The new parameters of global politics

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 10, 2001, Pages 87-107

  Therborn, Göran ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039302330     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (26)

1. This paper was first presented at a conference on 'La Izquierda ante los Nuevos Tiempos' organized by the senators of the PRD in Mexico City, 19 April 2001.
2. Multinational corporations are, of course, an age-old feature of capitalism.
3. Capitalism itself is a system of markets, social patternings and (one or more) states. Looking at the features and, above all, at the inter-relationships of these three dimensions is one way - in my experience, a fruitful one - of dissecting power relations and their dynamics within capitalism. These variables have the advantage of opening up into empirical-analytical overviews, while neither presupposing nor requiring assessments of the actual extent of the capitalist 'systemness' of states and social patterns. As current and foreseeable politics can hardly be summed up in terms of socialism vs capitalism, this conceptual apparatus - broader, looser, less capital/labour-focused - may have some merit.
4. That is, for the OECD before the recent inclusion of Mexico, South Korea and post-Communist East Central Europe.
5. 1960 data from OECD, Historical Statistics 1960-1997, Paris 1999, tables 6.5, 6.12; 1999 data from OECD, Economic Outlook, Paris 2000, Annex tables 28, 29.
6. 1960 data from OECD, Historical Statistics 1960-1997, Paris 1999, tables 6.5, 6.12; 1999 data from OECD, Economic Outlook, Paris 2000, Annex tables 28, 29.
7. In the mid-nineties the Pearson correlation measure of exports and social expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the original OECD countries was 0.26. There is probably no direct cause and effect here. Rather, the link should be interpreted as meaning that international competitiveness has contributed, through growth, to the weight of progressive forces, and has not been incompatible with the latter's policies of extending social entitlements.
8. The capital balance - in principle, a balance of assets versus shares and debt - of the historical record may not be quite the same as the current accounting of corporate assets; but that change in turn corresponds to actual corporate development. Calculations from P. L. Payne, 'The Emergence of the Large Scale Company in Great Britain', Economic History Review, vol. 20, 1967, pp. 540-1, and British and US historical national accounts; compared with contemporary data from Fortune, 31 July 2000, and from the World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001.
9. The capital balance - in principle, a balance of assets versus shares and debt - of the historical record may not be quite the same as the current accounting of corporate assets; but that change in turn corresponds to actual corporate development. Calculations from P. L. Payne, 'The Emergence of the Large Scale Company in Great Britain', Economic History Review, vol. 20, 1967, pp. 540-1, and British and US historical national accounts; compared with contemporary data from Fortune, 31 July 2000, and from the World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001.
10. The capital balance - in principle, a balance of assets versus shares and debt - of the historical record may not be quite the same as the current accounting of corporate assets; but that change in turn corresponds to actual corporate development. Calculations from P. L. Payne, 'The Emergence of the Large Scale Company in Great Britain', Economic History Review, vol. 20, 1967, pp. 540-1, and British and US historical national accounts; compared with contemporary data from Fortune, 31 July 2000, and from the World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001.
11. N. Crafts, 'Globalization and Growth in the Twentieth Century', in IMF, World Economic Outlook, Supporting Studies, Washington, DC 2000, p. 35.
12. Corporations data from Fortune, 24 July 2000. GDP data from World Development Report 2000/2001.
13. Corporations data from Fortune, 24 July 2000. GDP data from World Development Report 2000/2001.
14. Corporate account assets are more stable than market capitalization - ie, the stock-market value of the corporation's shares on a given day. On 24 April 2000, at the very start of the downturn on the world's stock exchanges, the market value of Microsoft was almost 7 per cent of US GDP in 1999, and that of General Electric almost 6 per cent: Financial Times, 4 May 2000.
15. th Annual Report, Basle 2000, p. 90, 98 and passim.
16. th Annual Report, Basle 2000, p. 90, 98 and passim.
17. th Annual Report, Basle 2000, p. 90, 98 and passim.
18. th Annual Report, Basle 2000, p. 90, 98 and passim.
19. See my Europa hacia el siglo veintiuno, México 1999, pp. 69ff.
20. CEPAL, Panorama Social, Santiago de Chile 1997, table 111.3.
21. ILO, World Employment 1995, Geneva 1995, p. 29.
22. Many - if not most - of the best Cuban hotels are public property, but they are usually run by capitalist enterprise managements, hired abroad.
23. This loosening of public-order controls may be reversed in the near future: an interesting test will be how the police authorities deal with forthcoming EU, WTO or World Bank summits. The technology for global surveillance and espionage already exists in the US Echelon system.
24. World Bank, Global Economic Prospects, of the Developing Countries 2000, Washington, DC 1999, appendix 2, table A2.2.
25. Income inequality among the households of the world has been estimated at a so-called Gini index value of 66 (out of a theoretical maximum of 100); Brazil and Guatemala have a value of 60. On the same scale, Scandinavia and Britain are more than six points apart. B. Milanovic, 'True World Income Distribution, 1988 and 1993: First calculations based on household surveys alone', World Bank, Washington, DC 1999; R. Paes de Barros, 'Inequality and Poverty in Brazil', paper presented to the Conference on Global Processes of Inequality in Stockholm, 26-29 October 2000.
26. Income inequality among the households of the world has been estimated at a so-called Gini index value of 66 (out of a theoretical maximum of 100); Brazil and Guatemala have a value of 60. On the same scale, Scandinavia and Britain are more than six points apart. B. Milanovic, 'True World Income Distribution, 1988 and 1993: First calculations based on household surveys alone', World Bank, Washington, DC 1999; R. Paes de Barros, 'Inequality and Poverty in Brazil', paper presented to the Conference on Global Processes of Inequality in Stockholm, 26-29 October 2000.