1、 毕业设计（论文）外文资料翻译 1 The Threat of Globalization By Edward S. Herman New Politics vol. 7, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 26 Winter 1999 Globalization is both an active process of corporate expansion across borders and a structure of cross-border facilities and economic linkages that has been steadily gr
2、owing and changing as the process gathers steam. Like its conceptual partner free trade, globalization is also an ideology, whose function is to reduce any resistance to the process by making it seem both highly beneficent and unstoppable. And as with free trade, while globalization may sometimes yi
3、eld economic benefits, both the process and economic-political regime it is helping bring about threaten progressive ends, and should be recognized as such and fought at every level. Admittedly this is a formidable task, as the economic and political power of its beneficiaries, and its momentum, are
4、 great and contesting it seems an almost utopian undertaking. But globalization has its vulnerabilities, and attacking it intellectually, at the local level of plant abandonments and moves, as well as at the national political level can help build understanding and support for a larger oppositional
5、movement. Globalization as Ideology Globalization is just one of an array of concepts and arguing points that have been mobilized to advance the corporate agenda. Others have been deregulation and getting government off our backs, balancing the budget, cutting back entitlements (non-corporate), and
6、free trade. Like free trade, globalization has an aura of virtue. Just as freedom must be good, so globalization hints at internationalism and solidarity between countries, as opposed to nationalism and protectionism, which have negative connotations. The possibility that cross-border trade and inve
7、stment might be economically damaging to the weaker party, or that they might erode democratic controls in both the stronger and weaker countries, is excluded from consideration by mainstream economists and pundits. It is also unthinkable in the mainstream that the contest between free trade and glo
8、balization, on the one hand, and protectionism, on the other, might be reworded as a struggle between protection-of transnational corporate (TNC) rights-versus the freedom of democratic governments to regulate in the interests of domestic non-corporate constituencies. As an ideology, globalization c
9、onnotes not only freedom and internationalism, but, as it helps realize the benefits of free trade, and thus comparative advantage and 2 the division of labor, it also supposedly enhances efficiency and productivity. Because of these virtues, and the alleged inability of governments to halt progress
10、, globalization is widely perceived as beyond human control, which further weakens resistance. The Economic Failure of Globalization As the globalization process has been engineered by corporate elites, and serves their interests, they have successfully conveyed the impression that globalization is
11、not only inevitable but has been a great success. This is fallacious. Even ignoring for the moment its distributional effects, globalization has been marked by substantial declines in rates of output, productivity, and investment growth. Under the new regime of enhanced financial mobility and power,
12、 with greater volatility of financial markets and increased risk, real interest rates have risen substantially. The average rate of the G-7 countries (U.S., Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan) has gone from 0.4 percent, 1971- 82, to 4.6 percent, 1983-94.This has discouraged long term
13、investment in new plant and equipment and stimulated spending on the re-equipment of old facilities along with a large volume of essentially financial transactions-mergers, buybacks of stock, financial maneuvers, and speculative activities. This may help explain why overall productivity growth in th
14、e countries that are members of the OECD fell from 3.3%, 1960-73 to 0.8%, 1973- 95. Gross fixed investment fell from 6.1%, 1959-1970, to roughly 3.1% thereafter, or by half. OECD country annual rates of growth of real GDP fell from 4.8%, 1959-1970 to 2.8%, 1971-94, or by 42 percent. But the elites h
15、ave done well despite the slackened productivity growth. Because globalization has helped keep wages down, while increasing real interest rates, the upper 5 percent of households have been able to skim off a large fraction of the reduced productivity gains, thereby permitting elite incomes and stock
16、 market values to rise rapidly. But it was a different story for the global majority. Income inequality rose markedly both within and between countries. In the United States, despite a 35 percent increase in productivity between 1973 and 1995, the median real wage rate was lower in the latter year.
17、Inequality rose to levels of 70 years earlier, and underemployment, job insecurity, benefit loss, and worker speedup under lean production systems all increased. Insecurity is functional. As Alan Greenspan complacently explained to Congress in 1997, wage rates were stagnant in this country because w
18、orker insecurity was high. That this high insecurity level reduced the well-being of the affected workers did not bother Greenspan, or Congress and the mainstream media. The gap in incomes between the 20 percent of the worlds population in the richest and poorest countries has grown from 30 to 1 in
19、1960 to 82 to 1 in 1995, and Third World conditions have in many respects worsened. Per capita incomes have fallen in more than 70 countries over the past 20 years； some 3 billion people-half the worlds population, live on under two dollars a day； and 800 million suffer from malnutrition. In the Third World unemployment and underemployment are rampant,
