The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century

In November 1999, when more than forty thousand demonstrators in Seattle effectively shut down a World Trade Organization (WTO) conference, we saw what may well have been this country’s largest popular protest of the last twenty years or more. In April 2000, thousands converged on Washington D.C. to express opposition to the IMF and the World Bank, and more recently, massive demonstrations in Geneva, Melbourne and Prague succeeded in bringing international attention to the issues surrounding globalization. Against the backdrop of these historic events, William K. Tabb issues a comprehensive examination of the world capitalist system at the start of the twenty-first century. He confronts the prevailing view of globalization as the steamroller against which even the most powerful nations are helpless and explains the role of the state in creating the conditions necessary for capital’s dominance.

The Amoral Elephant examines the implications of globalization, drawing parallels to earlier stages of capitalist development to demonstrate the social burdens arising from the exploding financial markets. Tabb describes how international institutions, most importantly the International Monetary Fund and the WTO have focused on neoliberal goals to erode the welfare state and shift wealth from the poor to the rich. Moreover, he shows how regulatory frameworks—such as the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment, NAFTA, and the misleadingly named “Africa Growth and Opportunity Act”—are designed by these powerful institutions to provide greater freedom and opportunity for capital at the expense of social needs.

Tabb’s goal is grounded in the view that we cannot change the world if we do not first understand it better, that people take part in making their own history. For him, the task is not understanding for its own sake but rather, to make us better prepared to engage in the struggles for progressive social change.

William K. Tabb is professor of economics at Queens college and professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City of New York. He is the author of The Postwar Japanese System: Cultural Economy and Economic Transformation (1995) and Restructuring Political Economy: The Great Divide in Economic Thought (1999).