Globalization Revisiting Marxian Economic Theory

Frank Hujsa

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Strobel, Frederick

Keywords

Marx, Karl, Globalization, Capitalism, Corperation, Multinational

Area of Concentration

Economics

Abstract

In Das Kapital and other writings, Karl Marx produced history's most comprehensive analysis of capitalism. He identified an essential tension within capitalism's internal mechanisms: the increasingly individualistic accumulation of private property contrasted with the integrated global marketplace that was being created. Based on this fundamental contradiction, Marx predicted that capitalism was inevitably doomed to negate itself. Its collapse would pave the way for the rise of global communism, the abolition of private property, and the end of Marx's dialectical process of historical materialism. Rather can collapsing as Marx predicted, capitalism has instead become the world's dominant economic system. Distinguished from the earlier ages of globalization by the centrality of the corporation, modern global capitalism has resulted in unprecedented wealth and prosperity, but also injustice and inequity. The first aim of this project is to provide an overview of Karl Marx's economic theory, distilled from several of his most important works including Das Kapital and the Grundrisse. The second aim is to examine the history of modern capitalism, and to identify the differences between today's corporate globalization and the globalization that has existed in prior centuries. The final aim of this project is to illustrate the special relevance of Marxian economic theory to modern corporate globalization and to answer the important question: If capitalism is shown to have followed the developmental steps predicted by Marx, is it inevitably doomed to fail in the manner that he predicted as well? The conclusion of this thesis is that capitalism is not necessarily doomed as Marx foresaw because of the intervening role that strong government has historically played. Government is the key to saving capitalism from its own self-destructive patterns. However, globalization is considerably weakening the influence of government, which may strengthen some of Marx's contentions that capitalism may self-destruct over time. In addition, therefore, the increasingly global nature of capitalism necessitates global governance.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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