Globalisation is an Anomaly and Its Time is Running Out

Cheap energy and relative peace helped create a false doctrine
by James Howard Kunstler

The big yammer these days in the United States is to the effect that globalisation is here to stay: it's wonderful, get
used to it. The chief cheerleader for this point of view is Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times and
author of The World Is Flat. The seemingly unanimous embrace of this idea in the power circles of America is a
marvellous illustration of the madness of crowds, for nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that
globalisation is now a permanent fixture of the human condition.

Today's transient global economic relations are a product of very special transient circumstances, namely relative
world peace and absolutely reliable supplies of cheap energy. Subtract either of these elements from the equation
and you will see globalisation evaporate so quickly it will suck the air out of your lungs. It is significant that none of
the cheerleaders for globalisation takes this equation into account. In fact, the American power elite is sleepwalking
into a crisis so severe that the blowback may put both major political parties out of business.

The world saw an earlier phase of robust global trade run from the 1870s to a dead stop in 1914. This was the boom
period of railroad construction and the advent of the ocean-going steamship. The great powers had existed in relative
peace since Napoleon's last stand. The Crimean war was a minor episode that took place in backwaters of Eurasia,
and the Franco-Prussian war was a comic opera that lasted less than a year - most of it the static siege of Paris.
The American civil war hardly affected the rest of the world.

This first phase of globalisation then took off under coal-and-steam power. There was no shortage of fuel, the colonial
boundaries were stable, and the pipeline of raw materials from them to the factories of western Europe ran smoothly.
The rise of a middle class running the many stages of the production process provided markets for all the new
production. Innovations in finance gave legitimacy to all kinds of tradable paper. Life was very good for Europe and
America, notwithstanding a few sharp cyclical depressions and recoveries. Trade boomed between the great powers.
The belle époque represented the high tide of hopeful expectations. In America, it was called the progressive era.
The 20th century looked golden.

It all fell apart in 1914.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0804-26.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5254590-103677,00.html
dp

So, are we opposed to the creating of connections between countries all around the world globalization, or are we just opposed to the kind that screws people over when it comes to jobs?

because i don't think that second deserves a pretty name like globalization then, because it's just exporting jobs to sweatshops, but the first is a sharing cultural thing from my perspective. i.e. i have internet friends in sydney AUS, is that a problem?

i've been confused for a while on what people really have a problem with, so I'd appreciate some help. thank you DUers!

I believe it's called capitalism and exploitation

One of the great victories of rhetoric of those who push what many term "corporate globalization", is that sending emails to Eskimos and sending jobs to Vietnam are tightly intertwined phenomena. Each of these and all related phenomena go by the same term -- "globalization".
By doing so it is much easier to paint those who are not so hot on "corporate globalization" as parochial and against "the future".

in Germany.
I couldn't agree more. In many ways the term "Globalization" is nothing more than a re-branding and a re-labeling of the "I"-word: Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism.
It's funny somehow that at least in the USA , the ruling elite has started a few years ago to openly talk of an empire and imperialism again.

Globalization is the international solidarity of the wealthy few against the rest of the world. In recent years it has become much harder for people outside of Europe or outside the USA to travel or to immigrate, while there are no borders anymore for corporations to exploit the people, whereever their profits are higher. The people are played of against one another.
I never had any kind of sympathy for nationalism or even patriotism of any kind. It's just ridicolous that the movement against the IMF, the WTO and the Worldbank is labelled as "anti-globalists". The "globalists" globalize poverty and exploitation.
Although I agree to some extent with the author that expensive transportation costs will put an end to corporate-globalization, as soon as it will become cheaper again, to produce localy, but to use the energy price for any kind of propaganda to re-establish the nation states sounds as cheap as the globalists themselves, who try to sell their kind of globalization to us as a kind of inescapable destiny.
The corporate globalization was (o.k. IS) man made and our reply to the economic genocide and the dictatorship of corporations, outplaying every legitimate democratic elected government, will be man made too.

Ay Marx and Engels did write in the manifest, when the labour-movement was described as being unpatriotic by their opponents:
"The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got."

Dirk

The undeveloped world isn't going to become developed through this process.

Rather the Corporations will ceate phalangist dictatorships or corrupt governments to allow their nation's natural resources to be extracted and their labor to be exploited, while the vast majority of the profits are enjoyed by the first-world Capitalists. These are characteristics of colonialism.

What these territories/nations often get left with is an environmentally pillaged and polluted landscape, a legacy of corrupt government, and a workforce living and laboring under conditions that have been intolerable for a century in the rest of the industrialized world.

have simply been defined in the economic terms. Communication growing between the peoples to the extent that even economic crossovers can occur digitally might sustain a more safely non-physical global unity- which we need in the first place if there is ever to be such a thing as healthy commerce? The capitalist mad dog greed gods have hijacked a natural social development in favor of a boom bust material empire contest.

The article is daunting in scope and particular in judgment but I think most people can sense the ominous truth behind the naive or triumphalist hype. It was not the collapse of the transportation and commerce networkthat caused WWI, but the author proposes it was the instability of the switch and reallocation that set completely aside any strides toward solidarity and peace. Materialism ruled and descended into ruin. Top down smart planners then as now.

Now, wiser and more intimately in touch with our neighbors at least on the net and in trade relationships, with safeguards in markets and the UN, we now not only face a REAL collapse of physical travel unties and all markets but the cruelest test of having absolutist assholes anticipating the fears with pre-catastrophe ruinous adventures and stupidity. The sorest test for humanity, a self inflicted foot wounding monstrosity is headed rapidly this way. I bet Bushco has part of this PNAC fear in the background, but they are setting the match as a response.

