To continue then,

The following are a couple of quotes we might describe as economic triumphalist poetry, which capture the "cocksure" attitude of the Spaniard and the Brit during these periods of their history in which finance dominated those economies at the expense of manufacturing.

Let London manufacture those fine fabrics... Holland her chambrays, Florence her cloth; the Indies their beaver and vicuna; Milan her brocades; Italy and Flanders their linens... so long as our capital can enjoy them. The only thing it proves is that all nations train journeymen for Madrid and that Madrid is queen of parliaments, for all the world serves her and she serves nobody (Phillips, K. Wealth and Democracy, p.195)."

We notice a couple of things. The globalizaing power, Spain here, sees its capital as commanding the "service" of "all the nations [that] trains journeymen for Madrid..." The Spanish elite clearly sees themselves in a relation of power with respect to the rest of the world that "serves her" while "she serves nobody." Furthermore, it seems as if capitalism, here, has recreated the dynamic that had been know to the ancient Near Eastern "divine" kings, who received "tribute" on a regular basis from all his vassals, allies, subjects peoples, and those nations recently conquered by the force of his arms.

Consider this. In the excellent book, Class Matters: Correspondents of the New York Times (2005), which talks about - class in America. It turns out the Times thinks there is such a thing as the class divide. Anyway, one chapter talks about the fact that the real demarcation of class involves services (products and clothes don't work so well in visually delineating who belongs to what class because of easy credit and so forth): how many people do you pay to tend to you. We're talking about use of nannies, educational tutors for the children, personal shoppers, personal assistants, pet grooming services, what have you.

The point is that the richer and more powerful one is, the less he has to do for himself. The quote we just looked at, concerning Hapsburg Spain's financialization, evokes this.

The plains of North America and Russia are our cornfields; Chicago and Odessa our granaries; Canada and the Baltic are our timber forests; Austalasia contains our sheep farms, and in Argentina and on the western praries of North America are our herds of oxen; Peru sends her silver, and the gold of South Africa and Australia flows to London; the Hindus and the Chinese grow tea for us, and our coffee, sugar, and spice plantations are all in the Indies. Spain and France are our vineyards, and the Mediterranean our fruit garden... (Phillips, K. Wealth and Democracy, pp.195-196).

We see here, a tendency on the part of the financially globalizing power, to regard land and resources sat on by other peoples as "ours." This, of course, is and has been a central ingredient for imperial adventure of capitalist powers into the developing world; and has been, and, scarily enough, possibly is in the future, an impetus for conflict between advanced capitalist powers (1).

I trust none of this is too controversial that capitalism undermines international relations, in the usual ways we're used to thinking about the matter. I want to argue that capitalism undermines international relations in a more subtle way also.

Remember how we defined globalization. It is the process that happens when the economic elite sharply reduced emphasis on manufacturing in favor of wealth creation by finance and speculative investment. If a country is not going to make certain products for themselves anymore, so much, they have to get these good from other countries with cheaper labor, of course. Hence, globalization.

American-led globalization of the last thirty-five years was, in a sense, effectively in fact, a way of America saying to the rest of the world: We'll do the thinking around here, planning the global order, keeping the galaxy in one piece and so forth. You all just make our Nike and Addidas sneakers, tennis clothes, cheap knock-off boutique brands and the like. You just make our computer chips, and so forth, and we'll do the thinking.

What happens here is that other nations and other peoples are objectified, reduced to the "dumb blonde," and children role: they are to be seen not heard. So, when productive capacity is sent from an advanced capitalist economy to a developing nation, the bourgeoisie of the latter country - paradoxically, although they are the prime beneficiaries of that country, at some level, they also see this, on an unconscious level, as a bit of an insult.

They, the bourgeoisie of the developing nation, are therefore eager to see the insult lifted as soon as possible. And this is why, I think, they are happy to see those plants relocated to another country with even cheaper labor costs. All they need (and I say, want) to remain is a little "dab" of productive capacity, upon which they can build their own complexes of financial speculation.

1) I heard Tariq Ali speak to this point in a talk available on the Internet called "On War, Empire, and Resistance."

wingedcentaur