The Left Needs a New Globalization Vision to Counter the Far-Right Surge

The way out of neoliberal globalization is by developing a new globalization that is democratic and free from the destructive tendencies of capitalist accumulation.

By C.J. Polychroniou

May 25, 2025

Source: Common Dreams



The left is in shambles everywhere while hard-right and far-right parties are riding high in polls across the world. I contend that globalization is at the heart of these developments, and thus it is critical that the left comes to terms with what has gone wrong with its approach to neoliberal globalization and develops in turn an alternative vision of world order.

Globalization came to be a dominant force in our lives sometime around the 1980s. It coincided with the rise of neoliberalism, although globalization is not a 20th-century phenomenon. The 19th century contained a huge burst of globalization. In fact, between 1850 and 1913, the world economy was probably as open as it became in the late 20th century. Tariffs fell, free trade agreements proliferated, trade flows skyrocketed, information flows accelerated, and migrants flowed to all corners of the globe. Neither Europe nor the U.S. had any restrictions on migration. In the U.S., no visas or passports were even needed to enter the country.

That wave of globalization was interrupted because of World War I, and the next wave of globalization did not occur until the early 1980s. In many ways, the new wave of capitalist globalization was more intense than the one that had preceded it as it was characterized by massive financial deregulation and the acceleration of capital flows while trade integration became more rapid than ever. By the 1990s, the new wave of globalization had reached such heights that the world was increasingly becoming a global village. Let’s call it the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave.

However, there was one huge qualitative difference between the 19th-century and the late 20th-century waves of globalization. While capital movements exploded during the late 20th-century wave of globalization and multinationals moved across the world in search of cheaper labor, labor migration was severely restricted. In contrast, migration became truly globalized in the late 19th century. And the late 20th-century wave of globalization, which was supposed to produce unrivaled benefits for all, also had another dark side: While it was not openly imperialistic as the 19th-century wave of globalization, it was based nonetheless on highly exploitative structures that were not much different from those of colonialism. After all, capitalism has always nurtured dependence, inequality, and exploitation.

Under the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave, the Global North took advantage of the weakness of the Global South by trapping millions of its workers in a relentless cycle of exploitation while offshoring had dramatic impacts on the standard of living of average citizens back in the Global North as well-paid industrial jobs became few and far in between, wages stagnated, and the social safety net was torn apart, partly because of less government revenues due to neoliberal tax cuts for corporations and the rich and partly on account of simple ideological reasoning. Austerity for the masses but subsidies, tax breaks, and bailouts for industry and the financial sector is a central aspect of the ideological agenda of neoliberalism. And while some developing nations did benefit from the great connectivity in the global economy that has been unleashed since the early 1980s, it is primarily the elites in the Global South, as much as it is in the Global North, that gained the most from the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave.

Enter politics.

By the late 1990s, grievances over the direction of the capitalist world economy united people to demand change and an anti-globalization movement surfaced across the globe, protesting specifically against the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave. Protests and demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund became a common feature of the anti-globalization movement across a large number of countries from 1995 to 2018. The anti-globalization movement was inspired by left-wing ideologies and was impressively transnational. Latin America’s anti-globalization movement was especially successful, resulting in support and eventually electoral victory for left-wing parties in scores of countries in the region. Indeed, a database on political institutions reveals that in the early 1990s, 64% of Latin American presidents came from a right-wing party. But a decade later, that number had shrunk to half.

The anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movement was no less prominent in Europe. In the summer of 2001, more than 300,000 people from all over Europe gathered in Genoa, Italy to voice their opposition to the G8 Group, while the Italian police unleashed violence of a dimension unknown up to that point in postwar Western Europe. In the spring of 2002, more than half a million people in Barcelona mobilized against the European Union Heads of State and Government under the banner against Capital and War.

The anti-globalization movement had come of age. The prospects for radical change had never looked more promising than they did during the first decade of the new millennium. The winds of change were still in the air in the second decade of the new millennium as the rise to power of the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) party in Greece brought hope to leftist movements worldwide, although it was abundantly clear to anyone willing to pay close attention to Greek politics at the time that the leadership of the party had made a decision to switch its ideological profile from radicalism to pragmatism in anticipation of its coming to power.

There is indeed one impressive thing about the rapid and sweeping changes brought about by the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave, and that is none other than the fact that the world now spins faster. Extraordinary social, political, and ideological changes can happen from one decade to the next. And, lo and behold, by the end of the second decade of the new millennium, not only did the radical left critique of globalization lose its appeal for the working class and huge chunks of youth, but anti-globalism emerged as a major ideological tenet of the extreme right.

However, the backlash against globalism by hard-right and far-right parties was not based on a scathing critique of neoliberal capitalism but was seen instead as a political project advanced by Marxism and the radical left with the double aim of destroying national culture and replacing the nation-state with institutions of global governance. This is of course an evasion of what capitalist globalization is all about, but it would be naïve to think that the backlash against globalism by the far-right does not have socioeconomic roots. The anti-globalist sentiment that brought President Donald Trump to power in the United States and scores of other authoritarian political figures across the world is driven by both cultural and socioeconomic factors and is nurtured by the “us versus them” mentality. The far-right of course is not anti-systemic and in fact enjoys the support of digital moguls like Elon Musk. As such, it is fooling voters on the economy with promises of a new order. The far-right’s anti-globalism stance begins and ends with the imposition of draconian measures against immigration and the creation of a culture of cruelty.

The anti-globalism of the far-right is perverse and irrational, and thus it may speak volumes of the need of a widely and publicly educated citizenry to sustain democracy, but it also calls attention to the gross political failures of the reformist left parties that came to power during the height of the anti-globalization period. Indeed, while the contradictions of neoliberal globalization led to electoral victories of left parties in scores of countries across the world during the last couple of decades, the shift to global neoliberalism was not countered by the parties of the reformist left that came to power. They may have criticized neoliberal hyper-globalization while they were in opposition, but they did very little once they came to power to combat its destructive effects. At the very best, they increased spending on social programs but did not try to diminish the spread of globalization on their economies and societies. Subsequently, by failing to tame, let alone shrink, capitalist globalization, they quickly saw their political fortunes decline and found citizens changing sides. This is the principal factor that has activated a turn to the far-right across the globe, including the United States, although Trumpism also needs to be considered in light of the peculiar social, cultural, and ideological features of the country.

