Globalization

Globalization is an ongoing process of integration and interaction amongst companies, governments and people. It is driven by invention of new technologies and forms of communications, international trade and investment. In addition to economic aspects, globalization plays an important part in other fields. It can also be defined as the integration of economic, cultural, political, ecological and social systems through internationalization and interconnectedness.

Globalization is the principally new step in the development of the long-term process of internationalization (transnationalization) of the economic, political, cultural, legal and other aspects of the society's life, at the point when interrelationships between the national socials have reached such a level, when some drastic changes within the entire world community gradually transforming into the integral society institute, became inevitable.

The level of economic, scientific, technological, legal and informational interrelationships of the national industries have reached a point, when at least three principally novel features are imminent. First, the world's economic community, formerly seen as loosely connected multiple countries, is gradually transforming into the integral economic system, with national societies now representing the constituents of the integral world's economic body.

Second, while conditions of globalization, national and global economic issues are swapping roles. With the development of international financial and other markets as well as production-sale structures, the global economic relationships more and more acquire the role of leading and governing structures. Even internal affairs of large and powerful countries, not to mention the remaining ones, are forced to adapt to the realities of the global economy.

Third, globalization process objectively leads to elimination and weakening of the regulatory functions of the national state, which is now not able to protect the national interests from the undesirable influence from the outside effectively. Neither various countries are able to regulate economic, social and cultural processes, which became more than narrow national issues and to a larger extent have transformed into rather independent and unmanageable ones.

During the second half of the 20th century, humans were confronted by previously unknown task - to discover the new tools that would regulate the global economy, environment and other aspects of modern life. Thus, the painful process of reconstruction of the previous national-state structure of the world, which evolved over millenium, into some novel shape, has started.

Uncertainty of the future and fear of the unknown, thoughtless reloading the responsibility for all the world's problems on globalization itself born the entire surge of anti-globalization ideas and mass rallies. Starting December 1999, when the crowd of enraged opponents of liberalization of the international trade have almost succeeded in calling off the Seattle's (USA) summit of the World Trade organization, all subsequent international meetings of the politicians, more or less related to globalization, are accompanied with the multi-thousand rallies of anti-globalization activists and havoc.

There are, at least, three main varieties of globalization negativism. The most radical and most vulgar attitude is the one that claims that all evil stems from the USA which, by means of the controlled institutions such as International Monetary Fund, World's Bank, International Trade Organization etc. are gradually transforming the developing regions of the world into the neo-colonial estate, in order to exploit the natural and people's resources. The other variant of anti-globalization ideology stems from the fact, that globalization is an objective process, justified by the technological advances, informational revolution, development of international industrial, trade and financial relationships. However, only highly developed western countries could benefit from this process, while the remaining countries of the world are destined to continuous lagging behind.

The third ideological paradigm of the antiglobalization activists is that the process itself is not only objective, but could be of benefit to all countries, though to a different degree. The developed western countries have the opportunity to utilize the globalization process entirely, while only scraps and pickings are left to others. Thus, it is necessary to force the West to shape the benefits of globalization with other regions in the world. However, since it would be rather impossible to do during the official summits, this should be performed by means of mass rallies.

One of the most trenchant issues, used by the entire range of antiglobalists as the primary bugbear, is the tremendous gap between the income of the wealthy "Northern" countries and poor countries of the "South". This gap in income between the 20% of population of wealthy countries and the same part inhabiting poor countries has increased from 30-fold in 1960 to 74-fold in 1997.

Once started, technological-economic progress has quickly acquired all the characteristics of a chain-reaction. The breach between the advanced and poor counties is increasing fast. However, under globalization conditions, the developing counties are able to skip the pathways of scientific and technological evolution of the leading countries, but simply use all the technological, management and market advances developed by them. This allows to save time and capital, skipping few steps on the ladder of scientific and technological evolution. Such "skipping" often happens not due to the initiatives of the developing countries, but also because of the objective trends in modern world economy and active role of the "North". The fact is, that the most developed counties are not able neither economically, nor politically be totally independent, and to disregard the remaining world. In fact, such an involvement could be seen as an exploitation of the entire world by a handful of industrial countries, i.e. as neo-colonialism etc. However, this process to a larger extent is clearly beneficial to countries, lagging behind in their technological, economic, social and cultural development.

The historically established infrastructure of the international labor partitioning is constantly modernizing by the transfer of labor-, resource- and energy-intensive processes, as well as environmentally problematic issues of the economic sector, from highly developed countries into the developing ones. Besides, such developing countries become the wastebasket for old and obsolete technologies and products. Such transition is only possible if the target country possesses workers with sufficient qualifications, the sufficient financial, transport infrastructure as well as legal and political stability. This process is more or less of a cascade character: the industrial advances from the highest levels of the technological economic pyramid are transferred to the closest by its development "level" country, thus facilitating the rates of its development. This process is repeated continuously, when each particular "level" accumulates its own technological and labor potential it began to seek how to transfer them to the lower "level". Thus, due to globalization of the economy the multi-level "ladder-like" structure is built, the structure where developing countries are climbing to the top, simultaneously increasing their economical and social-cultural potential and bridging the gap from the "North".

However, different countries use such "ladder" with variable success. South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Vietnam were quite successful in their integration into the current world system and even during 1980-s were boasting twice higher gross domestic product per capita than countries of the "North". In the 1990-s, India, Myanmar, Chili, Sri-Lanka, Dominican Republic, Jamaica as well as some other counties became part of this group.

This group is followed by the next assembly of countries, with gross domestic product per capita 1,5-2,0 times higher than that found in the developed countries. These countries are quite fast in catching up with the leaders. Then follow countries with gross domestic product per capita being 1,0-1,5 higher than that of the leaders. This group is either slowly bridging the gap or just keeping it the same.

The fourth group is formed by the countries, where gross domestic product per capita is increasing more slowly than that in the leaders and thus, these continue to lag behind. Finally, the most underdeveloped countries have clearly decreasing gross domestic product per capita. The share of these countries in population of "South" has increased significantly due to energy and debt crisis in the 1980-s. During 1990-s, it decreased 2,7 fold, but still remains exceedingly high.

Some of the "Southern" countries are in such a poor state, that they could not possibly use such a "ladder". Such countries possess neither favorable political and legal conditions to attract the foreign investors, nor enough qualified labor force able to acquire the novel technologies. At present, there are 49 such countries in the world, hosting 10,4 % of the entire population of the world. These countries are clearly in need of some assistance from the world community.

Globalization is an objective process, and is an outcome of all the preceding development of the world society. It cannot be cancelled, just like the history cannot be reversed. As any historical process, globalization has its benefits and challenges for all people. The entire range of countries - poor and rich, small and large are forced to adapt to both negative and positive aspects of globalization. In order these adaptive changes be more dynamic and occur with less costs, coordinated efforts and integral collaboration of the entire world's community are clearly required.