> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Jim O'Connor
>
> It's interesting to see what Bill Fletcher Jr. left out of his account of
> globalization and neoliberalism - namely, the imperialist role of the US
> and its instruments, IMF, etc. He defines "globalization" as an
> "orchestrated process by governments and economic elites to
> address many of
> the problems which capitalism has been facing over the last 20-30
> years, by
> reorganizing the world economy at the expense of working people." But it's
> the U.S. that "orchestrates" this process. Japan and EU are
> moving however
> slowly toward a multipolar world, often opposed to U.S. globalization
> schemes. The US government and US finance capital are or should be our
> targets, not "governments and economic elites" in general.
Let's see- Europe in the last twenty years went through the largest privatization of industries in global history, a crucial part of globalization since almost definitionally, a privatized company on a stock exange is controlled by a more multi-national constituency than a state-run firm. In fact, if "globalization" means anything, it is that European firms have globalized and privatized their capital ownership to the same point that US firms mostly were already at. Germany just passed a major cut in capital gains taxes, specifically to encourage owners of capital to end long-term holdings in favor of the short-term, takeover driven model of US capitalism. I won't even both to comment on Britain and Thatcher and Blairism.
As the recent conflict on the IMF successor noted, it is Europe that has traditionally controlled the head of the IMF, with the US controlling the World Bank presidency (and supplying chief economic Stiglitz, one of the notable elite dissidents from the elite consensus).
Europe may seem to have vestiges of social democratic leanings is nods to preserving the protections for its own workers, but I have seen no evidence that European firms overseas are any less despicable exploiters of foreign labor and despoilers of the global environment. Hell, when European firms come even to the US, they immediately engage in union-busting as readily as American firms (note the German transplants) just as Japanese firms union-bust with the best of them (see Firestone). In the developing nations, they are firmly the agents of globalization and the race to the bottom.
In fact, the US system, because the population has been struggling against this model longer than the Europeans who are newer to it, has developed more extensive counter policies against global corporate exploitation. US securities laws are far tougher than Europe's just as every corporation would rather be sued for environmental torts in Europe than before a US jury. And the US courts are often far more willing to rules against companies in crimes committed by its companies outside its borders than Europe- the extreme example being some of the Alien Torts cases being launched against large companies for human rights violations in places like Burma and Ecuador.
None of these are sufficient, of course, but the idea that European corporate elites are somehow more enlightened in their approach to globalization is ridiculous. Their idea of a multi-polar world is merely one of spheres of exploitation, not one that empowers developing nations or peoples or the global working class. Hell, Europe is hell-bent on erecting far more racist and exclusionary immigration laws than the US to keep the third world out.
In a world of Daimler-Chryslers, ABB, Nokias, Ford-Volvo, and the whole array of globally merged corporate entities, talking about "US imperialism" separately from the general corporate capitalist class is ridiculous.
-- Nathan Newman