The problem with the reformist left vis-à-vis neoliberal globalization remains. That is, it advances a critique of the consequences of capitalist globalization but seems to accept the phenomenon as inevitable and unalterable. In doing so, it leaves the field open for far-right populists to make inroads with disgruntled voters by appealing to their worst instincts as in the case of immigration.

We also know that pressure “from below” to tame or even reverse neoliberal globalization, a view that was held by the main body of the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s and 2000s, is a flawed strategy. The way out of neoliberal globalization is by developing a new globalization that is free from the destructive tendencies of capitalist accumulation and operates through political processes in which democracy and globalization are in a symbiotic relationship and thus support and reinforce each other.

The left is historically obligated to advance an alternative vision of a world order beyond capitalism. A world order where the rights of labor are at the pinnacle of human society and thus the means of production are collectively owned by workers while the exploitation of nature is seen as injustice.

In sum, systemic change for ending neoliberal hyper-globalization is a prerequisite but such a project mandates anti-systemic consciousness and a comprehensive political program for a new world order. If the left fails to develop the courage to engage itself economically, politically, ideologically, and culturally in the making of an alternative world order, capitalist globalization will continue to reign supreme, and the far-right will be its main political beneficiary.




C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).

Ukraine War: A Turning Point for Globalization?

on August 4, 2023
By Sarah Neumann


Globalization is a multifaceted phenomenon that refers to the increasing interconnectedness and integration of different regions and peoples across various dimensions, such as trade, investment, migration, culture, technology, and information. Globalization has been a dominant trend in the world economy since the end of the Second World War, but it has also faced many challenges and disruptions along the way.

The recent war in Ukraine is one of those disruptions that has profound implications for globalization and its future trajectory. The war has not only caused human suffering and economic damage in Ukraine and its neighboring countries, but also triggered wider geopolitical tensions and conflicts that have undermined global cooperation and trust. Moreover, the war has exposed the vulnerability and fragility of global supply chains that rely on foreign inputs, markets, and transport networks.

How will the war in Ukraine affect globalization in the medium to long run? Will it lead to a reversal or a reshaping of global integration? What are the consequences for development and cooperation? These are difficult questions to answer, as they depend on many factors and uncertainties. However, some possible scenarios can be sketched out based on current trends and evidence.

One scenario is that the war in Ukraine will accelerate de-globalization, or a decline in global integration. This scenario is based on the assumption that geopolitical risks will outweigh economic benefits as drivers of globalization. Under this scenario, countries will prioritize their national security interests over their trade interests, leading to a fragmentation of global markets along political lines. Trade barriers will increase as countries impose sanctions, tariffs, quotas, or other restrictions on their rivals or potential threats. Global supply chains will be disrupted or reconfigured to reduce dependence on foreign sources or markets. Countries will also seek to diversify their trade partners or develop their domestic capabilities to enhance their self-reliance.

This scenario would have negative consequences for development and cooperation. De-globalization would reduce global efficiency gains from specialization and comparative advantage. It would also reduce global welfare gains from lower prices, higher quality, and greater variety of goods and services. De-globalization would hurt developing countries more than developed countries, as they rely more on trade for their growth, employment, income, and poverty reduction. De-globalization would also undermine global institutions and norms that facilitate cooperation on common challenges such as climate change, public health, human rights, or peace.

Another scenario is that the war in Ukraine will reshape globalization rather than reverse it. This scenario is based on the assumption that economic benefits will still matter as drivers of globalization despite geopolitical risks. Under this scenario, countries will adapt to changing circumstances by adjusting their trade strategies and policies. Trade barriers will not increase significantly, but trade patterns will change as countries seek new opportunities or niches. Global supply chains will not be disrupted, but diversified or optimized to balance efficiency and security. Countries will also pursue regional or plurilateral integration agreements that are more flexible and inclusive than global ones.

This scenario would have mixed consequences for development and cooperation. Reshaping globalization would preserve some of the benefits of global integration, but also create some challenges and trade-offs. It would allow countries to exploit their comparative advantages and access new markets, but also expose them to more competition and volatility. It would enable countries to diversify their trade partners and sources, but also increase their complexity and coordination costs. It would foster regional or plurilateral cooperation on some issues, but also create fragmentation or exclusion on others.

The war in Ukraine has also revealed the vulnerability and complexity of global trade. The war in Ukraine has disrupted global supply chains and markets, especially for commodities such as food and energy. For example, Russia is one of the largest exporters of wheat and natural gas in the world, and its exports have been affected by Western sanctions and transport bottlenecks. This has created shortages and price spikes in some regions, such as Europe and Asia. Moreover, the war in Ukraine has increased global uncertainty and volatility, which have negative impacts on investment, consumption, and growth.

The war in Ukraine has also raised questions about the relationship between globalization and security. Liberalism is a theory of international relations that argues that globalization promotes peace and security by increasing interdependence, cooperation, and democracy among countries. However, this theory has been challenged by recent events that show that globalization can also create conflicts and threats. For example, Mark Galeotti argues in his book that globalization has enabled countries to use their economic, technological, or informational advantages as weapons against their rivals or adversaries. He calls this phenomenon “weaponized interdependence” and suggests that it leads to more frequent and protracted wars.

