A Question
Sep. 29th, 2002 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI'll just toss this question out into the sea of LJ communities and see if it gets any answer:
Assuming that you're a Marxist or you adhere to Marxist-influenced theories, why would you necessarily understand globalization in all of its manifestations?
From my understanding of Marx, a global capitalist economy that breaks up old traditional modes of subsistence is a prerequisite for the creation of a proletariat. The examples of the Soviet Union and China would seem to confirm, if nothing else, that it's impossible to move directly from traditional modes of subsistence to Marxist communism, and that it's rather difficult for a Communist state to challenge a world that was either capitalistic or capitalism-influenced. (The country formerly known as Zaire wasn't a capitalist economy like 18th century Britain, but it was definitely plugged into global capitalism, as evidenced by the West's support for Mobutu.)
So. Given the demonstrated inability of semiperipheral and peripheral areas of the world economy to challenge the capitalist core, and the need for the entire planet to be a globally-integrated economy in order to produce a world proletariat that cares about it's subordination, wouldn't the best route to go be a largely uncritical acceptance of globalization followed by proletarian revolution when you get the masses in New Guinea and central Africa to care about global inequality?
Assuming that you're a Marxist or you adhere to Marxist-influenced theories, why would you necessarily understand globalization in all of its manifestations?
From my understanding of Marx, a global capitalist economy that breaks up old traditional modes of subsistence is a prerequisite for the creation of a proletariat. The examples of the Soviet Union and China would seem to confirm, if nothing else, that it's impossible to move directly from traditional modes of subsistence to Marxist communism, and that it's rather difficult for a Communist state to challenge a world that was either capitalistic or capitalism-influenced. (The country formerly known as Zaire wasn't a capitalist economy like 18th century Britain, but it was definitely plugged into global capitalism, as evidenced by the West's support for Mobutu.)
So. Given the demonstrated inability of semiperipheral and peripheral areas of the world economy to challenge the capitalist core, and the need for the entire planet to be a globally-integrated economy in order to produce a world proletariat that cares about it's subordination, wouldn't the best route to go be a largely uncritical acceptance of globalization followed by proletarian revolution when you get the masses in New Guinea and central Africa to care about global inequality?
