Capitalism.“The investment of money in the expectation of making profit”[1]. The world’s biggest economic system, engulfing nearly half of the world’s population.Capitalism is the manufacturing and sale of goods and services in order to makea profit, usually through privately owned means of production.
How did this happen?
Following the Second World War, the removal of tariffs and the move towards economic liberalisation resulted in more world trade – proven by there being 22x more trade in 2000 than there was in 1950[2]. The development led to the introduction of transnational corporations.
Impact on the worker
The impact that capitalism on the proletariat varies depending on the location of work. It can be said that working conditions for a transnational company in the Global North would be polar ends of the spectrum, such as a sales advisor at Apple in London compared to an iPhone chassis moulder in China. On that note, migration policies adopted by governments and neoliberal trade deals could arguably have led to these worsening wage inequalities and social hierarchies[3]. In this case, the neoliberalist policies focus on the unpredictability of work[4] which leads to competition amongst workers.
The main aim we have within this website is to examine transnational companies alongside their working conditions as well as the transnational capitalist class.
[1]Fulcher, J.2004. Capitalism – A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press: Oxford. pp2
[2] WTO. 2018. WTO.org [Online]. [17November 2018]. Available from: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/inbrief_e/inbr01_e.htm
[3]Federici, Silvia. 2009. “The Reproduction of Labour-Power in the Global Economy, Marxist Theory and the Unfinished Feminist Revolution”. Seminar. University of Califomia-SantaCruz Gender and Political Economy Cluster (27 January), Santa Cmz, CA. [17November 2018] Available from: https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/silvia-federici-the-reproduction-of-labour-power-in-the-global-economy-marxist-theory-and-the-unfinished-feminist-revolution/)
[4]Peck, Jamie and Adam Tickell. 2002.”Neoliberalizing Space”. Antipode,34(3), pp. 380-404
Transnational Companies
Transnational companies can be defined as companies that are registered or operate in more than one company, such as Coca Cola, Cadbury’s, Shell and Google. These large companies depend on the capitalist regime in order to operate as their main aim is, of course, to make profit. As the size of the proletariat grew, transnational companies had more opportunities to move factories overseas and benefit from (or exploit) the growing workforce. Nike is a prime example of this. During the 1960s in Busan, South Korean, Nike subcontractors set up factories and capitalised on the women’s hard-working philosophy to compete for low wage jobs. Following uprising and workers organisations forming and demanding higher wages and better working conditions, Nike chose to move to Indonesia to escape and ensure they still had profit margins. However, Nike didn’t move to Indonesia to help out the workers, they did it to increase their profit margins.[5]
Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC)
Ultimately global capitalism is comprised of various aspects; the production of goods, the relationship between capital and labour, the financial system and circuits of accumulation that operate on a global level, transnational class of capitalists and the policies of global production, trade and finances created and administered by a variety of institutions that together, compose a transnational state [6]. Global capitalism has piloted a new global system of governance and authority that impacts what happens within nations and communities around the world with the core institutions of the transnational state being; the united nations, the world trade organization, the international monetary fund and the world bank – they make and enforce the rules of global capitalism.
In regard to this, corporate and financial executives, as members of the transnational capitalist class, now also influence policy decisions that filter down to all the world’s nations and local communities. However, the means by which they have influenced policy may not always be via positivity.
An example of a way in which negative engagements have had some sort of influence upon policy includes Jeff Bezos, founder and owner of Amazon. Bezos is the world’s sole ‘hectobillionaire’ in which is success is due to the failure of policy within the rights or workers and fair payment. Although the relationship between capital and labour has become more global and flexible so that corporations are not limited to production within home countries, cheap production happens mainly in ‘third world countries’ i.e. India, China etc [7]. Amazon factory workers illustrate the triumphing labour over capital. Amazon employees make less than $28,446 annually; according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the median wage for workers in the US was $44,564 annually (for a 40-hour working week) [8]. Thus, workers are not earning a living wage.
This is one of many harsh impacts global capitalism has on people, goes to show that the avoidance of paying fair wages results in many people merely serving the transnational class of elites – a bitter reality of global capitalism.
[5]Enloe, C. 2004 The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire (e-book). Chapters 3 and 4
[6] William I. Robinson, “Global Capitalism: Reflections on a Brave New World,” Great Transition Initiative (June 2017), https://www.greattransition.org/publication/global-capitalism.
[7] nationsonline.org, k. (2018). First, Second, and Third World – Nations Online Project. [online] Nationsonline.org. Available at: https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm [Accessed 13 Nov. 2018].
[8]Bls.gov. (2018). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. [online] Available at:https://www.bls.gov [Accessed 13 Nov. 2018].
Impact of Global Capitalism 