Real evolutionary progressive globalization would be inevitable whatever the setbacks of strained resources and radical change. But the domination of a doomed old world order trying to sit on the new throne will destroy all. Old wine in new wineskins, the parable holds true here especially well. Bags burst. the wine is lost. When progress in cooperation and society is called for, the world leadership has globally, as a whole, failed, whereas the people getting a glimmer of peace prosperity, opportunity hope and the capability of meeting all challenges are being smashed into chaos by greed. Globalization as with democracy in the mouths of these beasts is a lie and physical reality will bring it down.

:thumbsup:

dp

I'm a Japanese-English translator living in the U.S.

Thanks to the Internet, clients in Japan can e-mail me things (even videos) that they want translated, and in many cases, I provide overnight service, thanks to the time difference. Unlike Japanese people doing Japanese-English translation, I produce native-level English. That's the advantage from the point of view of my clients.

(There are native speakers of English living in Japan, mostly married to Japanese citizens, but there aren't enough who are interested in and qualified to meet the demand for translation.)

From my point of view, I benefit because Japanese clients pay better than American clients, and besides, having them to visit gives me an excuse for tax-deductible travel.

I'm not some desperate ex-peasant who is living on three bowls of rice and a few dollars per day, sleeping in a firetrap shack shoulder to shoulder with other workers after a twelve-hour, seven day work week, and getting beaten up for complaining.

of the brain drain from your country?

In fact, I have two right now.

It's just that most of the work in the States is English TO Japanese, which really needs a native speaker of Japanese to avoid producing the equivalent of "Engrish."

What J>E work exists here is mostly in patents and pharmaceutical test reports, two areas that I don't work in, the first because it's excruciatingly boring, and the second because it requires knowledge of a subject I never felt comfortable with--chemistry. Most people who translate patents have an engineering background, and most people who translate pharmaceutical test reports have either training in a health field (there's even a cardiologist who translates these things for fun) or a degree in biology or chemistry.

I just got an inquiry a few minutes ago. :-)

and as such, your field stands to survive the oil shocks that are starting even now.

What will not sustain, is the off shore manufacturing parts of globalization. Production of consumer and most durable goods will move closer to the consumer, to defray higher transit costs. Of course, manufacturing itself will have to shift paradigms for the oil scarcity economy.

You are a gifted anomaly, as the American educational system is not preparing students who can do what you do in any practical numbers. And the American culture's increasing isolationism acts as a further drag on information workers who can market themselves across cultural and or linguistic boundaries.

I admire you, but you do not represent a viable career path for most Americans in upcoming generations. Sadly, what American kids are being trained for is automated warfare.

That is how I like to frame the distinction.

Globalization means forcing the rest of the world to act in a way congruent with our economy. It globalizes the American economy.

Instead we should be internationalizing. Reforming our institutions so that they are better able to deal effectively with the world while building up a truly international world economy.

I wish EVERYONE could understand the distinction. :hug:

:kick::kick::kick:

THE INTERNATIONALE

Arise ye pris'ners of starvation
Arise ye wretched of the earth
For justice thunders condemnation
A better world's in birth!
No more tradition's chains shall bind us
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall;
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been naught we shall be all.

(Refrain):
'Tis the final conflict
Let each stand in his place
The International Union
shall be the human race.
'Tis the final conflict
Let each stand in his place
The International Union
shall be the human race.

We want no condescending saviors
to rule us from their judgement hall
We workers ask not for their favors
Let us consult for all.
To make the theif disgorge his booty
To free the spirit from its cell
We must ourselves decide our duty
We must decide and do it well.

The law oppresses us and tricks us,
the wage slave system drains our blood;
The rich are free from obligation,
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we've languished in subjection,
Equality has other laws;
"No rights," says she "without their duties,
No claims on equals without cause."

Behold them seated in their glory
The kings of mine and rail and soil!
What have you read in all their story,
But how they plundered toil?
Fruits of the workers' toil are buried
In strongholds of the idle few
In working for their restitution
the men will only claim their due.

We toilers from all fields united
Join hand in hand with all who work;
The earth belongs to us, the workers,
No room here for the shirk.
How many on our flesh have fattened!
But if the norsome birds of prey
Shall vanish from the sky some morning
The blessed sunlight then will stay.




The Internationale was written by to celebrate the Paris Commune of March-May 1871: the first time workers took state power into their own hands. They established in the Commune a form of government more democratic than ever seen before. Representatives were mandated on policy questions by their electors, they were recallable at any time and were paid wages that reflected those of their constituents. The Commune was a working body, not a talk shop. The distinction between legislative and executive arms of government was abolished. Marx's "Civil War in France" is a superb account of the history and significance of the Commune. The Commune was drowned in blood by the conservative French government in Versailles, cheered on by the ruling classes.


I couldn't resist to post it. This was written in 1871!

The french original is just wonderfull and the german translation, too. I can't seem to find an english translation that is doing justice to the original lyrics. When I did read the inscript on the American Statue of Liberty for the first time in a foreword of a book without regognizing the source, I just thought, this must be some kind of "communist propaganda" or an english translation of the "International".

I think Bush, Clinton etc. should immediately imprison the Statue of Liberty or put it to Guantanamo for Unamerican Activities and Treason.

Dirk