The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Conflict in a Transnational World

Combining bold theoretical analysis and careful empirical investigation, Harris provides a critical framework to understand the political and economic underpinnings of globalization. In an unique historical approach, the book examines how the revolution in information technologies and the break-up of the Soviet Union intertwined to present new global opportunities to reorganize capitalism as a unified world system headed by an emerging transnational capitalist class. The book challenges the common view that nation states still define international relations, with the United States as hegemonic leader of the world system. Instead Harris offers a more complex analysis of world affairs that sees the current period as one of transition between nationally based industrial capitalism and a global system based on revolutionary methods of production and new class relationships. He argues this conflict appears in every country as national economies realigned to fit new patterns of world accumulation creating a host of political tensions within and between nations. This analysis is detailed in a distinctive interpretation of the US military/industrial complex, as well as the contemporary class struggles in Germany and the emerging powers of China, India and Brazil. The book concludes by investigating alternative trends which are currently challenging the inequalities of global capitalism, unfolding a fresh approach to the relationship between the state, market and civil society. This book is a timely and welcome contribution to our understanding of the nature and direction of change in world capitalism in the age of the microchip. Focusing on the cybernetic revolution and the sweeping changes it has brought about, Harris address' such topics as the transformation of work, the conflict between new and old centers of capital, the rise of a transnational capitalist, the military-industrial complex, and terrorism. He identifies new theories, practices and strategies needed in this age of cyber-capitalism to achieve a renovation of participatory democracy and sustainable economics. These essays should be widely read and studied. William I. Robinson, associate professor of sociology, global and international studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, author of "A Theory of Global Capitalism, Production, Class and State in a Transnational World". "The Dialectics of Globalization" is a fresh approach to the question of globalization and the technological transformations that underpin it. Whereas the Left has usually ignored the computer revolution, or been dazzled by it Harris systematically identifies the contradictions and crises below the surface of the shiny world of IT and traces its impact on ordinary people's lives. - A. Sivanandan, Director of the Institute of Race Relations, Editor 'Race & Class,' author of 'When Memory Dies'. On the solid materialist foundations of his experience as an apprentice machinist with US Steel in Chicago, Jerry Harris has produced a valuable re-interpretation of the political economy of globalization, focusing on the complex inter-relations of capital, labor and technology. His subtle critical analysis of 'US Hegemony or US Globalization?' , complemented with detailed case studies of class struggle and globalization in Germany and the Third World, fruitfully locate the often confused rhetoric of nationalism and globalization within a more productive class perspective. - Leslie Sklair, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, author of 'The Transnational Capitalist Class.'