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Abstract: Globalization is full of contradictions, creating homogeneity alongside differentiation. Classes become more differentiated while products become more homogeneous. Globalization has stimulated growth in China, while it has contributed to dysfunctional financialization, which largely disregards the productive side of the economy. This article emphasizes globalization as a shift in power relations in which corporations require powers that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago, while government power is becoming restricted to the point that globalization is creating a form of unchecked corporate anarchy.
Key words: globalization; class; power; trade; economic development
Introduction
This article was originally prepared for a conference on "The Local Effects of Globalization" at Artvin University in Hopa, Turkey. Its topic plays with a delightful irony because globalization rhetorically suggests a homogeneous world. In fact, globalization is anything but homogeneous; instead, it is riddled with contradictions and ironies. For example, New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, who popularized an unrealistic vision of a flat world of shared prosperity once glibly claimed, "No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's" (Friedman 1999, 195). Later in the same book, Friedman could not help himself with blurting out an equally clever refutation of the same idea:
The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F 15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. . . . Without America on duty, there will be no America Online. (Friedman 1999, 373)
Further Confusion of Globalization
Some sources suggest that the explosive growth of China has indeed reduced the extent of global inequality, even though China itself has become increasingly unequal.
The literature on imperialistic development offers some valuable studies on the localized effects of globalization at the national level. Andre Gunder Frank's (1966) analysis of imperialism's production of underdevelopment on a national level is an excellent early example. More localized analysis looked at the way that extractive industries produced enclaves in which mines or oil fields would produce regions that had little connection with the rest of the country. Historically, foreign...