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TERM PAPER

ON

RELEVANCE OF MARXIST EXPLANATION

OF GLOBALIZATION

MIRD 502

WORLD POLITICAL AFFAIRS

SUBMISSION DATE- JULY 30, 2020

NUMBER OF WORDS – 1372

SUBMITTED BY- SUYASH KHAREL

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KARL MARX AND GLOBALIZATION– INTRODUCTION

Karl Marx was a German Philosopher whose critical writings about society, economics, and
politics- collectively known as Marxism gives a basis in understanding contemporary concepts of
multi-disciplinary fields. He has written rigorously on the extend, merits, and implications of a
capitalistic world, one of which is globalization.

In the vernacular meaning of the word, ‘Globalization’ denotes the dismantling of obstacles
imposed by states, cartels, and organized labor to the free flow of capital and commodities
between nations. (Smith, 2010). In his book Das Kapital, Karl Marx predicted globalization
through his proposition about overproduction– the extension and expansion of capitalism across
the globe exploring for fresh markets. When Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the
Communist Party in 1848, he had the following perspective on the implications of capitalist
globalization: "Along with the developing bourgeoisie, freedom of trade and the world market, ...
the national splits and confrontations of people are increasingly disappearing." (Marx &
Engels, 2011, pp.14-15).

MARXISM EXPLANATION OF GLOBALIZATION

Through his theories, Marx has been successful in giving a detailed account of mostly
illustratively accurate and in others, an imaginatively accurate description of globalization by
citing legitimate reasons for this occurrence. The Marxist theory of capitalization and increased
industrialization, both explains the persistent hunt of industries for new markets and cheap labor,
as well as the ceaseless demand for more natural resources, both of which require continual
nourishment. This phenomenon, also called globalization, is more pronounced in the post-cold
war era enabled by the commercialization of the internet and the unprecedented flow of
information.

Moreover, the naturally tumultuous, calamity-prone nature of capitalism was an essential part of
Marx’s writings. He asserted that the persistent hunt for profits would lead companies to
automate their workplaces and search new market places, giving rise to more production while
deteriorating workers’ wages until the workers could no longer be able to buy the products they
created. For instance, recent economic history starting from the Great Depression of the 1930s to
the dot-com bubble can be cited back to what Marx termed “fictitious capital” – financial
instruments like shares and credit-default swaps (Marx, 1970, pp. 98-107). We produce and
produce until there is simply no one left to acquire our produced commodities, no fresh
markets, no new debts. This economic cycle is still in the run, before our very eyes: Broadly
speaking, it’s what made the financial crisis in 2008. Years of heightened inequality decreased
earnings, which prompted increasingly more Americans to borrow debt. And when there was no
debt left to borrow, the whole bubble burst out. And this crisis had effects all over the world just
as Marx knew it would.
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Marx’s thoughts on economic globalization are contained in his philosophical views, his ideas on
historical materialism, and his theory of world history (Shirong, 2016). "The need of a constantly
expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe",
Marx wrote. "It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."
(Marx, 1970). While this argument is fairly obvious as of now, he said it at the time when the
primary means of transportation were in their infancy (rails and roads) and the vastness of
today's commodity globalization was more than a century away.

In one way or another, the Manifesto is even more true today than-in 1849 when it was written.
Marx explained, through the scientific method, dialectical materialism known as historical
materialism, how competition and 'free enterprise' would inevitably lead to the concentration of
capital and the monopolization of the productive forces. (Xing, 1998). From Marx, we learn to
study capitalism by looking at some of its fundamental relations: capital-to-labor. capital-to-
capital, capital-to-state. At the present stage of global capitalism, the development of these
relations had undergone new transformations, but they are not so different from what Marx
discovered.

Marx also wrote extensively on the implications of capitalism in disrupting the old societal
orders outside Europe, particularly in Asia. In the mid-1850s, he wrote a series of essays on India
that published on the New York Daily Tribune. In these essays, he concedes the English rule
over India in the name of initiating and nurturing civilization: “The English interference in India
blew up the economic bases of these half-barbarian and half-civilized small communities and, as
a result, broke up these communities. Consequently, it caused the biggest and, to tell the truth,
the sole social revolution which Asia ever saw.” And, recent Marxists believe the new economic
order to be the extension of favoring the same status quo. Smith writes “The crux of ‘neoliberal
globalization’, as codified in the infamous ‘Washington Consensus’ and by the IMF’s ‘structural
adjustment’ programs, has been the transformation of relations between developed capitalist
countries and the global South, and, in particular, an enormous expansion of the possibilities for
northern capitalists to increase their ‘access’, in the IMF’s words, to the ‘global pool’ of low-
wage workers corralled in southern nations.” (Smith,2010).

