Capitalism and colonialism

Capitalism and colonialism



Capitalism and colonialism

Introduction

Researchers on global capitalism have focused on three inter-related phenomena, increasingly significant since the fifteen century. These are, first, the ways in which transnational corporations (TNCs) have facilitated the globalization of capital and the production of goods and services; second, the rise of new global forms of organization of the capitalist class; and third, transformations in the global scope of TNCs that own and control the mass media, notably television channels and the transnational advertising agencies and their role in promoting global brand consumer goods and the emergence of a global culture and ideology of consumerism. Theory and research on each of these three phenomena roughly coincide with attention to the economic, political and culture-ideology spheres of global capitalism(Wallerstein 1979 pp.89-95).

Global Capitalism as an Economic System

It is no coincidence that interest in a global capitalist system in contrast to competing national capitalisms increased perceptibly from the 1950s. The context of theoretical and empirical interest in competing national capitalisms was (and for many still is) the history of colonialism and imperialism. This is overlaid with several versions of the theory that capitalist states could more or less successfully plan their own economic futures. The concept of international capitalism, therefore, refers to a system of interacting and competing national capitalist economies, in which national elites of various types use 'their' big business (and businesses) to further national interests around the world. As direct imperialism and colonialism came to an end and as increasing numbers of very large TNCs began to emerge in the 1960s, attention began to shift decisively from national to global capitalism (Strange 1996 pp.12-30).

The dependency approach to development and underdevelopment of Gunder Frank and the related world-systems approach of Wallerstein, both highlighted the systemic nature of capitalism as a worldwide phenomenon over several centuries. While these theoretical innovations can be said to have prepared the ground for it, neither entirely succeeded in establishing a coherent concept of global capitalism for what came to be termed the 'age of development' from the 1950s onwards. This was due to ambivalence over their units of analysis and insufficient focus on the role of the major corporations in development in general. For example, the analysis of core, semiperiphery and periphery in the world-systems approach is based on national economies, as is the theoretically more ambitious concept of commodity chains. The simple assertion that these take place within a world-economy or global economy does not suffice for an analysis of global capitalism(Sklair 2001 pp.45-70 ).

Theories of global capitalism, in the sense used here, take off from the proposition that capitalism entered a new, global phase in the second half of the twentieth century. By the end of the century, the largest TNCs had assets and annual sales far in excess of the gross national products (GNPs) of most of the countries in the world. In 2000, only about 70 countries out of a total of around 200 for which there were data, had GNPs of ...