Capital Went Global. Workers Did Not.
Capital Went Global. Workers Did Not.
“Our era of globalization is Marx’s global capitalism on steroids; but he was mistaken about the consequences. Marx predicted that once free trade prevailed, the naked harshness of the laws of economics would apply to the entire planet, thus uniting the international working class and hastening the coming anti-capitalist revolution.”
Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction, p. 110, Kindle edition.
What interests me here is the distance between an economic condition and a political identity. Marx expected free trade to expose workers everywhere to the same logic of capital. As capital crossed borders, workers would recognise their common position. The world market would create both a global working class and the conditions for revolt.
The first part was broadly right. Capital crossed borders with extraordinary ease. A company can design a product in California, manufacture its parts across Asia and sell it throughout the world. Money moves in seconds. Employers compare wages and costs across continents.
Yet workers remain governed, protected, taxed and politically represented within nations. A factory worker in China, a delivery driver in South Africa and a warehouse worker in Germany may occupy similar positions in a global system without seeing themselves as members of the same class.
Globalisation did not erase national divisions. It often sharpened them. Governments tell workers that their problem is the foreign worker, the immigrant, China or unfair trade. Capital operates internationally while labour still bargains nationally.
Global supply chains also hide many of the relations Marx expected capitalism to expose. The buyer sees a cheap product, not the wage, the factory dormitory, the mine or the contract behind it.
Perhaps Marx’s mistake concerned visibility rather than scale. The global system can bind people together without allowing them to see or act together. Capital became international. Political solidarity did not.
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