Alternative Globalizations


Book Description

Globalization has become synonymous with the seemingly unfettered spread of capitalist multinationals, but this focus on the West and western economies ignores the wide variety of globalizing projects that sprang up in the socialist world as a consequence of the end of the European empires. This collection is the first to explore alternative forms of globalization across the socialist world during the Cold War. Gathering the work of established and upcoming scholars of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, Alternative Globalizations addresses the new relationships and interconnections which emerged between a decolonizing world in the postwar period and an increasingly internationalist eastern bloc after the death of Stalin. In many cases, the legacies of these former globalizing impulses from the socialist world still exist today. Divided into four sections, the works gathered examine the economic, political, developmental, and cultural aspects of this exchange. In doing so, the authors break new ground in exploring this understudied history of globalization and provide a multifaceted study of an increasing postwar interconnectedness across a socialist world.




Another World Is Possible


Book Description

In 2001 the first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The meeting was viewed by many at the time as a new manifestation of the global Left, a people's opposition to the World Economic Forum that stood as the first real front to global capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While many activists and intellectuals on the left have since become deeply critical of the Forum, newer movements, such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the indignados, have built upon its successes and innovations. Another World is Possible is the original collection of essays and demands from the heart of the 'movement of movements'. Based on the work of the first two annual meetings of the WSF, this classic collection not only set out the initial aims of the movements that came together, it also paved the way for the theoretical study of new social movements, their multiple and participatory character. Today, as many crises affect all our lives, it is time to revisit the original demands of a global solidarity movement, united in its determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities, and the destruction of our earth, and to reconstitute a global left.




Capitalist Globalization


Book Description

“Globalization,” surely one of the most used and abused buzzwords of recent decades, describes a phenomenon that is typically considered to be a neutral and inevitable expansion of market forces across the planet. Nearly all economists, politicians, business leaders, and mainstream journalists view globalization as the natural result of economic development, and a beneficial one at that. But, as noted economist Martin Hart-Landsberg argues, this perception does not match the reality of globalization. The rise of transnational corporations and their global production chains was the result of intentional and political acts, decisions made at the highest levels of power. Their aim – to increase profits by seeking the cheapest sources of labor and raw materials – was facilitated through policy-making at the national and international levels, and was largely successful. But workers in every nation have paid the costs, in the form of increased inequality and poverty, the destruction of social welfare provisions and labor unions, and an erratic global economy prone to bubbles, busts, and crises. This book examines the historical record of globalization and restores agency to the capitalists, policy-makers, and politicians who worked to craft a regime of world-wide exploitation. It demolishes their neoliberal ideology – already on shaky ground after the 2008 financial crisis – and picks apart the record of trade agreements like NAFTA and institutions like the WTO. But, crucially, Hart- Landsberg also discusses alternatives to capitalist globalization, looking to examples such as South America’s Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) for clues on how to build an international economy based on solidarity, social development, and shared prosperity.




Globalization


Book Description

Capitalist globalization has been instrumental in globalizing civil and political rights all over the world as a condition of 'free' markets and trade, but capitalist globalizers have no answer to the rapidly accelerating demands for universal economics and social rights, expressed in the enormous growth of local, national, multinational and global NGOs and anti-globalization movements. In this book, based on his highly successful Sociology of the Global System, Leslie Sklair focuses on alternatives to global capitalism, arguing strongly that there are other alternative futures that retain and encourage the positive aspects of globalization whilst identifying what is wrong with capitalism. The negative aspects of capitalist globalization are explored in a new critique which argues that there are two main crises of capitalist globalization: the class polarization crisis and the crisis of ecological unsustainability. The book also presents a new analysis of a long-term alternative to global capitalism: the globalization of human rights.




Green Alternatives to Globalization


Book Description

Thoroughly revised and updated edition of this comprehensive survey of resource depletion.




Designing the Green Economy


Book Description

Milani, a teacher and research coordinator for the Eco-Materials Project in Toronto, first describes the economic world of the past and present, the industrial and post-industrial world with which we all have some experience. Then comes the economic outline for the world of the future, a green economy most have only glimpsed or heard tell of. Milani's goal is to integrate human technologies into natural processes and stop humanity's "predatory attitude." By doing so we will move from a quantitative model of wealth to a qualitative model where what becomes paramount is the development of people and communities, and the de-development (self-restoration) of nature. Milani wants to reform human practice with real philosophic, economic, and material solutions so that nature no longer needs human protection against human onslaught. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR




Alternatives to Globalization


Book Description

Welcome remarks to the conference on alternatives to globalization; Critique of globalization & the challenge for alternatives; Crisis and globalization; The global financial crisis, the IMF and strategies towards resolving the crisis; The WTO and the south: implications and recent developments; Peasant movements confronting imperialist globalization; Globalization and the struggle for the environment; Globalization: a socialist perspective.




There Is An Alternative


Book Description

This is a thought-provoking collection of essays by radical thinkers. It moves beyond criticism of current globalisation trends, and offers theoretical and practical alternatives for our world.




Globalization and International Political Economy


Book Description

The politics of globalization include nation-states pursuing power, multinational firms seeking profits for their shareholders, coalitions and networks attempting to promote particular visions of future possible worlds, resistance groups ranging from the nonviolent to the murderous, and ordinary people struggling to feed their families and secure their futures in a rapidly changing world. Globalization and International Political Economy examines processes of globalizing capitalism and the complex politics that are emerging from it--processes and struggles that will determine the shape of our world in the twenty-first century.




Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era


Book Description

This study looks at the ongoing efforts of the Alternative Global Movement and World Social Forum to reconcile contests over political organization among three of the most prominent groups on the contemporary left - social and liberal democratic NGOs, anti-authoritarian (anarchist) social movements, and political parties.