Globalization

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Globalization

• CMN 2168

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Recap - Globalizing technologies

• Digitalization is probably the most important
  technological advance in the area of
  communications. The term refers to the process
  whereby information is produced as a universal
  binary code, and is thus able to circulate more
  freely and at greater speed across communication
  technologies, and not just within them (59).

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Recap

• Digitalization brings together different media
  (telephone, television, computers) and texts
  (pictures, sounds, words).
• Greater flexibility.
• Greater speed.

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• The relationship between the place of technology
  in our lives and its supposedly progressive
  dimension needs to be discussed in terms of the
  actual effects of these technologies and global
  convergence.
• Global convergence the tendency facilitated by
  communication technologies, to bring together
  different communities, institutions, media (217).

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• Castells argues that corporations both
  participate into and are dependent on information
  networks.
• As virtually all corporations are connected to
  and reliant on information networks, they cannot
  place themselves or think outside these networks
  (partly because of the general interdependence on
  such communication systems).

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• The exclusion of some kind of information in
  analysis is part of a much wider tendency which
  Bourdieu refers to as the editing out of the
  human.
• Mathematization of human behaviours
  (scientific authority associated with
  statistically and mathematically based
  information. 66-7).

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• According to Virilio, information networks
  contribute to the development of endocolonialism
  (as opposed to exocolonialism).
• Endocolonialism Paul Virilios term for the new
  form of colonialism where social and economic
  inequalities are not exported to the colonies
  but are accentuated within colonialist states
  such as the United States and the United Kingdom
  (216).

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• There is now a network of flows across the globe.
  The old imperial centre / periphery has
  disappeared into a confusing system of power
  relations and connections. What appear to be free
  and interactive trade relations are in fact an
  utterly constricting set of obligations,
  tendencies and imperatives (70).

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• Chomsky and globalization
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vAHJPSLgHemM

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Chomsky and globalization

• The accelerating pace of globalisation is having
  a profound effect on life in rich and poor
  countries alike, transforming regions such as
  Detroit or Bangalore from boom to bust - or vice
  versa - in a generation.
• Many economists believe globalisation may be the
  explanation for key trends in the world economy
  such as
• - Lower wages for workers, and higher profits, in
  Western economies
• - The flood of migrants to cities in poor
  countries
• - Low inflation and low interest rates despite
  strong growth.

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• In economic terms, globalisation refers to the
  growing economic integration of the world, as
  trade, investment and money increasingly cross
  international borders (which may or may not have
  political or cultural implications).

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• The rapid spread of information technology (IT)
  and the internet is changing the way companies
  organise production, and increasingly allowing
  services as well as manufacturing to be
  globalised.

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The role of trade

• Trade has been the engine of globalisation, with
  world trade in manufactured goods increasing more
  than 100 times (from 95bn to 12 trillion) in
  the last 50 years since 1955, much faster than
  the overall growth of the world economy.
• Since 1960, increased trade has been made easier
  by international agreements to lower tariff and
  non-tariff barriers on the export of manufactured
  goods, especially to rich countries.

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• Neo-liberalism is based on the Washington
  consensus, also called the neo-liberal doctrine
  (or neo-liberalism). It puts great emphasis on
  liberalisation of trade and finance,
  privatisations and the supremacy of markets. This
  system praises the rationalisation of all
  activities and services, but it generally leads
  to the concentration of money within the hands of
  a small minority.

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• Neo-liberalism relies on the ideas of Adam Smith
  (who was one of the intellectuals who developed
  the idea of free trade and capitalism).
• Privatisations
• Liberalisation of trade and finance
• Supremacy of markets

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Global capitalism

• Globalization can be understood as the
  relationship between the development of new
  communication technologies, on the one hand, and
  the contexts and politics of the use of that
  technology, on the other (73).

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• We can also understand globalization as an
  aspect of its effects on and in relation to the
  institutions, practices and strategies of
  capitalism (73).
• Capitalism is currently the dominant system for
  the organization of economies characterized by
  the private ownership of the means of production,
  and reliance on the market to direct economic
  activity and distribute economic goods and
  rewards. Its founding principle is the pursuit of
  self-interest through competition (215).

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Logic of capitalism

• Capitalism operates through the creation of
  surplus value, but that surplus value must always
  find a market.
• Surplus value is created when the value of
  production exceeds labour and other associated
  costs.

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• Surplus value is only realized, however, through
  the process of consumption.
• Surplus value is then (at least parlty) returned
  to the capitalist process as investment, which in
  turn creates more surplus value and more goods
  for consumption.

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• When home markets are exhausted and unable to
  cope with what eventually becomes capitalist
  overproduction, or when overproduction leads to
  devaluation, capitalism is faced with a barrier
  to its mode of operation.

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• This can be accommodated by the development of
  new markets, such as foreign countries (or
  colonies in the past).
• The long term goal of capitalism is the
  capitalization of the entire world (74).
• Global capital.

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• Capitalisms basic principle is the pursuit of
  self-interest, which is achieved economically
  through competition between producers and
  producers, consumers and consumers. This
  competition, under capitalist logic, creates a
  state in which the right amount of goods and
  services at the right price are made available to
  meet consumer demands (79).

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• The principle, in the simplest terms, is that
  increasing demand will put pressure on supply
  prices will go up in response to the pressure,
  and demand will drop back, in the face of the
  raised prices, to reach an equilibrium with
  supply (79).
• See the marble example on page 79.

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In other words

• Under capitalism, the means of production are
  privately owned. The levels of exchange and the
  production of goods and services are reliant on
  the market and the relation between supply and
  demand rather than through intervention (79-80).

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The two main competitors of capitalism

• Fascism
• The means of production are privately owned
• The state plans and intervenes in production.

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• Communism
• - The state both owns the means of production and
  controls the outputs.