Globalization - the theory of Ulrich Beck

The introduction of the mechanism of globalization carries a threat factor, i.e. the policy of globalization is aimed at getting rid of national-state restrictions, it aims at weakening national-state policy.

  Ultimately, we are talking about minimizing the tasks assigned to the state and reducing the state apparatus, realizing the dream of an anarchistic market-the utopia of a minimal state. At the same time, a rather paradoxical thing happens: globalization often entails renationalization.

The national state is a territorial state, its power is based on ties with a certain locality. World society, which was formed in the process of globalization in many spheres, and not only in the economic sphere, is weakening, casting doubt on the might of the nation-states, along and across their territorial borders, through a multitude of various social relationships that are not related to a certain territory, market relations. This manifests itself in all the most important spheres on which the national-state authority is held: in tax policy, in the field of military security, in the higher powers of the police apparatus, in foreign policy.

Globalization means the destruction of the boundaries of daily activities in various spheres of management, information, ecology, technology, transcultural conflicts and civil society, which is knowable on experience, thus means something that is in principle familiar and at the same time incomprehensible, hardly understandable, something that, with the irresistible force changes our daily lives and forces everyone to adapt and respond to these changes.

Money, technology, goods, information, poisons "overstep" boundaries, as if they do not exist at all. Even things, persons and ideas that governments do not want to let into their countries (drugs, illegal immigrants, criticism of human rights violations), find ways of penetration. The globalization understood in this way means the annulment of distances, immersion in the often undesirable and incomprehensible transnational forms of life.

The cancellation of distances leads to the fact that "the spatial matrix of the world, first, no longer has white spots and, secondly, in principle it opens the possibility of orientation to each person, regardless of the point of the globe he (or she) is in. Thanks to modern means of communication and movement, globalization is carried out in principle "without difficulties".

Globalism sings the anthem of free world trade. It is argued that the globalized economy is best suited to raise the level of well-being around the world and thereby eliminate the unsatisfactory situation in the social sphere. It is said that even in the protection of the environment, it is possible to achieve progress through free trade, because the pressure of competition allegedly contributes to a careful attitude to resources, encourages a delicate treatment of nature.

     The assertion that world trade aggravates competition and leads to lower costs, which ultimately benefits everyone, is extremely cynical. Silence is the fact that there are two types of cost reduction: increased profitability (improved technology, organization, etc.) or violation of decent working and production conditions.

Transnational corporations are an essential factor of globalization.

The whole history of transnational corporations is a brilliant proof of the undeniable fact that the best kind of business is managing not those or other companies operating on the market, but managing the markets themselves through national governments.

Most influential, not to say the power of TNCs and their transformation into a key tool of social development, manifested itself in the nature and depth of their impact on the key processes of development and diffusion of technologies for the key to mankind.

A key feature distinguishing TNCs from all multinational corporations is the high degree of their influence on the processes of both economic and political development. The criterion of the degree of this influence should be recognized the presence or absence of the ability to have a tangible impact on the national development of the countries in which they are in one form or another present, on the basis of interests outside the respective national territory.

With the beginning of the information revolution, the imperfection of the market, caused by the monopolization of not only production and sales, but also information, also became of fundamental importance. The spread of consciousness formation technologies has made different access to information for various market participants a more significant factor of its imperfection than traditional monopoly.

TNCs make every effort to avoid the transfer of technology, since it is technology ownership (along with the scale effect that allows the international division of labor into the corporation) to be the main factor of their competitiveness. It is this (along with the monstrous monopoly overstatement of prices for a whole series of "licensed" goods, primarily computer programs, as well as audio, video and digital recordings) in many respects the morbidly hypertrophied value attached to TNCs on the protection of intellectual property.

One of the key mechanisms for protecting technology is patenting. A country that provides TNC with patent protection automatically deprives its own companies of the opportunity to import cheaper products and technologies and even more so to use patented technology in production.

Globalization, creating (especially for relatively weak societies) numerous problems, at the same time provides them with no less numerous opportunities. Every society, trying to use it in its own way, uses its features most effectively.

The main civilizations actively participating in global competition and able to maintain the offensive nature of actions in the foreseeable future are the United States, China and the Islamic world. Economically significant Europe and Japan (together with relatively successful countries of Southeast Asia) are not seen as expansion subjects due to even economic difficulties (which are sufficient for both the US and China, and the Islamic world is not at all a single economic organism), but its own passivity and, most importantly, the notorious absence of universal values, which they can offer or impose.

Globalization is the process of increasing impact of various factors of international importance on social reality in individual countries.

THE FACTORS OF THE GLOBALIZATION PROCESS:

1. Economic - organizational forms of economic activity go beyond the boundaries of individual states and contribute to the formation of a single economic space.
2. Political - weakening the rigidity of state borders, facilitating the freedom of movement of citizens, goods, capital, services.
3. Industrial and technical - a sharp increase in the scale of production, the creation of TNCs, a qualitatively new level of communication and transport, ensuring the rapid distribution of goods and services.
4. Informational - a radical change in the means of communication, information exchange.
5. Sociological - weakening traditional social ties, customs, increasing mobility of people in territorial, psychological, spiritual relations, international migration.
6. Ecological - people's awareness of the danger of aggravation of global environmental, energy and other problems, which causes the unification of the efforts of the world community, the consolidation of resources, and actions.

