Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism

A Progressive Living Book Review

Representative Quotations

Mission Statement

"Over the past 400 to 600 years a culture and society, originating for the most part in Europe and dedicated to the idea of consumption as the ultimate source of well-being, began to expand to all parts of the globe. In many ways it is the most successful culture and society the world has ever seen, its technology, wealth, and power monuments to its success; but accompanying its expansion have been problems—growing social and economic inequality, environmental destruction, mass starvation, and social unrest. Most members of this society and culture perceive these problems as distant from themselves or as challenges for them to meet. However, there is the possibility that these problems, which threaten to negate everything this culture has accomplished, are intrinsic to the culture itself. That is the possibility to be explored in this book."

Samples

". . .corporations soon found that they could more easily tap into pools of cheap labor by relocating their manufacturing process when possible to countries on the periphery of the world system whose governments were committed to economic government through industrialization. . . .

"As an economic arrangement, almost everyone seems to benefit from the growth of assembly plants.

• Nike and other companies are able to compete with other manufacturers by paying workers in Third World countries a fraction of what they would have to pay American workers.
• Workers in the Third World find employment.
• Consumers pay less for their clothes, electronic devices, toys, and so on.
• Investors get a higher return on their money.

It seems that the only ones who don't benefit are the American workers who lose their jobs (some half-million in the textile industry alone in the 1980s).

"However, there are some problems. Critics have cited assembly plant workers' poor working conditions, their low pay, the actions of foreign governments in discouraging the formation of workers' unions, and the loose environmental regulations that have in some cases resulted in considerable environmental degradation around free trade zones.

"For example, in 1995, American labor and children's rights groups called for a boycott of all garments assembled in Bangladesh to protest the estimated 25,000-30,000 children working in garment factories in Bangladesh. The United States is Bangladesh's biggest apparel customer, with nearly 50 percent of Bangladesh's $1.6 billion in garment exports arriving in the United States. In some assembly factories in El Salvador, where women earn $4.51 for the day, or 56 cents an hour, union organizers are often summarily dismissed, bathrooms are locked and can be used only with permission, and talking on the job is prohibited. In Guatemala workers are required to work overtime at a moment's notice and ar dismissed if they refuse. There have been reports of systematic violence against union organizations in Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala."

". . .the most important development of the early twentieth century was the merger frenzy in the United States that led to the concentration of wealth in fewer hands. Companies such as Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler in automobiles, General Electric and Westinghouse in electric, Duont in Chemicals, and Standard Oili in petroleum dominated the market. In 1929, the two hundred largest companies owned half of the country's non-banking wealth. Since then, of course, corporations have become one of the dominant governance units in the world. By 1992 there were 37,000 transnational corporations controlling one-third of the world's private wealth. From their foreign operations alone they generated about $5.5 trillion in sales. The largest corporations exceed in size, power, and wealth most of the world's nation states and, directly or indirectly, define policy agendas of states and international bodies."

"Another problem Engish textiles merchants faced in the mid-eighteenth century was that the textile business, especially in cotton, faced stiff competition from India, whose calico cloth was extremely popular in England. How do you meet this competition? The first thing England did was to ban the import of Indian cloth and develop its own cotton industry to satisfy domestic demand. This not only helped protect the British textile industry, it virtually destroyed the Indian cotton industry, and before long India was buying British cotton textiles. The result was summed up in 1830 in testimony before the House of Commons by Charles Marjoribanks:

"We have excluded the manufactures of India from England by high prohibitive duties and given every encouragement to the introduction of our own manufactures to India. By our selfish (I use the word invidiously) policy we have beat down the native manufactures of Dacca nd other places and inundated their country with our goods."