

Alternative
The alternative is to reject Capitalism by rejecting
globalization via an international workers movement
The Anti-Globalization Movement For a Socialist Alternative to Capitalist Barbarism! By John
http://www.socialistappeal.org/usa/antiglobalization_movement_.html (No Date)

Peterson,

So what does this all mean? It means that the fight against the negative aspects of
globalization is inextricably linked to the fight for the abolishment of the capitalist
system itself. The power of the multinationals is based on their ownership of the
means of production. As long as these parasites are not expropriated and their
wealth put under democratic control of the many, it will be impossible to change the
current state of affairs. But how do we go about harnessing the energy of the
movement in order to overthrow the capitalist system? First of all, we must
recognize that in face of the attacks and the exploitation by the capitalists on an
international scale, we must fight back with an international struggle of workers and
youth. The internationalism of the protests has already been demonstrated with
protestors travelling from around the world to each event. But the struggle cannot
be limited to protests against this or that multinational or the attempt to close down
this or that capitalist institution. While these protests are a vital element in the fight
against the capitalist system, our ultimate task is not simply to shut down these
meetings of capitalist ministers and financiers, or get the capitalists to listen to
our demands. We all know that our demands will fall on deaf ears! We must take the
struggle not only to the meetings of the capitalists, but to our day to day lives in
our workplaces, trade unions, communities, and political activities. Demanding a
kinder gentler capitalism is like demanding that the law of gravity to stop working.
Our main aim must be to put an end to the capitalist system, with the
nationalization of the banks and big monopolies, the expropriation of the wealth
accumulated by the multinationals, and to use it to plan the world economy, in a
democratic way and with the participation of all the oppressed, in order to fulfill the
needs of the many and not the profits of the few. A genuine socialist society the
only alternative. But this radical change can only be carried out by a revolutionary
movement of the working class. While capitalist globalization has brought with it
tremendous misery and exploitation, it has also inevitably created the very force
which can end the rule of capital once and for all. The working class is the largest
and most powerful sector in society, and is the only class which due to its role in the
productive process has the power to freeze capitalist production and end the
domination of the multinationals. It must stand at the head of all the other layers of
society which are also suffering the consequences of capitalist oppression. In
modern society there are two great classes contending for economic and political
domination in society - the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the proletariat (workers).
The bourgeoisie owns the means of production (industry, agribusiness, banking,
etc.) but does no real productive work itself - it lives off the labor of others in the
form of rent, interest, and profit. The proletariat on the other hand does not own the
means of production and must therefore sell the only thing it does own its labor
power its ability to work and produce more wealth than it is paid in wages. It does
the actual work in producing the wealth of society. What we have is socialized
production (you cant build a car on your own for example), but private
appropriation of the surplus wealth. Instead of this surplus being used for things like

healthcare, education, reducing the working day, etc. in order to improve the lives
of the vast majority, it goes into the pockets of a handful of capitalists whose only
interest their own enrichment. It also goes towards funding the massive state
bureaucracy and military apparatus which is uses to keep the toiling masses of the
world in check. Due to its role in the productive process (it actually runs things on a
day to day basis), the working class is the only class which can freeze production
and take the running of society into its own hands democratically and in the
interests of all working people. For example, when a factory goes on strike, nothing
is produced. The CEOs certainly dont come down and start making cars! They
wouldnt have the first clue how to do it! On a small scale, this very graphically
poses the question who controls the running of society? In a strike, the workers of
one or several factories face the owners of those factories and refuse to continue
working for those conditions and wages. In a revolution, the entire working class
faces the entire capitalist class and refuses to work for them any longer. If the
revolution succeeds, then the working class will take its destiny into its own hands
and decide how to run things in the interest of the vast majority of society. But in
between these two main classes lies the petty-bourgeoisie. This is a layer of
intellectuals, small business people, and semi-independent farmers which work
themselves, but regularly also employ the labor of others. In their conditions of life
they are isolated from the working class, and they develop a very narrow mentality.
They are concerned with my property, my ideas, mywell-being and so on. They
aspire to become big capitalists, and dread being forced back into the ranks of the
working class. Although they detest the big bourgeoisie for their excesses and for
crushing them with high interest rates, high rents, and high prices for the goods
they need to run their businesses, they also worship them and would do anything to
join the club. Their psychological outlook is thus very individualistic, and they
scorn the working class for its alleged ignorance and lack of initiative. As we have
explained, it is often these layers (especially intellectuals and middle class students
who have not yet entered the workforce) who are the first to express discontent at
the sickness and barbarity of the capitalist system. They have the time, energy, and
money to travel to these protests, to plan public meetings, to read books about the
effects of globalization, and so on. This is a very important and progressive step,
and these layers can be valuable allies for the working class, but on their own they
simply cannot play an independent role in the struggle for socialism. Historically,
they have either backed the working class which alone can offer them a better
future with cheaper credit, a guaranteed market for their goods and services, etc.,
or they fall into despair and become the most rabid and desperate supporters of
fascism. It is our duty to win them over to the cause of the working class the cause
of the majority of humanity. But only by breaking decisively with their individualistic
prejudices, and by throwing their lot in 100% with the working class can they play
an important role. If not they can be a severe hindrance to the movement as we
shall see below. We cannot over-emphasize that the participation of the labor
movement is a vital component in this struggle. Contrary to the lies of the bourgeois
media, the working class has not decreased on a world scale. Over the past twentyfive years it has grown dramatically, and with its growth, its power. In the advanced
capitalist countries there were 112 million industrial workers in 1973; now there are
113 million. In the developing world, there were 280 million industrial workers in
1980; now there are 400 million - that is over 500 million industrial workers globally.
When you add to that figure the hundreds of millions of millions of service sector
and white collar workers and their families, the number of proletarians is even more

imposing. The fact is, the working class is the most powerful force on the planet,
and once it moves decisively there is nothing that can stop it. The restructuring of
industry over the last twenty years or so has not been a revolution. It was a
response to the present stage of general stagnation of capitalism. The markets have
not been growing at the same levels of the previous period and the capitalists, in
order to keep up their profit margins, also with the help of new technology, have
been cutting everything there is to cut - the workforce, wages, breaks, warehouse
stocks - with speed-ups, longer hours etc. In many service sector companies, there
are huge concentrations of workers in one workplace whose conditions of life are
very much like those of traditional factory workers. And for the millions working in
fast food the conditions are often far worse. The pressure of these jobs, most of
them non-union and with few benefits, will result inevitably in an explosion. One
recent example is Verizon Communications, where 87,200 employees went on strike
and forced this enormous telecommunications company to the negotiating table
with the unions. Verizon is the result of a merger between Bell Atlantic Corporation
and GTE. The owners wanted to achieve this merger by cutting jobs and wages. The
strike, which took place in several plants at the same time and lasted from 15 to 18
days depending on the area, achieved good results: a three-year contract providing
for a 12% pay increase over three years, a 14% increase in company pensions and
some limits imposed on forced overtime, a measure which the company has
always made wide use of. An equally important result was achieved on trade union
rights: union organizers will be allowed to speak to the employees of Verizon
Wireless (the biggest American mobile phone company) and unionize them. This is
an important development as it opens up the possibility of unionizing an
increasingly important section of the working class in the developed countries. This
is the perspective we must keep in mind at all times the working masses will
mobilize to improve their conditions and change society. But the transformation of
society along socialist lines can only be coordinated and led to successful
conclusion if we have the correct perspectives, tactics, and program. As Marxists we
are committed to participating in the anti-globalization movement, but we must
firmly explain its present negative as well as progressive features, and point the
way forward from a class point of view.