The war in Ukraine does not necessarily mean the end of globalization or the return of a Cold War scenario. Rather, it means that globalization is changing and evolving in response to new challenges and opportunities. Globalization is not a uniform or linear process, but a diverse and dynamic one that varies across different dimensions, regions, sectors, and actors. Some aspects of globalization may decline or stagnate, such as trade in goods or multilateral agreements. But other aspects of globalization may continue or increase, such as trade in services or digital flows. Moreover, some regions may pursue deeper integration or cooperation within their own blocs or groups, such as the European Union or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

The war in Ukraine is a critical juncture for globalization, but its outcome and impact are not predetermined. They depend on how countries adapt to changing circumstances and what policies they adopt to manage their trade relations. The challenge for policymakers is to find ways to harness the benefits of globalization while minimizing its risks. This requires balancing efficiency and security, openness and sovereignty, cooperation and competition in a changing global environment.”

Sarah Neumann is a political scientist and freelance writer who specializes in international relations, security studies, and Middle East politics. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Humboldt University of Berlin, where she wrote her dissertation on the role of regional powers in the Syrian conflict. She is a regular contributor to various media outlets like Eurasia Review. She also teaches courses on international relations and Middle East politics at Humboldt University of Berlin and other academic institutions.

Globalization, its Demise, and its Consequences

by Greg Godels / April 11th, 2025

There is very, very much to like about the recent (3-24-2025) article in Jacobin by Branko Milanović entitled “What Comes After Globalization?”

First, Milanović explores historical comparisons between the late-nineteenth-century expansion of global markets and trade (what he calls Globalization I and dates from 1870 to 1914) and the globalization of our time (what he calls Globalization II and dates from 1989 to 2020). The search for and exposure of historical patterns are the first steps in scientific inquiry, what Marxists mean by historical materialist analysis.

Unfortunately, many writers — including on the left — take the more recent participation of new and newly engaged producers and global traders, a revolution in logistics, the success of free-trade politics, and the subsequent explosion of international exchange as signaling the arrival of a new, unique capitalist era, even a new stage in its evolution.

Recognizing a growing share of trade in global output, but burdened with a limited historical horizon (the end of the Second World War), left theorists drew unwarranted, speculative conclusions about a new stage of capitalism featuring a decline in the power of the nation state, the irreversible domination of “transnational capital,” and even the coming of a borderless “empire” contested by an amorphous “multitude.”

Countering these views, writers like Linda Weiss (The Myth of the Powerless State, 1998) and Charles Emmerson (1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War, 2013) bring some sobriety to the question and remind us that we have seen the explosive growth of world trade before, generated by many of the same or similar historic forces. Weiss tells us that “the ratios of export trade to GDP were consistently higher in 1913 than they were in 1973.” Noting the same historical facts, Emmerson wryly concludes “Plus ça change”.

Milanović’s recognition of this parallel between two historic moments gives his analysis a gravitas missing from many leftists, many self-styled Marxist interpretations of the globalization phenomenon.

Secondly, Milanović — an acknowledged expert in comparative economic inequality — makes an important observation regarding the asymmetry between Globalization I and II. While they are alike in many ways, they differ in one important, significant way: while Globalization I benefited the Great Powers at the expense of the colonial world, the workers in the former colonies were actually benefited by Globalization II. In Milanović’s words:

Replacing domestic labor with cheap foreign labor made the owners of capital and the entrepreneurs of the Global North much richer. It also made it possible for the workers of the Global South to get higher-paying jobs and escape chronic underemployment…  It is therefore not a surprise that the Global North became deindustrialized, not solely as the result of automation and the increasing importance in services in national output overall, but also due to the fact that lots of industrial activity went to places where it could be done more cheaply. It’s no wonder that East Asia became the new workshop of the world.

While he misleadingly uses the expression “coalition of interests,” Milanović elaborates:

This particular coalition of interests was overlooked in the original thinking regarding globalization. In fact, it was believed that globalization would be bad for the large laboring masses of the Global South — that they would be exploited even more than before. Many people perhaps made this mistake based on the developments of Globalization I, which indeed led to the deindustrialization of India and the impoverishment of the populations of China and Africa. During this era, China was all but ruled by foreign merchants, and in Africa farmers lost control over land — toiled in common since time immemorial. Landlessness made them even poorer. So the first globalization indeed had a very negative effect on most of the Global South. But that was not the case in Globalization II, when wages and employment for large parts of the Global South improved.

Milanović makes an important point, though it risks exaggeration by his insistence that because Globalization II brought a higher GDP per worker, the workers are better off and exploited less.

They may well be better off in many ways, but they are likely exploited more.

Because he forgoes a rigorous class analysis, he assumes that gain in GDP per worker goes automatically to the worker. Most of it surely does not; if it did, capital would not have shifted to the Global South. Instead, most of the GDP per capita goes to the capitalist — foreign or domestic. Capital would not migrate to the former colonies if it garnered a lower rate of exploitation.

But engagement with manufacturing in Globalization II, rather than resource extraction or handicraft, certainly provides workers in the former colonies with greater employment, better wages, and more opportunity to parlay their labor power into a more advantageous position — a fact that nearly all development theorists from right to left should concede.

Structural changes in capitalism — the rapid mobility and ease of mobility of capital, the opening of new lower wage markets, a revolution in the means and costs of transportation — have shifted manufacturing and its potential benefits for workers from its location in richer countries to a new location in poorer countries, creating a new leveling between workers in the North and South.

Denying or neglecting this reality has led many leftists — like John Bellamy Foster — to support the “labor aristocracy” thesis as a reason to ignore or demean the potentially militant role of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. As one of the strongest voices in support of the revolutionary potential of the colonial workers and peasants, Lenin was scathingly critical of elements of the working class who were indirectly privileged by the wealth accumulated from the exploitation of the colonies. Those “labor aristocrats” constituted an ideological damper on the class politics of Lenin’s time (and even today), but by no means gave a reason to deny the class’s revolutionary potential. Certainly, the ruling classes of the Great Powers employed that relative privilege and many other ploys to further exploit their domestic workers to the fullest extent and discourage their rebellion.

