"Today, we are facing the possibility of a global system that is not organized by a hegemonic power, in the way that Giovanni Arrighi and many others understood it. The abandonment by the United States of the tools of hegemonic organization does not necessarily mean that another nation-state will take up that mantle. The question appears, then, whether such a nonhegemonic project can be effective and lasting. For now, a centrifugal and conflictive multipolarity seems to be an adequate description of the state of the world. From this perspective, a continuing or even permanent war regime begins to appear as a necessary component of both the organization of the world market and the conditions of capitalist development. The capitalist world has always required violence and dispossession, beyond the “mute compulsion” of economic forces, just as all regimes of capitalist “free trade” have required weapons of dominant states and imperial regimes. One difference of the current conjuncture is that there appears to be no need to legitimize the exercise of force with claims to democratic ideals or civilizing missions. The post-hegemony tendency in the global sphere clearly coincides in these, among other, respects with the increase in the domestic sphere of authoritarian and fascist rule.

As we suggested above, many of these developments appear to revive classical characteristics of imperialism, with the marriage between vast capitalist monopolies or cartels and the power of dominant states, together with practices of territorial expansion. Today these gigantic capitalist actors are directly political in ways they have not been before. Beyond the political role always played by processes of gigantic accumulation of wealth, indeed, big platforms tend to build basic infrastructures of social and economic life, competing with states and emerging as direct governmental actors. "

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/the-coming-post-hegemonic-world

No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality
Paul Adler
University of Pennsylvania Press

"How consumer and environmental activists became significant players in U.S. and world politics

Amid the mass protests of the 1960s, another, less heralded political force arose: public interest progressivism. Led by activists like Ralph Nader, organizations of lawyers and experts worked "inside the system." They confronted corporate power and helped win major consumer and environmental protections. By the late 1970s, some public interest groups moved beyond U.S. borders to challenge multinational corporations. This happened at the same time that neoliberalism, a politics of empowerment for big business, gained strength in the U.S. and around the world.

No Globalization Without Representation is the story of how consumer and environmental activists became significant players in U.S. and world politics at the twentieth century's close. NGOs like Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen helped forge a progressive coalition that lobbied against the emerging neoliberal world order and in favor of what they called "fair globalization." From boycotting Nestlé in the 1970s to lobbying against NAFTA to the "Battle of Seattle" protests against the World Trade Organization in the 1990s, these groups have made a profound mark.

This book tells their stories while showing how public interest groups helped ensure that a version of liberalism willing to challenge corporate power did not vanish from U.S. politics. Public interest groups believed that preserving liberalism at home meant confronting attempts to perpetuate conservative policies through global economic rules. No Globalization Without Representation also illuminates how professionalized organizations became such a critical part of liberal activism..."

#Globalization #Activism #Inequality #Neoliberalism #AlternativeGlobalization #NAFTA #WTO

https://www.pennpress.org/9780812253177/no-globalization-without-representation/

Probably don't need to reiterate it on lefty Mastodon, but the #Trump tariffs are not so that the working class can get back something stolen from it by #globalization but so that the #rich & #oligarch class can avoid having what THEY have stolen reappropriated from them. #Protectionism may have a role in a just #economy but that isn't what this is about. It's dividing the international working class to stop it uniting against the super rich

"Trump’s crusade to rebalance trade is occurring because the vicious cycle propping up the FIRE sector at the expense of the American people is breaking down. The rise of the multipolar world order disrupts the American oligarchy’s interests. The modernization and economic development of the rest of the world reduces the need for other countries to rely on American imperial hegemony. There are more trade opportunities than ever outside America. Other countries are less reliant on access to American markets, weakening the dollar’s status as reserve currency.

Any gains for the productive economy from Trump’s tariffs will likely be sabotaged by the FIRE sector’s malinvestment of capital and the foreign-policy establishment’s unwillingness to withdraw from the world. America can’t have its cake (of maintaining the dollar as the global reserve currency) and eat it too (bringing back manufacturing and resolving trade imbalances). The oligarchy cannot be expected to act in America’s best interests, because that is at the expense of its interests.

