Used neutrally, the term “globalization” just refers to international integration.

Virtually no one is opposed to that, certainly not the left or the workers movements, which from their modern origins have been committed to international solidarity. The phrase “workers of the world unite” is a call for globalization. That’s why every union is called an “international” — the reality is far from hopes. More narrowly, the term is used for international economic integration. Put neutrally, few are opposed to that, though serious questions arise about the real costs and the benefits of trade — questions raised by Keynes,

for example, who was in general in favor of domestic production (as was Adam Smith; that’s the context in which he used the much misunderstood phrase “invisible hand” in Wealth of Nations), and international exchange mainly in ideas. In contemporary ideology of the past 20-25 years, the term “globalization” has been used to refer to a specific form of international economic integration, a

mixture of liberalization and protectionism, designed in the interests of the designers (not surprisingly), that is investors, financial institutions, etc., and the few powerful states linked to them. Naturally, many people — probably the large majority of those who know anything about it — are opposed to this form of international integration, and favor globalization oriented to the needs of people, not concentrations of private power. They have quite concrete proposals, but these are silenced by the corporate media; the case of NAFTA was quite dramatic in this respect, and reviewed in print, but next to unmentionable within the doctrinal systems. When the term “globalization” is used in this well-crafted propagandistic

sense, those who oppose “globalization” can be dismissed as primitives who want to return to the stone age, don’t understand elementary economics, and other standard jeering and hysterics. And it is possible to evade the embarrassing fact that insofar as the rules of “globalization” have been followed, the results have generally been quite harmful — though so little is understood about the international economy that it is not easy to establish causal relations. And so on.

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