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Summary
Summary
Perhaps no word today is used and misused more than globalization. It generally serves to refer to worldwide epoch-defining changes in the organization of societies, economies and politics. But as Petras and Veltmeyer demonstrate, the term globalization obscures much more than it reveals.
In practice, globalization provides a cover for a new form of imperialist exploitation and the institution of US hegemony over a global process of capital accumulation. In the last decade, capitalists in Europe and the United States have created favourable conditions for the takeover and recolonization of economies across the developing world. International capital has managed to restore highly profitable returns on investments and operations as never before, creating islands of opulent prosperity within a sea of growing poverty and misery.
In effect, this book argues that the terms globalization and imperialism are widely used as alternative frameworks for understanding the dynamics of the same worldwide developments and trends. Employing an imperialist analytical framework over that of globalization not only provides a better understanding but also points towards forces of resistance and opposition that through political action may bring about necessary change.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
Sociologists Petras (emeritus, Binghamton Univ.-SUNY) and Veltmeyer (St. Mary's Univ., Nova Scotia) present a series of analytical essays and empirical case studies drawn primarily from Latin America in this pithy primer on international political economy. Their twin goals are to rehabilitate the concept of "imperialism" and to debunk the myths of "globalization." The debate they enter is hot enough to fry "globaloney," and their approach is unabashedly Marxist, with correspondingly searing rhetoric. But their class analysis of economic, political, and social relations in the new global village bracingly rebuts the notion that there is anything new or natural about corporate greed, bureaucratic corruption, poverty, or international inequality. The chapters are replete with depressing historical examples and invigorating accounts of contradictions and alternatives. They cumulatively indict not only the current state of world economic and political affairs but also its apologists. Moreover, although others cover much of this territory, their chapters on capitalist democracy, nongovernmental organizations, and narco-capitalism bring radical state theory into the 21st century. Petras and Veltmeyer sometimes reduce the complexities of liberation struggles; women in the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, for example, might feel shortchanged. Nevertheless, protesters at future WTO meetings will wave well-thumbed copies. All collections and levels. L. D. Brush University of Pittsburgh
Table of Contents
Globalization or Imperialism? |
Globalization: A Critical Analysis |
Globalization as Ideology |
Capitalism at the End of the Millennium |
The Labyrinth of Privatization |
Democracy and Capitalism: An Uneasy Relationship |
Cooperation for Development |
NGOs in the Service of Imperialism |
US Empire and Narco-Capitalism |
The Politics of US Hegemony: Right-Wing Strategy in Practice |
Socialism in an Age of Imperialism |