Ending the rule of the American oligarchy would require reductions of military spending, ending proxy conflicts, closing bases, and embracing diplomacy. For the FIRE sector, this would entail taxing financial transactions, using central bank window guidance, and establishing a national development bank to direct investment into productive sectors and not to asset price inflation. Tariff policy wouldn’t be used as a retaliatory action, but as a targeted and measured policy tool for incubating critical domestic industries."

https://www.compactmag.com/article/liberating-america-requires-more-than-tariffs/

"In summary, the first globalization saw the rise of the West, the second the rise of Asia; the first led to an increase of between-country inequalities, the second to their decline. Both globalizations tended to increase inequalities within nations. The unevenness of countries’ growth rates during Globalization I installed most of the Western populations at the top of the global income pyramid. It is rarely recognized just how highly placed even the poor deciles of the rich countries were in the global income distribution. Economist Paul Collier, in his Future of Capitalism, writes wistfully of the time when English workers were on top of the world. But for them to feel high, somebody else had to feel low.

The second globalization drove some of the Western middle classes from these perches and produced a great reshuffling of incomes as they were overtaken by a rising Asia. This relatively imperceptible decline occurred together with the Western middle classes’ far more perceptible one with respect to their own national elites. It caused political dissatisfaction that found its reflection in the rise of populist leaders and parties.

Finally, we should note that the convergence of worldwide incomes did not extend to Africa, which continued on its path of relative decline. If that is not changed — and the likelihood of such change seems low — the relative decline of Africa will, in the decades to come, overturn the forces currently pushing global inequality downward and usher in a new era of rising global inequality."

https://jacobin.com/2025/03/what-comes-after-globalization/

well yes #donaltrump just as his predecessor mostly care about #money

so when #globalization (u know selling companies off to foreign countries mostly #China dismantling whole factories shipping them to #China) was good #money #economic policy of #USA was #globalization

now #China won that game

so now #USA #America #TheWest realizes: this game SUCKS (ok told u 30 years ago but whatever)

and try to turn back the wheel to the 1960s if they turn too far we might end up in 1933

nothing get's build anymore in #USA except sometimes a great song like this #trump #song #music #lol

Our 2nd group of calls to hire four Assistant Researchers under the #FCTTenure programme ends on 24 February:

2023.11076.TENURE.199: #Migrations and #Globalization in Historical Perspective
2023.11076.TENURE.200: #Colonialism, #AntiColonialism, #Decolonization
2023.11076.TENURE.203: #SocialMovements, State and #Capitalism in #ContemporaryHistory
2023.11076.TENURE.259: History, specialising in #memory and #heritage

https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/en/ar-history-fcttenure-02/

@histodons

In or around 1177 BCE, some 3200 years ago, a thriving international trade system covering much of the area around the Mediterranean Sea collapsed. Once dominant civilizations like the Hittites basically disappeared over the course of mere decades. And it took centuries for societies and trade to recover.

This year I read Eric Cline's two books on this Bronze Age Collapse, "1177 B.C." and "After 1177 B.C." They can be pretty dry history if that's traumatizing, but it also offers some interesting ideas of what might happen to us in our current globally connected society.

"So what can we think when we attempt to look at the overall picture? We conclude that all essential ingredients of the neoliberal globalization have been abandoned by the mainstream economists and by Democratic administration in the US as they will be further abandoned by Trump. It is in that sense that Trump’s assumption of power on the 20th of January represents a symbolic date for the final rejection of these principles. The goals are no longer free movement of goods because tariffs stop them; movement of technology is limited because of the so-called security concerns; movement of capital is reduced because the Chinese (and most recently Japanese as In the case of US Steel) are often not allowed to buy American companies; movement of labor has been severely curtailed. So what essential ingredients of neoliberal globalization have been left intact?