On the other hand, the critique of Marxism is formulated from different angles. Some emphasize
the inadequacy of its conceptual foundations in that its dogmatic concepts of dialectics, material
production, class antagonism, and the proletariat revolution are no longer applicable to today’s
advanced industrialist society. (Merawi, 2018). For instance, a non-Marxist could argue that the
"Marxist theories about the prediction of a global revolution of proletariats against the common
capitalistic system" or simply known as the "global communist revolution" as the foundation of a
global socialist movement is utopian. And thus, while this argument is reasonably legitimate in
today's context, we will have to see the world not as it is today but as Marx saw it in the mid-
nineteenth century when the world was just getting used to the capital and commodity markets.
And we should retrospect the developments leading until today by factoring in the changes in the
structure and the roles of a modern worker working in an industry against a worker working at
that time.
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"It is the working class that produces all the value in society; and yet, under capitalism, they
receive only a fraction of this value back in the form of wages. The class struggle is, therefore, a
struggle for this surplus in society.” (Marx, K. & Engels F, 1967, pp 303-310). Karl Marx wrote
this at a time when the surplus of production was fairly simple, it was the tug of war between
profits and wages. Other factors have since jeopardized this assumption like for instance,
reducing costs through technological advancement and other economic theories developed later
found that worker satisfaction is imperatively tied to the success of an organization. Thus, this
error in prediction can be traced to the paradigm shift in inherent assumptions about the work
culture. And thus, while Karl Marx has been wrong in accurately describing the globalization of
the proletariat revolution, it is in large due to the differences in the definition and job description
of the modern proletariat vis-a-vis a nineteenth-century worker.

We cannot also forget that consequently in his later years, Marx reflects upon his limitations of
the study and increasingly persuades himself that without detailed concrete research into the
inner structure of any particular region of the world, we can under no circumstances understand
which new socio-economic relations result from the dissolving effects of expanding capitalism
on traditional indigenous communities in non-European regions and, on the other hand, from
persistent resistance to capitalist penetration offered by traditional communities. Finally, in his
later years, he changes his stance on globalization as he keenly becomes aware that the historical
formation of the capitalist mode of production, which he describes in detail in Das Kapital, can
solely apply to West European history. (Tairako, 2003)

Thus, through his criticisms and in-depth study about the societal, political, and but mostly
economic effects of capitalism, he has successfully explained the phenomenon of globalization.
And therefore, contrary to the view that Marxism is a past episode in world history, the
development of the world today is a close resemblance of what Marx predicted two hundred
years ago, and even though his works are not without its limitations, they have been one of the
most important lines of work in explaining globalization and its relevance continues to this day.
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REFERENCES:

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1967). Das Capital: A critique of political economy. New York:
International Publishers.

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2011). The communist manifesto. New York: Penguin Books.

Marx, K. (1970). A contribution to the critique of political economy. Moscow: Progress

Publishers.

Merawi, F. (2018). Marxism, Globalization, and Liberation of the Subject. Research gate.
Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328928911_Marxism_Globalization_and_Liberation_o
f_the_Subject

Ouyang, K., Liu, Y. & Zhu, L. (2006). Globalization and the Contemporary Development of
Marxist Philosophy: Precondition, Problem Domain and Research Outline. Frontiers of
Philosophy in China. 1(4), 643-657.

Renton, D. (2005). Marx on Globalisation. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Shirong, L. (2016). Marx’s Thoughts on Economic Globalization. Social Sciences in China.
37(2), 5–19.

Siebert, J. (2019). Globalisation, Agency, Theory: A Critical Analysis of Marxism in Light of

Brexit. Retrieved From
https://www.e-ir.info/2019/01/05/globalisation-agency-theory-a-critical-analysis-of-marxism-in-
light-of-brexit/

Smith, J. (2010) Imperialism & the Globalisation of Production. Retrieved from

https://thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/imperialism-the-globalisation-of-
production.pdf

Susan M. Jellissen, Fred M. Gottheil (2009). In Praise of Globalization. Contributions to

Political Economy. 28(1), 35–46.

Tairako, T. (2003). Marx on Capitalist Globalization. Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies. 35,
11-16.

Xing, L. (1998) Capitalism and Globalisation in the Light of the Communist Manifesto.
Economic and Political Weekly. 33(33/34), 2223-2227.