Liberalism and Neo-liberal Capitalist Globalization: Contradictions of the Liberal Democratic State

摘要

Throughout the history of capitalism and imperialism capitalist and imperialist interests and their organic intellectuals employed a number of constructs such as the White Man's Burden, the civilizing mission, democracy and stability and order, and anti-communism to rationalize expansionism and capital accumulation. More recently counter-drug interdiction and anti- terrorism have been added to reflect the changing priorities. All such measures have involved both the internationalization of capital and expanding the extraterritorial scope and reach of the state power of the imperialist states and the property rights of capital in its various configurations. Those measures have been contested in varying ways from slave revolts and wars of resistance such as peasant wars and national liberation straggles to other oppositional strategies, including those that were organized from within the West itself.' Contemporary imperialism, which is disguised as neo-liberal globalization, is girded by a complex of the leading capitalist states and ruling class forces and institutions from across the spectrum of industry and manufacturing, money and finance, agro-industry, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, banking, oil, telecommunications and information technology, accounting, and key multilateral institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and key agencies of the state in the United States of America. Contemporary globalization is a historically specific intensive and extensive articulation of capitalism in the age of electronics in which the rule of 'money as money' dominates all areas of global economic life. Globalization is not the logical culmination of a natural, eternalizable wealth producing system that liberals and neo-liberals have claimed capitalism to be.