My point here is not to argue whether the abandonment of these principles is good for the United States or Europe or China or the world, or not. It is rather simply to show that it was not Trump who is the only agent of change, but that these principles have been in abeyance for at least a decade or perhaps a decade and a half. The Financial Times has misled its readers by not clearly stating that its promotion of trade blocs and revision of other key principles means in reality the abandonment of neoliberal globalization as a project. This is happening because of (1) geostrategic competition with China and because (2) such neoliberal policies have domestically been harmful for Western middle classes."

https://braveneweurope.com/branko-milanovic-how-the-mainstream-abandoned-universal-economic-principles

"In 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sum­marised a number of studies that estimated the costs of geoeco­nomic fragmentation (GEF). These ranged from 0.9 per cent of global GDP under mild assumptions to as high as 8.5 per cent of global GDP under severe assumptions. There are no exact estimates to be had. These estimates should be contrasted with its biannual global economic forecast, the World Economic Outlook (WEO). The latest edition, of October 2024, penned global growth in 2025 at 3.2 per cent, unchanged from the 2024 estimate and a sliver less than the 3.3 per cent estimate in 2023. With latest economic data from the UK showing no growth and Germany faring equally badly, it is not surprising that global economic output has stagnated. Even if one were to filter out cyclical factors behind such fluctuations in output, the geoeconomic factors loom large in this story. In Britain’s case, growth has nosedived ever since Brexit and Germany’s economic travails are largely due to exorbitant costs of en­ergy. The later phase of Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder was as much about sound economic management as it was about cheap energy, most of it from Russia. Once those taps shut, the German economy caught a chill.

Among the bright spots in this bleak scenario are China and India with estimated growth rates of 4.5 per cent and 6.5 per cent respectively in 2025. There are other economies with faster growth but they do not matter for global output as their share of output in the world economy is very small."

https://openthemagazine.com/cover-stories/a-fragmenting-world/

When the cookies are cheaper than empty tins.

In 2013, #ChineseMining company #Chinalco (中国铝业集团有限公司) sparked an international conversation about extractive impacts with the news it had successfully relocated an entire #Peruvian town of 5,000 residents to clear space for a #CopperMine. At the time, the #relocation project in #Morococha, central #Peru, was touted as a solution to protect villagers from #pollution and #environmental degradation as a result of #mining practices, and as a potential template for #Chinese overseas #investment in #LatinAmerica.

Ten years later, experts describe the move as a “tragedy.”

Joselyn Jaua, a Peruvian #journalist who covers the #environment and communities in the region, explained to #GlobalVoices that Chinalco’s policies have deeply impacted both Old Morococha and New Morococha: “The rise of poverty is notorious for relocated and non-relocated people alike.”

https://globalvoices.org/2024/10/11/a-chinese-mining-company-relocated-a-whole-peruvian-town-now-they-are-struggling-to-survive/

The pre-modern “#globalization” resulting from the military activity of the Crusades helped foment the #Renaissance, and later the #Enlightenment.

We might be entering a dark age, so write. down. all. the. #pagan. things.

"In our century, American politics has been blown open by the reverberating crises of neoliberalism and capitalist globalization. They have rebounded on our society and politics in four major forms: imperial blowback and endless warfare; deindustrialization and the hollowing out of American society; the rise of an engorged, predatory, and increasingly insane billionaire class, obsessed with eugenics and immortality; and the climate crisis, now a source of regular natural disasters and swelling refugee flows. At each juncture, the Democrats have attempted restoration: to manage the crisis, carry out the bailout, stitch things back together, and try to get back to normal. It is the form of this orientation, as much as substantive questions of culture, race, and gender, that seems to me the fundamental reason the Democrats are often experienced as a force of inhibition rather than empowerment by so many voters. And it is against this politics of containment that Trump’s obscenity comes to feel like a liberation for so many."

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/exit-right/