dara

If you watch all of this not only are you cool but you may understand what I do a little better The fate of workers in the face of globalization has been much decried and debated, but usually from the whole angle. The focus of focus of conventional discussion is almost always on labor markets, and the woes of international wage competition. In critical approaches, the miracle of global capital mobility and the power of transnational corporations come in for the most attention, for their presumed role in the offshoring of industry from the advanced economies and build-up of cheap-labor platforms in the newly-industrializing countries. In contrast, the argument presented here points the finger of blame away from the economic failings of workers and successes of capital to the worldwide political defeat of the working class and global economic failures of capitalism.A pressing question of our time is the fate of labor and the working people of the world in the face of the rampant globalization of capitalism. Much ink has been spilled on the topic and some titanic political battles have been shaped by the debate, including those over the North American Free Trade Alliance (NAFTA) and, in Europe, over the single currency, high unemployment, and the 35 hour work week. My own locale, California, has been swept by fierce political disputes over immigration, taxation, health care and other matters of moment to people feeling the pressure on incomes. While there may be no definitive answer to the question ‘does globalism raise or lower wages?’, we can nevertheless frame the matter squarely in economic, geographic and political terms, so that our discussion is not cock-eyed from the outset. In so doing, we can shift the balance of debate away from the labor markets, where it almost always rests, toward a discussion of global capital. This will run counter to the prevailing view that stagnant wages in the United States or high unemployment in Europe are due chiefly to the competition of foreign workers, failures of labor training or flexibility, or the miracle of globally mobile capital. Indeed, I want most of all to point the finger of blame away from the failings of workers to the political successes and economic failures of capitalI take as my starting point the plain evidence that these are hard times for the working class around the world. The majority of working people are no better off than they were a quarter century ago and many are much worse off. In the Northern Tier countries (defined as the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or Group of Eight) for the period 1973 to 1996, the average rate of wage increase was only one-third that of the preceding 25 years, while the rate of unemployment was double that of the postwar era. On average, workers suffer greater job insecurity and more widespread unemployment than before. The ‘productivity wage’ of the postwar era, when wages could be expected to rise in tandem with productivity and national output, is but a hazy memory of a Golden Age that lasted all of a decade or two in America and Europe. Workers also suffer the indignity of greater inequality as compared with the ballooning incomes and wealth of the rich, particularly the top 5% of people who own most of the capital (property and financial assets) in the world.