World globalization: the delirium of the ill imagination - 3 September, 2002

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov is concerned about the globalization of the world economy.  Luzhkov delivered a speech to the students of the Moscow State University yesterday.  The Moscow mayor talked about transnational corporations and their influence on the world economy. 

According to the opinion of the Moscow mayor, it is the USA that controls these processes. “I am not an anti-American, but I deeply dislike some decisions that the USA makes,” – claimed Luzhkov. Luzhkov pointed out joyfully that the Western countries gave birth to the powerful movement of anti-globalists.

In the meantime, the processes that disturb the Moscow mayor so much are just a myth, actually. This is the conclusion that you might come to if you read the report from the international group of scientists under the chairmanship of professor Alan Ragman.

The <i><b>BBC</b></i> reported that Ragman conducted research on the 500 largest transnational corporations. The following statement was the result of this work. “The activities of only a few corporations can be characterized as global  international activity. The majority of them are concentrated in their own national markets.”

The “rare examples” of international companies include  Nestle, Unilever, IBM, and Sony. As a matter of fact, the group of scientists found very few  vestiges of the globalization of the world economy. They actually discovered the opposite tendency, which was called  deglobalization. In particular, Ragman  referred to the fact that the company Walmart, which had the biggest trade turnover in the world, gained one-third of the profit of the North American market.

Let’s see what Russian scientists have to say on the subject. They all say that globalization and the world of transnational corporations  is absolutely real. They add that this is far from being good news for the vast majority of the world’s population. Let’s recall what Russian Academician Nikita Moiseyev had to say on the subject.

“The world community is gradually becoming a single, joint organism, politically, socially, and economically. I prefer to call this the world of transnational corporations, since they determine the form of a community’s development. The world of transnational corporations is only a form, which shows deep mechanisms  of self-organization.

"Market mechanisms lay the foundation of the development of the modern community. They were meant for establishing local markets before, which, in their turn, were the basis of national economies. The international trade and the interaction of those markets exerted  great influence  on the development of national economies. The  global market started  its development at the beginning of the 1960s due to scientific and technical progress. The role of national economies and the extent of their independence started decreasing a lot. It is even hard to say that this is a market, actually. It would be more correct to say that this is the system of sharing the world's income.

"The major criteria for the efficiency of a national economy is  labor productivity. This factor  determines a country’s position and its economic system in the global community.  This criteria divided countries into developed and backward nations. The developed countries accumulate the resources from the backward ones. The latter lost their chances for any further development and well-being. Their fate is to be backward and exploited forever.

"It should also be mentioned in this respect that all ecologically harmful industries move to backward countries.  Chemical and  metallurgical industries are vital for the development of modern civilization, but they are located in the countries of the second category. Waste products are also stored in the third-world countries. In other words, such countries sacrifice their genetic potential to developed nations.

"Therefore, where is Russia’s place in this scheme, if we follow this tendency? I think that the answer is evident. There should not be any illusions about it.”

Sergey Yugov
PRAVDA.Ru