Bellamy and others want to deny the revolutionary potential of the workers in the advanced capitalist countries in order to support the proposition that the principal contradiction today is between the US, Europe, and Japan and the countries of the Global South. Bellamy endorses the Monthly Review position taken as far back as the early 1960s: “Some Marxist theorists in the West took the position, most clearly enunciated by Sweezy, that revolution, and with it, the revolutionary proletariat and the proper focus of Marxist theory, had shifted to the third world or the Global South.”

While frustration with the lack of working-class militancy (worldwide) is understandable and widespread, it does not change the dynamics of revolutionary change — the decisive role of workers in replacing the existing socio-economic system. Nor does it dismiss the obligation to stand with the workers, the peasants, the unemployed, and the déclassé wherever they may be — within either the Great Powers or the former colonies.

Just as revolutionary-pessimism fostered the romance of third-world revolution among Western left-wing intellectuals in the 1960s, today it is the foundation for another romantic notion — multipolarity as the rebellion of the Global South. Like its Cold War version, it sees a contradiction between former colonies and the Great Powers of our time as superseding the contradiction between powerful monopoly corporations and the people.

Of course, richer capitalist states and their ruling classes do all they can to protect or expand any advantages they may enjoy over other states — rich or poor — including economic advantages. But for the workers of rich or poor states, the decisive question is not a question of sovereignty, not a question of defending their national bourgeoisie, or their elites, but of ending exploitation, of combatting capital.

The outcome of the global competition between Asian or South American countries and their richer Western counterparts over market share or the division of surplus value has no necessary connection with the well-being of workers in the sweatshops of the various rivals. This is a fact that many Western academics seem to miss.

Thirdly, Milanović clearly sees the demise of Globalization II — the globalization of our time:

The international wave of globalization that began over thirty years ago is at its close. Recent years have seen increased tariffs from the United States and the European Union; the creation of trade blocs; strong limits on the transfer of technology to China, Russia, Iran, and other “unfriendly” countries; the use of economic coercion, including import bans and financial sanctions; severe restrictions on immigration; and, finally, industrial policies with the implied subsidization of domestic producers.

Again, he is right, though he fails to acknowledge the economic logic behind the origins of Globalization II, the conditions leading to its demise, and the forces shaping the post-globalization era. For Milanović, globalization’s end comes from policy decisions — not policy decisions forced on political actors — but simply policy preferences: “Trump fits that mold almost perfectly. He loves mercantilism and sees foreign economic policy as a tool to extract all kinds of concessions…” Thus, Trump’s disposition “explains” the new economic regimen; we need to look no deeper.

But Trump did not end globalization. The 2007-2009 economic crisis did.

Globalization was propelled by neoliberal restructuring combined with the flood of cheap labor entering the global market from the “opening” of the People’s Republic of China and the collapse of Eastern Europe and the USSR. Cheaper labor power means higher profits, everything else being the same.

With the subsequent orgy of overaccumulation and capital running wildly looking for even the most outlandish investment opportunities, it was almost inevitable that the economy would crash and burn from unfettered speculation.

And when it did in 2007-2009, it took trade growth with it and marked “paid” on globalization.

As I wrote in 2008:

 As with the Great Depression, the economic crisis strikes different economies in different ways. Despite efforts to integrate the world economies, the international division of labor and the differing levels of development foreclose a unified solution to economic distress. The weak efforts at joint action, the conferences, the summits, etc. cannot succeed simply because every nation has different interests and problems, a condition that will only become more acute as the crisis mounts…

“Centrifugal forces” generated by self-preservation were operant, pulling apart existing alliances, blocs, joint institutions, and common solutions. Trade agreements, international organizations, regulatory systems, and trust greased the wheels of global trade; distrust, competition, and a determination to push economic problems on others threw sand on those wheels.

Anticipating the period after the demise of globalization, I wrote in April of 2009:

To simplify greatly, a healthy, expanding capitalist order tends to promote intervals of global cooperation enforced by a hegemonic power and trade expansion, while a wounded, shrinking capitalist order tends towards autarky and economic nationalism. The Great Depression was a clear example of heightened nationalism and economic self-absorption.

The aftermath of the 2007-2009 Great Recession was one such example of “a wounded, shrinking capitalist order.”  And predictably, autarky and economic nationalism followed.

The tendency was exacerbated by the European debt crisis that drove a wedge between the European Union’s wealthier North and the poorer South. Similarly, Brexit was an example of the tendency to go it alone, substituting competition for cooperation. Ruling classes replaced “win-win” with zero-sum thinking.

The pace and intensity of international trade has never recovered.

While Milanović does not attend to it, this cycle of capitalist expansion, economic crisis, followed by economic nationalism (and often, war) recurs periodically.

In the late-nineteenth century, the global economy saw a vast restructuring of capitalism, with new technologies and rising productivity (and concomitant rises in rates of exploitation).The era also saw what economists cite as “a world-wide price and economic recession” from 1873 to 1879 (the Long Depression). In its wake, protectionism and trade wars broke out as everyone tried to dispose of their cheaper goods in other countries, only to be met with tariff barriers.

The imperialist “scramble for Africa” — so powerfully described by John Hobson and V. I. Lenin — raised the intensity of international competition and rivalry, while generating the foundation for economic growth and global trade with newly acquired colonies. This is the period that Milanović characterizes as Globalization I. A further aspect and stimulus of the rebirth of growth and trade was the massive armament programs mounted by the Great Powers. The unprecedented armament race — the “Dreadnought race” — served as an engine of growth, while exponentially increasing the danger of war (from 1880 to 1914 armament spending in Germany increased six-fold, in Russia three-fold, in Britain three-fold, in France double, source: The Bloody Trail of Imperialism, Eddie Glackin, 2015).

One could argue, similarly, that the 1930s were a period of depression and economic nationalism, following a broad, exuberant economic expansion. And as with the pre-World War I Globalization I, the contradictions were resolved with World War.

Is War our Destiny after the Demise of Globalization II?

