Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives

This indispensable guide to the integration of East Asia into the multinational corporations’ networks of integrated production clearly shows how the ruling classes of China and South Korea have taken the initiative in sponsoring their country’s integration into an overall process of capitalist globalization which has not only been US-led but also dependent on American mass consumption. Its exposure of the costs to the working classes in each country make this book essential reading for all those looking beyond the unfortunately very limited alternatives addressed here to neoliberal free trade in postwar Europe and contemporary Latin America.

—Leo Panitch, editor, Socialist Register; Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy, York University; co-author (with Sam Gindin), The Making of Global Capitalism

Building upon his excellent in-depth studies of capitalist development in South Korea, Japan and China, Martin Hart-Landsberg takes his analysis to the next level by explaining the profound significance of the restructuring of the international organization of production with the creation of cross-border production networks and global (surplus) value chains. By focusing upon how the drive for profits has led transnational corporations to divide production into multiple components in different locations, Hart-Landsberg convincingly demonstrates that a nation-state framework is a distorting lens through which to analyze capitalist globalization. He shows, too, that reliance upon national accounting data is not only a barrier to a correct analysis of the world of international capital—it also makes changing that world difficult because it supports the appearance that workers of other nations are the enemy rather than the transnational corporations that divide and weaken all workers. Hart-Landsberg’s stress upon the sphere of production is essential because it gives him particular insight into economic theory, neoliberalism and state policies designed to remove all existing barriers to transnational capital and as well to consider potential alternatives such as those being explored in Latin America.

—Michael A. Lebowitz, professor emeritus, Simon Fraser University; author, The Contradictions of ‘Real Socialism’

What exactly is ‘globalization’? Why does it matter for working people and how does it relate to neoliberalism and capitalism? Why are Chinese workers not the rivals of American workers but their potential allies? Why do workers all over the world suffer from unemployment, declining real wages, disappearing benefits and many other hardships? How can capitalist globalization be resisted and how can development be reoriented towards the common good? These are the questions Martin Hart-Landsberg brilliantly discusses and convincingly answers.

—Minqi Li, University of Utah; author, The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy