Globalized Monopoly

Capitalism, when left to its own devices, leads to monopolies and oligarchies. The process of maximizing profits and elimination, as well as consolidation through competition inevitably leaves a handful of large winners in every market-segment. Global capitalism, therefore, leads to global monopolies.

"Globalization is an attempt to extend corporate monopoly control over the entire globe. Over every national economy, over every local economy, over every life. It does this by treating international corporate property-rights and international corporate investment-rights as supreme, as taking precedence over all other rights, including our democratic sovereignty."

That's how Michael Parenti opened his speech on "Terrorism, Globalism and Conspiracy" some 20 years ago; I'll link that speech here. Globalization is often explained as inevitable, as a natural consequence of modern transportation and communication technologies. That's not wrong, but that limited view holds a misleading assumption; it assumes that it's primarily the people who've gained more freedom, when in actuality it's the complete liberation of capitalist forces. Your and mine freedom of movement is still restricted by the size of our wallets, and crossing borders is only possible when both governments on either side of it allow it. Capital, on the other hand, knows no such restrictions. Production facilities have largely been moved to low-wage countries with little to no effective regulation on the environment or workers' rights.

Ancaps and capitalist libertarians get this wrong all the time. They stubbornly argue that if only the government didn't meddle so much in the workings of the free market, everything will get better. Well, explain to me then why every civilized country on the planet has antitrust laws. They'll retort that it was the government in the first place who signed into existence the thing we know as "corporations", which is true. But they forget to tell you that they were able to make governments do so because of their disproportionate wealth and power. The defense of global capitalism that goes like "capitalism has lifted more countries out of poverty than any other preceding system", can only come from a gross misunderstanding of what capitalism is.

Any progress made by the working classes of the world has come from the democratic struggle against capitalism. The right to unionize, paid vacations, paid parental leave, healthcare benefits, the right to a safe working environment; they were all won in a fight against capitalists. Or do you believe it were capitalists who abolished slavery and child-labor? They didn't, evidenced by the fact that they now move to countries where they can pay slave-wages, put children to work and dump toxic waste in the river. Furthermore, what really made us progress is our increased abiliti to produce more; science and technology are the drivers behind our increased collective wealth. The fact that the rise of capitalism coincided with the rise of industrial production is merely a historic coincidence. So, whenever someone makes the stupid argument of capitalism eradicating poverty, you now know how to rebut that.

Globalization is rightly often characterized as "The Race To The Bottom": governments do their best to make conditions for big companies to settle there as profitable as possible for those companies. The culmination of this phenomena is seen in the so called "free-trade zones" where Nike and Adidas run their sweatshops.

Unifying humanity is the opposite of our current capitalist version of it. I've been quoting Michael Parenti quite a lot lately, so if you're interested in in listening to the entire speech, "Terrorism, Globalism and Conspiracy", you can watch and listen to it in the first linked video. I recommend you do; it has all sorts of valuable insights about our globalized imperialistic economy, like the lies told to get America into the first Gulf War, as well as the war against Iraq after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and how car accidents are good for the Gross Domestic Product, but bad for people, as so many things are...

Linked below is a discussion on Thom Hartmann's book "The Hidden History of Monopolies" in which he explains the birth of corporations, imperialism and the reluctance of the American administrations in particular to uphold and enforce antitrust laws. Capitalism, as long as it exists, needs to be heavily regulated, there's just no two ways about it. The transitioning from western imperialism to western global capitalism is almost seamless, as the latter is in fact a continuation of the former.

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