Certainly, the historical parallels cited above suggest that wars often follow pronounced economic disruptions and the consequent rise of economic nationalism, though we must remember that events do not follow a mechanical pattern.

Yet if history is a great teacher, it certainly looks like the mounting contradictions of today’s capitalism point to intensifying rivalry and conflict. A March 24 Wall Street Journal headline screams: Trade War Explodes Across World at a Pace Not Seen in Decades!

The article notes that the infamous Smoot-Hawley (tariff) Act of 1930– a response to the Great Depression– was only rescinded after the war.

It also notes — correctly — that tariffs are not simply a Trump initiative. As of March 1, the Group of 20 have imposed 4500 import restrictions — up 75% since 2016 and increased 10-fold since 2008.

The World Trade Organization, responsible for organizing Globalization II has failed its calling. As the WSJ reports:

In February, South Korea and Vietnam imposed stiff new penalties on imports of Chinese steel following complaints from local producers about a surge of cut-price competition. Similarly, Mexico has begun an antidumping probe into Chinese chemicals and plastic sheets, while Indonesia is readying new duties on nylon used in packaging imported from China and other countries.

Even sanctions-hit Russia is seeking to stem an influx of Chinese cars, despite warm relations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Russia in recent weeks increased a tax on disposing of imported vehicles, effectively jacking up their cost. More than half of newly sold vehicles in Russia are Chinese-made, compared with less than 10% before its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

As tensions mount on the trade front, rearmament and political tensions are growing. War talk mounts and the means of destruction become more effective and greater in number. The US alone accounts for 43% of military exports worldwide, up from 35% in 2020. France is now the number two arms exporter, surpassing Russia. And, in over a decade, NATO has more than doubled the value of weapons imported.

European defense spending is expanding at rates unseen since the Cold War, in some cases since World War II. According to the BBC, “On 4 March European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced plans for an €800bn defence fund called The ReArm Europe Fund.”  Germany has eliminated all restraints on military spending in its budget. Likewise, the UK plans to increase military spending to 2.5% of GDP in the next two years, while Denmark is aiming for 3% of GDP in the same period (growth rates consistent with those of the Great Powers before World War I, except for Germany).

Dangerously, centrist politicians in the EU are beginning to see rising military spending as a boost to a stuttering economy. As military Keynesianism takes hold, the possibility of global war increases, especially in light of the shifting alliances in the proxy war in Ukraine.

Even more ominously, Europe’s two nuclear powers — France and the UK — are seriously discussing the development of a European nuclear force independent of the US-controlled NATO nuclear capability.

At the same time, the incoming chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff announced readiness to supply more NATO powers with a nuclear capacity.

As war cries intensify, the EU Commission has issued a guidance that EU citizens should maintain 72 hours of emergency supplies to meet looming war dangers.

Of course, the continually escalating wave of tariffs, sanctions, and hostile words directed at The People’s Republic of China by the US and its allies threatens to break into open conflict and wider war, a war for which the PRC is quite understandably actively preparing.

As with previous World Wars, it is not so much — at this moment — who is right or wrong, but when the momentum toward war will become irreversible. Another imperialist war — for, in essence, that is what it would be — will be an unimaginable disaster. No issue is more vital to our survival than stopping this momentum toward global war.

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Greg Godels writes on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.

What Ever Happened to Globalization?

By Jeremy Brecher

September 28, 2024

Source: STRIKE!



Globalization has been the hallmark of the economic world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Since the Great Recession of 2008, however, globalization as we knew it has been changing fast. That change is an important part of what is being called the “polycrisis,” the convergence and mutual aggravation of geopolitical, economic, governance, climate, and other crises. This commentary examines the rise and fall of globalization as we knew it. The next commentary explores what is emerging from it. Both are part of a series on “The Polycrisis and the Global Green New Deal.”

Over the last four decades the world has undergone a transformation in the structure of the global economy — generally known as “globalization.” While there had been a global economy since 1492 or even before, this new globalization represented a profound change in the relations between national economies, national governments, and the world economy. Goods and money grew increasingly free to move anywhere around the world to make greater profits. Corporations went global. New global institutions enforced the unimpeded movement of capital. The ideology and political practice that has come to be known as “neoliberalism” beat down efforts by national governments and popular organizations to restrict this freedom. But since the Great Recession of 2008, the trend of globalization has been reversed. This Commentary examines why and how.
Globalization: The Backstory

Both neoliberal globalization and today’s retreat from it represent phases in the long history of the changing relations between markets and states. To grasp the rise and fall of globalization, it helps to put both in historical perspective.[1]

In medieval Europe, markets were extremely limited; most economic activity was controlled by feudal lords, whose peasants produced for them directly, or by guilds organized by craft. Within this system, markets, trade, and a class of capitalists gradually grew.

The emerging system of markets and capitalists had an ambiguous relation to the system of territorial states. Many capitalists traded internationally, but most also developed close ties with their “home” states, each providing support to the other. According to historical sociologist Michael Mann, by the time of the Industrial Revolution, “capitalism was already contained within a civilization of competing geopolitical states.” Each of the leading European states “approximated a self-contained economic network,” and economic interaction was largely confined within national boundaries – and each nations’ imperial dominions.[2] European states shaped trade, often aiding it by national policies, war, and empire. By the 20th century, Europe and its offshoots like the United States – what came to be known as “the West” — controlled most of the world.

A series of industrial revolutions, from the invention of machine production to today’s computer-based technologies, immensely increased human productive capacity. The increased production was and remains controlled primarily by capitalist corporations, which organized an ever-increasing proportion of the world’s economic activity. The size of these corporations grew exponentially. By the mid-20th century a small number of giant corporations, integrating all aspects of production from raw materials to the consumer, dominated major markets in each major country. A growing proportion of people became their employees.

The Great Depression of the 1930s represented a worldwide breakdown of this system, marked by decline of production and mass unemployment of human and material resources. Many nations began developing versions of “regulated capitalism,” in which the state assumed considerable responsibility for overall management of the national economy.