The processes of globalization

 Economic globalization is the unification of production processes, which causes the growth of interdependence of countries in commercial, industrial and financial relations on a global scale. It is expressed in the growth of the influence of transnational corporations, world banks, the IMF

Political globalization is manifested in the growing influence of international political organizations (NATO, the OSCE) and groups of states (the European Union, the CIS) in the quest for leadership in world processes.

Social integration - migration, mixed marriages.

Spiritual integration is the internationalization of culture.

Neoliberal Globalization

Alternatives to neoliberal globalization are born around the world. They become an equally integral part of the modern world economic, social and political life, as well as the neoliberal mainstream.

However, neoliberal globalization itself is changing. It is gradually beginning to replace a new, even more dangerous for society, nature and man the trend of the birth of a new empire.

This also applies to our behavior as consumers, where we turn out to be non-independent subjects dominating the market, semi-blind semi-slaves to marketing other ways of manipulation used by large corporations. This concerns our behavior as workers, where we not only freely sell our labor in a competitive market, but are often built into the complex structures of large corporate structures, selling not only their labor power, but also their personal qualities to corporations. Moreover, we are subject to this system and as subjects of political life, being puppets manipulated with the help of political technologies, as well as in the sphere of ideology, where manipulation is most obvious.

"Free competition" and open borders are becoming an ideal mechanism for countries that monopolize capital, high technologies, military power and control over international organizations, they could "compete" freely with the third, as well as with the second world. Irrationally (militarism, parasitic financial speculation, "consumer society", mass culture, etc.), squandering much of the still extremely limited potential of high labor productivity, corporate capital inevitably retains a "periphery" where existing pre-industrial "dirty "Industrial technologies, where poverty and brutal military conflicts will persist under the current type of international relations).

Large transnational corporations still remain national companies (primarily as a consequence of the existence of systems of rights and property and capital management), who’s activities go beyond their country of origin. If they expand, this always requires the active support of the state, but they have become too powerful to independently develop their expansionist strategies in the non-logic of public policy (and sometimes in opposition to it). Therefore, it seeks to subordinate the state to its own strategy. Behind neo-liberal discussions against state intervention in the economy is precisely this goal - to legitimize as the only possible logic of protecting the interests of TNCs. The "freedom" they demand is not for everyone. It is the freedom of the company to make its interests dominant and determinative of everyone else. In this sense, the neoliberal debate is absolutely ideological and deceptive.

For a long time, the comparison of the center and the periphery of the modern world system was practically identical to the division of countries into industrially developed and undeveloped. The uprising of the periphery, which took the form of a socialist revolution (Russia, China) or national liberation, challenged this old form of polarization. This meant the creation of systems for the national regulation of permanent negotiations, including collective ones (North-South), as well as systems for international settlement (in this sense the UN Conference on Trade and Development-UNCAD played a very important role). In addition, this policy was aimed at reducing "labor reserves with low productivity" by providing them with modern activities with higher productivity (although not always "competitive" in world markets). The inequivalent results of industrialization imposed on capital by social forces reinforced by the victories of national liberation movements provide an opportunity to identify several peripheral countries that managed to create a national system of production and industry that was potentially competitive within global capitalism, as well as the "marginalized" periphery to which this and it was not possible. Therefore, modern peripheral capitalism is no longer synonymous with the lack of industrialization.

The world without globalization

Globalization is the predominant economic, strategic and political force of our time. Its consequences and side effects - from wealth creation to climate change - are spreading everywhere. It's no secret that the direction of globalization has far-reaching consequences.

The future of globalization in three scenarios

Scenario 1: Globalization continues

In the first scenario, globalization continues in the form that we know and understand in the last thirty years. In essence, this means that the dollar continues its role as the first among the world's equal foreign exchange. Western transnational corporations dominate the global business landscape, and the structure of international law and institutions is still of a Western character.

In the economy, macroeconomic volatility is low, trade is growing with small interruptions from protectionism, and the Internet economy is growing across borders. Socio-politically significant development is that human development is improving, characterized by more "open societies".

Scenario 2: Multipolar world

The second scenario envisages the growth of Asia and the stabilized Eurozone, a driving global economy that, in general, rests on three pillars - America, Europe and Asia (led by China). It is expected to see the development of new world institutions, as well as the growth of "managed democracy" and a more regional version of the rule of law.In this vision, migration becomes more regional and rural in cities, rather than transboundary. In addition, regional financial centers are growing, banking and financial issues are developing in new ways. At the corporate level, significant changes will be the growth of regional corporate champions, which in many cases will supplant global transnational corporations.It is also expected to see uneven improvements in human development that will lead to the creation of more stable and wealthy local economies against the background of continuing growth in the consumer class of emerging markets. In Europe, the EU stops its external expansion and flourishes, as the restructuring of banks and companies leads to a reduction in the economy.

Scenario 3: The End of Globalization

The third scenario is darker, more negative, which calls for the collapse of globalization in 1913 and the subsequent start of the First World War. Over the past few years, although the world was marked by a global financial crisis and terrorist attacks, these events generally resulted in more, not less, cooperation between countries.

But there is a risk for globalization, and points to several areas for observation - the economic downturn that affects trade, or the possibility of macro compensation from debt, inequality or immigration. The world could see the growth of protectionism, a military clash between great powers, currency wars, a climate event, a negative reaction against global corporations or even a turn in transitions to democracy.