> Capital has civilized North America, Western Europe, and East Asia.
> That's a small patch of the earth, though, within which much of
> capital circulates.
Multinational capitalism is much more tightly integrated, both economically, culturally and politically, than its 19th century predecessor; even rural Afghanistan has its share of Gameboys and cellphones. The global media culture has spawned toxic consumerism, but also allowed wondrous films from China and Iran to emerge; urbanization has rescued billions of people from harsh, miserable existences in oppressive and brutally patriarchal villages; marketization has done appalling things to human beings, but also created the preconditions for the democracy and human rights movements now sweeping the globe. This is a dialectical contradiction, not a simplistic moral one.
-- Dennis