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yeah, the curious thing i suppose is that this globalizing capitalism game has been sold to folk as an unqualified good--which probably got taken to mean "good for me" since the Good and "good for me" are synonymous here
(i dont know if that's a particularity or not...i suspect it kinda is and kinda isnt)
but let's not be naive about what globalization means: mostly it means, if you actually look at it, the exportation of new and improved versions of the worst features of american-style mass production-oriented factory-fragments (now suppliers in supply chains) to places with weak labor laws, no unions and a big version of what marx used to call the "industrial reserve army"---the central spaces within which these operations are located are those strange "free trade zones" or tax havens---which makes them free of any meaningful contact with the surrounding economies--they are not in ANY meaningful sense contributing to the "development"--what the fuck does that mean?--of the "third world" (which was where before 1960? o wait, i remember: it was empire--and so this "globalization" thing...why it's neocolonialism..but no no, no-one reads those books anymore)...
you remember the good old days, those halcyon days of neoliberal-inspired debt spirals, forced privatization of infrastructure (including in many cases water) repression of political dissent all in the name of "free markets". of course you do.
the state is dismantled, transfers of wealth erased to the greatest possible extent, markets opened for american agricultural combines to dump the results of pathological overproduction of industrial farm objects--and furhter afield, in the various manufacturing shitholes brought to you by nike or versace or the computer hardware manufacturer of your choice wages are low low low and explotiation is high high high and if Trouble comes, the facility can just move.
go team.
all this for the greater profit of shareholders in this the great milton freidman be-responsible-for-nothing-except-profit world expressed in domestic political terms by the populist right and republican party--you know, that curious combination of absolute priority given to profit on the one hand and wholesale delusion about what that might mean for the working joe--now more likely the "service industry joe" in the united states.
there are other things happening as well--the same logic has been applied to more skilled work, and NOW suddenly globalizing capitalism is a bit more scary--but it is STILL in neoliberal-land an unqualified good and trying to oppose it is like being king lear...
let's try to be realistic about this folks--even though it's hard to say anything coherent about much of anything in these little boxes---stock has been trading transnationally since 1970 or so. Since 1970 then the ownership of capitalist firms has no longer been specific to nation-states. Since the 1980s and accelerating through the 1990s, you had a huge extension of just-in-time system inspired remodelling of manufacturing and the fragments of the process--"outsourced"--followed in general terms the pattern set by ownership.
in the united states, the hostility toward unions and the fact that many many people were chumped into buying the ideology of "free markets" is a condition of possibility for this kind of outcome--it is a condition of possibility to the extent that it is about the political consent that was required.
so it seemed to me that for 40 years alot of americans had their collective head up a collective ass about what was happening around you: now you pull it out, look around can't understand what you see because you refused to look beforehand and you cry foul.
presumably like most folk you supported the illusion of free markets and the concomitant lie about the greatest good for the greatest number because you thought that meant everything would be hunky dory for you---americans are like that in a way--it's all one great big lake woebegon, where everybody is above average.
as if this is not disturbing enough for nationalists, the bush administration has been a very significant accelerant in the american loss of power in financial markets. another transnational affair. we haven't really felt the effect of this one yet--but they're coming.
we are about to arrive the new third world.
we hope you've enjoyed your flight.
you booked the ticket, you slept for most of the ride, you misread the brochures.
but as you're about to find out, this is a cheap destination because, despite the photos and tourist copy, it sucks here. and there's no way out.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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