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Understanding Late-Twentieth-Century Capitalism: Reassessing the Globalization Theme1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Don D. Marshall
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There are Many Ambiguities Within The Literature on globalization. Some scholars speak of a world that is chunging others use the framework as part of a new univocal discourse to describe late twentieth-century capitalism. Apart from ‘globalization’, many other cartographic and navigational metaphors have been employed to describe the present world order. There is the loss of the ‘magnetic North’; an ‘emerging global civilization’; and a curious notion of an evolving ‘global civil society’. Master concepts like ‘sustainable development’ and ‘world politics’ have consequently become popular and are creeping into international relations discourse. In extreme cases the literature seems to suggest or imply that history is coming to an end on convenient Western socio-cultural terms only. Indeed it seems that proponents of globalization have come to proclaim universality afresh in similar vein to that of those who indulge in and perpetuate the notion of a post-Columbus 500-year capitalist historicism. I do not share the triumphalism of the liberal globalization discourse. It is certainly important to ask whether the wave of technological change, interdependent policy-making, international socialization of production, and time-space compression have or have not come to transcend or replace the complex web of centre-periphery relations. There remains generally a familiar interstate world system, albeit with the spatial and temporal limits to state, market and human interactions experientially compressed. Questions about who rules, who benefits or suffers, and whether prospects for social survival are better or worse remain as important as ever.

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Articles
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Government and Opposition , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1996 , pp. 193 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1996

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on 4 July 1995 atthe University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I would like to thank Barry Gills, Neville Duncan and anonymous referees for their useful comments and suggestions.

References

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3 See Bateson, M. C., ‘Beyond Sovereignty: An Emerging Global Civilization’, in Walker, R. B. J. and Mendlovitz, S. H. (eds), Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community, Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990.Google Scholar

4 For example, see Blumenthal, M., ‘The World Economy and Technological Change’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 3, 1988, pp. 529–50Google Scholar; Overbeek, H., Global Capitalism and National Decline: The Thatcher Decade in Perspective, London, Unwin Hyman, 1990 Google Scholar; and Strange, S., ‘The Limits of Politics’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 30, No. 3, Summer 1995, pp. 291–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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26 See S. Amin, ‘A Brief Biography of Samir Amin’, op. cit., p. 54.

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32 As neatly summarized by H. A. Watson (ed.), The Caribbean in the Global Political Economy, op. cit.

33 The Third World via the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, acted on the idea of a ‘democratization of international relations’ (via a proposed International Bauxite Association along the lines of OPEC; the declaration of ‘socialist planning’ e.g. Grenada and Nicaragua; and the calls for New Information Order and a New International Economic Order). As M. Piore and C. Sabel. (The Second Industrial Divide, op. cit., p. 10) put it, Third world efforts to maintain solidarity and other events ‘created an uncertain world’.

34 See Gills, B. K. and Rocamora, J., ‘Low intensity Democracy’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1992, pp. 501–523 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a broader philosophical discussion on the idea of ‘liberating civil society’, see Popper, K. R., The Open Society and its Enemies, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1992.Google Scholar

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39 That is, the recently signed (1994) Generalized Agreement on Trade and Tariffs; the (1989) Canadian-United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) which has become the (1993) North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA (inclusive of Mexico) and is to be expanded into a wider (2005) Americas Free Trade Area (AFTA); the various G7 summits; and the current IMF/World Bank stipulations.

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46 The new ones by such time were Anguilla, Bahrain, Barbados, Cyprus, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Malta, Montserrat, Nauru, Netherland Antilles, Philippines, Seychelles, St Vincent, Turks and Caicos, Vanuatu and the Virgin Islands (British and US).

47 These include Costa Rica, Gibraltar, Lebanon, Liberia, Monaco, Nicaragua, Panama, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

48 This includes attracting insurance operations, foreign sales corporations and international business companies.

49 See Strange, S., ‘An Eclectic Approach’, in Murphy, C. N. and Tooze, R. (eds), The New International Political Economy, Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988, pp. 33–50 Google Scholar; Gills, B. K., ‘International Relations Theory and the Processes of World History: Three Approaches’, in Dyer, H. C. and Mangasarian, L. (eds), The Study of International Relations: The State of the Art, Basingstoke. Macmillan and Millennium, 1989, pp. 103–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Payne, A., ‘US Hegemony and Reconfiguration of the Caribbean’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, April 1994, pp. 149–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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51 ibid. I refer to B. K. Gills (p. 370), A. G. Frank (p. 372 and to a lesser extent, H. Overbeek (p. 368).

52 ibid. See the contribution of H. Overbeek, p. 368.

53 See Chase-Dunn, C., ‘Technology and the Logic of World-Systems’, in Palan, R. P. and Gills, B. K. (eds), Transcending the State-Global Divide: A Neostructuralist Agenda in International Relations, Boulder and London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994, pp. 89–106 Google Scholar; also Crawford, B., ‘The New Security Dilemma Under International Economic Interdependence’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 25–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 See the APEC Economic Leaders’ Declaration of Common Resolve, Bogor, Indonesia, signed 15 Nov. 1994 by ASEAN countries, Papua New Guinea, United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and China.

55 Bernard and Ravenhill make the point that the years after the Plaza Agreement (1985) marked a deepening of the regionalization of production in East Asia. See Bernard, M. and Ravenhill, J., ‘Beyond Product Cycles and Flying Geese: Regionalization, Hierarchy and the Industrialization of East Asia’, World Politics, Vol. 47, No. 2, January 1995, pp. 171–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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57 See J. A. Camilleri, ‘Rethinking Sovereignty in a Shrinking, Fragmented World’, op. cit., p. 27.