The general crisis also led to economic nationalism, intense international competition, national and inter-imperialist rivalry, and eventually World War II. As the war drew to a close, the victorious nations initiated the Bretton Woods system to establish a degree of international economic regulation to forestall trade wars and downward economic spirals. It instituted the International Monetary Fund to support fixed exchange rates among different national currencies and a World Bank to aid reconstruction and development. It established the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to base world trade on the “Most Favored Nation” principle under which nations agreed to assure each other trade conditions as favorable as those they gave any other nation. The Bretton Woods system created international supports for regulated national economies in which countries would be able to forestall devastating recessions and depressions. National economies remained “coordinated and territorially contained,” at least in comparison to the impending era of globalization.[3]

Globalization and its Crisis

Regulated national capitalism and the Bretton Woods system contributed to an unprecedented period of sustained growth in the world capitalist economy from World War II to the early 1970s. The years from 1948 to 1973 saw global growth rates of nearly 5 percent per year. But in the early 1970s capitalism entered a worldwide crisis. Global economic growth fell to half its former rate and corporate profit rates plummeted.

This extended crisis was met by several related strategies on the part of governments and corporations that together constituted what came to be known as “globalization.” [4]


Capital mobility Companies expanded their “capital mobility”– their ability to move production and money around the world without impediment. This cut costs by moving production to locations where labor was cheapest and environmental and other regulations weakest.

Transnational networks Corporations restructured from vertical and horizontal integration within national economies to what economist Bennett Harrison described in 1994 as “the creation by managers of boundary-spanning networks of firms, linking together big and small companies operating in different industries, regions, and even countries.” The ultimate power and control remained concentrated with the largest institutions: “multinational corporations, key government agencies, big banks and fiduciaries, research hospitals, and the major universities with close ties to business.” Harrison described this “emerging paradigm of networked production” as “concentration of control combined with decentralization of production.”[5]

Neoliberalism International networked production was supported by a national and global policy framework that became known as “neoliberalism,” which aimed to dismantle barriers to international trade and direct all public policy to the goal of capital accumulation.

Together these practices have gone under the rubric of “globalization.”

Over the course of four decades globalization transformed the world economy. As one recent study put it, “State-centric territorial competition” has been “substantially displaced in significance” by an “economic globalization” which creates its own set of international structures through global networks.[6]

From the 1960s to 2007 trade growth as a proportion of global GDP nearly doubled, from less than 10% to nearly 20%. However, this global system produced a devastating crisis, generally known as the Great Recession. Since 2008 the same measure of global economic integration has dropped steadily – back to the level of 2000. In parallel, global cross-border bank lending fell from 60% of global GDP in 2008 to 37 percent by 2023.[7]

This apparent “de-globalization,” however, is far from reestablishing the “coordinated and territorially contained” economies of the pre-globalization era. In fact, world trade has continued to grow. What’s happening has appropriately been called “geoeconomic fragmentation.”[8]

Geoeconomic fragmentation is part and parcel of the polycrisis – both an effect and a cause. The growth of geopolitical conflict, preparation for war, and actual war are a driving force in geoeconomic fragmentation as nations, coalitions, and corporations vie for dominance in global networks. So is the rise of xenophobic nationalistic political movements espousing economic nationalist policies.[9] So is the response to the climate crisis, with global struggle to control networks of climate-protecting products and to displace the costs of climate protection onto others. At the same time, geoeconomic fragmentation and the economic warfare that accompanies it aggravates geopolitical conflict, nationalistic politics, and climate catastrophe.

[1] For a fuller though still compact review of this history see Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage, 2nd Edition, July, 1999, Chapter 2: “The Era of Nation-Based Economies.” This account focuses on the capitalist West because most of the main forces shaping the global economy originated there. https://www.jeremybrecher.org/downloadable-books/globalvillage.pdf

[2] Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, 1986, Volume 1, p. 513. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/sources-of-social-power/71430B753552703F801E9C6087E524D6

[3] Seth Schindler et. al., “The Second Cold War: US-China Competition for Centrality in Infrastructure, Digital, Production, and Finance Networks,” Taylor & Francis Online Geopolitics, Vol. 29, 2024, Issue 4, September 7, 2023. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2023.2253432?src=

[4] See Brecher and Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage, Chapter 3: The Dynamics of Globalization,” Ibid. https://www.jeremybrecher.org/downloadable-books/globalvillage.pdf

[5] Bennett Harrison, Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility, New York: Basic Books, 1994; cited in Global Village or Global Pillage, 53-4. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA17502440&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00197939&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E9e9c1b95&aty=open-web-entry

[6] Schindler et. al., Ibid. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2023.2253432?src=

[7] Adam Tooze, “Chartbook 198: Globalization: The Shifting Patchwork,” February 27, 2023.


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Jeremy Brecher is a historian, author, and co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability. He has been active in peace, labor, environmental, and other social movements for more than half a century. Brecher is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements, including Strike! and Global Village or Global Pillage and the winner of five regional Emmy awards for his documentary movie work.

THE REAL 'LIBERAL' AGENDA

Why Progressives Should Embrace Trade and Globalization

Progressive values shaped the postwar international economic system that has procured the benefits of globalization and trade. Will U.S. policymakers remember?

Article by Inu Manak, Author
May 30, 2024 

CFR

Bettmann / Contributor, Getty Images

In recent years, a growing bipartisan consensus against trade and globalization has put U.S. foreign economic policy into a tailspin and raised concerns over a retreat of U.S. leadership among our allies. The last two administrations have openly questioned the benefits of globalization and called for a rethink of the Washington Consensus. Through escalating trade wars, industrial policy, and hamstringing the World Trade Organization, and with it, the rules-based economic order, the United States has walked away from the very system it helped create. These actions are not only mistakes, but they go against the long-held progressive beliefs that undergirded U.S. efforts to remake the world trading system in the aftermath of World War II.

