Neo-Liberalism and Globalization
After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the world has entered the next stage of its development, which is called globalization. From the very beginning of its history, state formation of the humankind strived to conquer as much land as it could for dissolving problems connected with protecting from barbaric peoples and creating its economic power. For example, the Roman Empire conquered multiple neighboring peoples and tribes in Europe and Africa; to be the most powerful global state, Alexander the Great created his empire, which spread from the Mediterranean to India; Napoleon and Hitler also dreamed of the global power. Of course, all empires were totalitarian as the conquered peoples were suppressed by their enslavers; sooner or later, they decayed in the result of internecine wars between successors of the enslavers, corruption, or liberated wars of their conquered peoples. It happened during all historical periods: slave owning, feudal, and capitalist systems. As it is shown by Lecture 12, Europeans conquered America, Africa, and Asia turning feudalism into imperialism and justifying their policy by bringing civilization to backward pagan tribes and peoples. All the European governmental institutions and Christian church supported this policy, and colonists had rights to enslave some African, American, and Asian nations for the development of economics of their new colonies. Finally, bad social conditions of conquered peoples in colonies and poverty of the working class and peasants became the major reason for emerging socialist studies of Marx and Engels in the second half of the 19th century. It caused a series of revolutions, wars, and coups in the 20th century; in the result, the world socialist system was created to oppose capitalism. The role of neo-liberalism in globalization and the World System Theory is shown on the basis of the materials from Lecture 12, works of Fidel Castro, Ralph Nader, and Gary Burtless,
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After the World War I, Germany and its allies were defeated. In 1917, the first Socialist Revolution took place in Russia, and the first socialist republic emerged. Russia lost some of its colonies, like Finland, Poland, and the western parts of Ukraine and Belorussia, but it still remained one of the largest empires in the world. It was the empire of the new type, with the bureaucracy of the sole governmental Communist Party seizing the whole power in the country from capitalist aristocracy, using hard economic situation, poverty, grief, and multiple deaths brought by the war. It became a country with a totalitarian regime, which expropriated capitalists, landowners, and subjected to repressions all citizens irrespective of their social origin or political viewpoints. Thus, such class as investors was eliminated in the Soviet Russia. At the same time, wealth of the repressed rich Russian people became investments in its economy; by 1939, Russia reconstructed its armed forces and rebuilt its economy. Moreover, Russian communists wanted to make the global Socialist Revolution. It was their major task. Therefore, in 1939, Russia concluded with fascist Germany the non-aggression pact of Ribbentrop-Molotov on freedom and cooperation, which became the most scandalous document in the modern history. Two totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Russia and Fascist Germany determined the further development of the world’s history. As a result, almost the whole Europe was conquered by Germany, but in 1941, the Soviet Russia had to fight against Germany. Great Britain, the United States, and France fought against Germany at that time, and Russia joined them. After defeating Germany in 1945, the two world’s political and economic systems emerged. Therefore, the world was divided into capitalist and socialist states, which rivaled each other. Therefore, the first signs of the modern globalization emerged at that time. From one side, the countries of Western Europe established the so-called Common Wealth and the NATO, and from the other side, it was socialist countries, which formed the Warsaw Military Pact and the Union of Economic Cooperation.
At the same time, political and economic disagreements emerged between the socialist countries. As a rule, the Soviet Russia was the major investor of the socialist countries. Thus, a huge amount of material and financial resources was allotted to support world’s socialist movement. Thus, the Soviet Russia supported Korean and Vietnam Wars, armed conflicts in the Middle East, and the Cuban Revolution. The great famine in China in 1958-1963 as a result of natural disasters, wrong agricultural studies of Lysenko and Maltsev, and political shortcomings of the Chairman Mao caused disagreements between Russia and China. It led to the armed conflict in 1969 between them. Moreover, the Socialist system began to decay from the mid of the 20th century when an armed conflict emerged between Russia and its Socialist allies as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and China. Totalitarian political system with command economic system posed a danger to the world, because such disasters as famine in the Soviet Russia and China were a result of the low economic incomes, shortcomings in the governmental management, and wrong approach to dissolving political and economic issues. In the result, Chinese government under ruling of Deng Xiaoping implemented new economic reforms introducing the private property in the Chinese agriculture. Decollectivization and denationalization became the crucial points for the further development of the Chinese economy, in which the state ownership was supported to cover the largest enterprises in each sector of the industry for further state regulation. Both national and foreign private capitals were to regulate the small enterprises. At the same time, it improved the economic situation in the country. Nowadays, China is one of the most developed countries in the world, but the multinational People’s Republic of China has a totalitarian political regime, which cannot solve social, national, and cultural problems in its provinces.