>does anyone have any references, or better, figures which show clearly the
>globalisation of capital (and trade) that is often talked about? or is this
>far from a clear trend? or?
There are plenty of numbers that show this. For almost the entire post-WW II period, global trade has outgrown global product, meaning that the trade share of GDP has increased in almost every country on earth. Also, cross-border capital flows - both portfolio (financial) and direct (real - though these distinctions can get a little blurry) - have also increased sharply, especially since the mid-1980s. The real question is what all these numbers mean. You could argue, as I do, that in many cases they measure a return to pre-1913 levels of "globalization" - this is true in the trade share figures (by that measure, Mexico was more "globalized" in 1913 than it is today) and the foreign investment figures (British foreign assets in the late 19th century were much larger in relative terms than Japan's are today, U.S. industrialization was heavily financed on the London markets, etc.). Most of the trade and capital flow action occurs among a rather small group of countries - the OECD countries and about 10 "developing" ones. About 2/3-3/4 of foreign investment flows, for example, consist of one rich country investing in another. Most of Western Europe's trade - more than 70%, I think, but I'm doing this from memory - is intra-European; with EMU, Europe is evolving from a set of small, open economies to a large, closed one.
My major problem with the globalization discourse is that it's conducted in such analytical isolation - that the word is often used as a misleading euphemism for capitalism and imperialism, which has the disarming effect of presenting social activities as inevitable forces of nature. And as John Forbes says in the poem that Meaghan Morris uses as the epigraph for "Ecstasy & Economics" necessity is often "what rich Americans want."
I just posted the paper Christian Gregory referred to on the LBO website. There's no link anywhere to it, but you can get it by clicking <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/MillMarx.doc>. It's in MS Word 6.0/95 format.
Doug