In fact, modern views on trade and globalization are a stark departure from core progressive values; mainly, that domestic and international prosperity are strongly linked, that trade institutions support the rule of law, and that globalization is an important tool for improving conditions for the world’s poorest. In an essay for the Cato Institute’s Defending Globalization project, we explore the contemporary discourse surrounding U.S. leadership in international trade and emphasize how progressive values informed and shaped the system that exists today. Importantly, the U.S. experience with the Great Depression and recognition of the costs of nationalism following World War II spurred a new approach rooted in the notions of shared prosperity, fairness, and creating opportunities for all to benefit.

In a 1934 speech requesting additional trade authority from Congress, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt expressed concern over the startling decline of world trade, which not only “meant idle hands, still machines, ships tied to their docks, despairing farm households, and hungry industrial families,” but in turn, “has made infinitely more difficult the planning for economic readjustment in which the Government is now engaged.” Roosevelt well understood the need for a vibrant international economy to help the United States prosper at home. He acknowledged that the United States should “sustain activities vital to national defense,” but that “equally clear is the fact that a full and permanent domestic recovery depends in part upon a revived and strengthened international trade and that American exports cannot be permanently increased without a corresponding increase in imports.”

While the United States faces a different economic situation today, the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical rivalry, and supply chain vulnerabilities have precipitated a change of heart on globalization. Despite ample evidence that globalization has served as an important driver of economic growth and poverty reduction worldwide, expanding global economic opportunity has not been a top priority for U.S. policymakers seeking to address these modern challenges. Instead, growing economic nationalism has obscured the merits of globalization and common-sense reforms that could help the Bretton Woods institutions keep up with a rapidly evolving world. Perhaps most importantly, in the rush to remake the world trading system yet again, many have lost sight of the core American principles that helped lift billions out of poverty, making the world richer and more equal in the process. Refocusing on the reality of our global links—that we rise and fall together, that a system that shields the weak from the most powerful is in all of our interests, and that economic openness provides a fair shot for anyone that wants to participate in the global economy—will go a long way in helping U.S. economic leadership get back on track.

Read the full essay, “The Progressive Case for Globalization.”

The globalization paradox: Why trade war is self-sabotaging

By Hui Fan | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2025-05-19 

The Apple Inc logo is seen hanging at the entrance to the Apple store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, the US on Oct 16, 2019. [Photo/Agencies]

In the heart of Cupertino, Apple engineers are scrambling to redesign the iPhone 17. Why? US semiconductor tariffs have ignited a fire under production costs.

But here's the kicker: your smartphone is a United Nations of tech, with its brain born in California, its face crafted in the Republic of Korea, and its body assembled in China. This intricate web of international collaboration is the hallmark of globalization, a system that has driven economic growth and innovation for decades.

But now, this delicate balance is under threat.

In April 2025, the US government imposed "reciprocal tariffs" on nearly all trading partners, with rates on Chinese goods soaring up to 145 percent—the highest in a century. Despite optimistic signals from China-US trade talks in Geneva, the damage to global trade may already be irreversible.

According to Bloomberg, global supply chain costs have surged by 40 percent. The WTO has issued a stern warning that US tariffs could shrink global trade by 1.5 percent in 2025, with North American exports plummeting by a staggering 12.6 percent.

The rampant politicization and weaponization of tariffs by the US, though cut back to some extent, is challenging the very principles of globalization.

The champion of globalization is now breaking it

After the WWII, the US engineered the Bretton Woods system and WTO to institutionalize free trade, cleverly embedding its economic dominance into multilateral trade rules.

This system fueled unprecedented growth: US GDP tripled from $10 trillion in 2000 to $27 trillion in 2023, while multinational giants like Exon and Apple thrived on global supply chains.

Yet today, Washington is dismantling the system it built. The reason? The rise of China and other developing nations has eroded US dominance, sparking a political backlash. Faced with pressure—particularly over Rust Belt job losses—American politicians have scapegoated globalization, casting China as a "free rider" gaming the system.

However, this narrative overlooks deeper structural flaws. Automation and corporate offshoring—not trade—have displaced workers, while tax policies favor capital over labor. The Fed reports that median household wealth stagnated for decades even as corporate profits hit records. With elites capturing the gains of globalization, wealth inequality has soared, with the wealthiest 1 percent holding 30.8 percent of US net wealth as of 2024.

Tariffs won't fix the real problems

The US obsession with trade deficits and "Made in America" is even more misguided.

Washington fixates on deficits in trade in goods while ignoring a $295 billion surplus in trade in services in 2024—up 283 percent since 2000.
Efforts to revive US manufacturing also face steep challenges. American blue-collar wages remain far higher than China's, while decades of offshoring have left supply chains deeply entrenched overseas.

Tariffs backfire by raising production costs, accelerating corporate relocation to Mexico or Vietnam. The result would only be a self-inflicted isolation from global value chains.

The world moves on

As the US retreats, others are redefining and empowering globalization.
According to the World Bank, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China has reduced global trade costs by 1.8 percent, boosting global incomes by up to 2.9 percent. China also grants zero tariffs to all least-developed partners and pioneers cross-border digital currency payments across 18 nations.

The Global South is emphasizing shared growth—a vision aligned with globalization's original promise. The BRICS New Development Bank has funded numerous infrastructure projects in developing countries, such as the metro project in Mumbai, India, that are transforming urban mobility and driving regional growth. The African Continental Free Trade Area aims to create a single continental market for goods and services, poised to significantly boost intra-African trade.

Fade or adapt

History's verdict is clear: no nation can isolate itself from the tide of globalization.

As US ports languish under tariff-induced logjams, Shenzhen's Yantian Harbor bustles with ships carrying Chinese EVs bound for smart factories in Saudi Arabia and Brazil built under the BRI framework.

