From: "christian a. gregory" <christiangreg at worldnet.att.net> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> References: <006e01be95e4$453c1480$a8e33ecb at rcollins> Subject: Re: global capital? Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 17:26:32 -0400 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211
>I'm skeptical about the announcement of the death of the
>nation-state as well, but not that it is being re-shaped, made stronger in
>some areas, incapable of enacting the same powers in others. I'm trying to
>disentangle the degrees or significance of globalisation in relation to three
>things specifically: national labour regulations (including immigration, laws
>covering temporary workers and refugees); national trade laws (such as import
>tariffs and restrictions); and national currency arrangements (money flows).
on the first, you might want to consult saskia sassen's _globalization and its discontents_: she's mostly working on immigration policy and trends in the us and japan. in general, she argues that, for the the u.s., immigration, trade, and monetary policies are handled by different agencies that nonetheless should be concerned with what the others are doing, rather than working in isolation; and she says that internationalizing production has helped to establish some of the linkages necessary for immigration between third world and u.s. for japan, new immigration regimes have expanded the kinds of workers that can go to japan and expect to get work and live as temporary resident aliens, but they have also made it easier to create and discard a low-wage immigrant sub-proletariat.
the problem with the second is that gatt/wto, which was supposed to provide a framework for postwar trade has been coming apart at the seams, not because the international situation is ungovernable, but because the wto has tried to treat things like FDI as part of trade negotiations. much of the problem at the uruguay round came from troubles with "trade" in things like "services" or intellectual property, which are really forms of FDI, or can be counted as such. also, the problem with looking at trade in terms of tariffs and regulations is that, in this vocabulary, there is this putative pre-lapsarian moment of market freedom that regulations and tariffs impinge upon. i wonder if it's not better to think about this in terms of more general governance issues: after all, the regulations on child labor (and similar ones on wages, etc) ought to be imagined to constitute the market or trade, rather than come from the outside. (i'm not suggesting that you buy this neoclassical rhetoric/ image, but it does matter how you imagine this as a distinct problem.) i guess i would be more interested in the on-the-ground effects or "content" of laws and whatnot, rather than whether one is a liberal free-trader or not.
on the third, you could do worse than to look at barry eichengreen's book, _globalizing capital_. although he's a conspicuous liberal on matters financial, he nonetheless makes an interesting argument that the postwar agreements on exchange rate stability were bought at the cost of other political goals (i.e. freely roving capital, wage and price instability etc.) the upshot is not too different from doug's characterization--though it's fashionable to refer to a newly destabilized international monetary system, such periods of crisis (cognitive and financial) are part and parcel of the world monetary arrangement; the interests and effects of such agreements have been "global" (or, as eichengreen puts it, dependent upon "network externalities") since whenever. kapstein's book and eichengreen's new book on a "new" architecture (sic) are good too.
yeah, and arrighi's chapter on the twentieth century--i like that one, too.
best christian