This duality captures globalization's crossroads: Should one cling to unilateral protectionism or embrace shared prosperity? Be part of this transformation or fade into irrelevance? The path forward lies not in futile resistance, but in adapting to economic realities and competing through innovation.

Globalization will continue. The choice rests with each individual nation.

Hui Fan is a Beijing-based observer of international affairs. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

If you have a specific expertise, or would like to share your thought about our stories, then send us your writings at opinion@chinadaily.com.cn, and comment@chinadaily.com.cn.

 

THE LIBERTARIAN VIEW

Globalization, Not Globalism: Free Trade Versus Destructive Statist Ideology – OpEd

 January 5, 2023  

By MISES

By Connor O’Keeffe*

After the 2008 financial crisis, calls rang out across establishment publications and the executive offices of Wall Street that we were witnessing the death of globalization. The calls grew louder and more numerous after Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet the data appears to dispute this narrative. Global trade hit a record $28.5 trillion last year with projections to grow in 2023. The pace, however, is expected to slow. The reason for this is less a problem with globalization itself and more the historic setbacks that globalism has faced.

Before continuing, it is important to define some terms. Globalization occurs when societies around the world begin to interact and integrate economically and politically. The intercontinental trade experienced during the Age of Sail and via the Silk Road are early examples of globalization. Globalization really took off after World War II and received a recent boost with the widespread adoption of the internet. Importantly, globalization in common discourse includes both the voluntary economic activities between peoples of different nations and the involuntary geopolitical activities of governments.

In contrast, Ian Bremmer defines globalism as an ideology that calls for top-down trade liberalization and global integration backed by a unipolar power. Statists believe that market exchange between people is literally impossible without government; only when a group claims a legal monopoly on violence and then builds infrastructure, provides security, documents property titles, and serves as the final arbiter of disputes can a market come into existence. Globalism is the application of this perspective to international trade. Globalists believe that top-down global governance enforced and secured by a unipolar superpower enables globalization.

But, like statists on a more local scale, the globalist view is logically and historically flawed. Global trade was well underway before the first major attempt at global governance, the League of Nations, in 1919. The league’s stated aim was to ensure peace and justice for all nations of the world through collective security. Falling apart at the outset of World War II, it failed miserably. But globalism as an ideology found its footing after the war. Europe was devastated. This left the US and the USSR as the only two countries with the ability to exert power globally.

So began the fastest era of globalization in history. Trade exploded as people moved on from the war. The globalist project also got off the ground with the founding of the United Nations and the World Bank. Globalism was limited only by the ideological differences between the two superpowers. The USSR wanted to support revolutions while the US aimed for top-down trade liberalization—which drove the recent allies apart and plunged the world into the Cold War.

In the United States, the neoliberals and neoconservatives dominated the political mainstream through their shared mission to bring markets and democracy to the world at gunpoint and financed by US taxpayers. Fortunately for them, the rate at which their interventions at home and abroad were wrecking US society was slower than that of the Soviets. The abolition of prices and private property eventually led to the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. With its main adversary defeated, the United States had achieved one of the central tenets of globalism, unipolarity.\

From the outset, the US establishment gorged itself on its new globe-spanning influence. Through new international organizations like the World Trade Organization, “free trade” agreements were introduced. Some ran for hundreds of pages, yet all free trade really requires is an absence of policy. The United States sailed its navy around the world’s oceans promising to secure shipping lanes like a global highway patrolman. Through the promise of US military security and the bankrolling of international governance organizations, US taxpayers were forced to subsidize global trade.

As Murray Rothbard highlights in Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, there is no such thing as international trade in a truly free market. Nations would still exist, but they would be pockets of culture instead of economic units. Any state restrictions on trade between people based on location are a violation of their liberty and a cost to society. Most free-market economists understand this and advocate against state restrictions accordingly. But subsidies to international trade are also antithetical to the free market. The proper free-market position is the complete absence of policy on both sides. No restrictions and no subsidies. Let people freely choose who they do business with. There should be no hand on either end of the scale.

Economic integration was far from the only focus of the US regime during its unipolar moment. Too many people had gained wealth, power, and status during the Cold War as part of the US war-making class. Despite the USSR’s total collapse, the last thing the United States wanted to do was declare victory and give up its privileged position. Instead, the United States scrambled to find a new enemy to justify the continuation of those privileges. Their eyes settled on the Middle East where they would, in time, launch eight unessential wars that killed any notion of a “rules-based international order.” US unipolarity proved Albert Jay Nock correct; governments are only as peaceful as they are weak.

This institutional desire for war would sow the seeds of destruction for the United States’ unipolar moment. As the United States eviscerated any notion that it stood for a rules-based order through its adventurism in the Middle East, tension was brewing in Eastern Europe and East Asia. To the doubtless joy of weapons companies and foreign policy elites, the Russian and Chinese governments were transformed back into the United States’ enemies.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February was a huge win for the US war machine, but it also represented an enormous step backward for globalism. The Russians seceded from the global order the United States had led for three decades. The West’s reaction, grounded in strict sanctions and forced economic divestment, deepened the rift in the global system.

What the future holds is anyone’s guess, but the globalist dream of a singular system of global governance is surely wrecked for the near future as the Russo-Chinese bloc breaks away. There will be pain because so many connections between nations are controlled by governments; however, a significant degree of globalization is still valued by the world’s consumers. The data contradicts any idea that globalization is reversing. It is only slowing as governments attempt to drag consumers along on their quest to divest from the other side.

Despite the claims that globalization is dead, international trade is alive and well. But the drive toward an interconnected world is slowing down as the ideology of globalism experiences its biggest setback in decades. The statist conflation of unipolar global governance and international trade explains where these claims are coming from and why they are flawed.

*About the author: Connor O’Keeffe is a writer and video producer at the Mises Institute. He has a masters in economics and a bachelors in geology.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute

MISES

The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. The liberal intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) guides us. Accordingly, the Mises Institute seeks a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order. The Mises Institute encourages critical historical research, and stands against political correctness.