Globalization, as the term is generally used, refers to the extension of the production and distribution of goods and services on a vastly greater international scale than ever before.

This increasing internationalization of economic activity is primarily the result of developments of what Marxists call the “forces of production,” referring in broad terms  to the land, factories, and the workers  who operate them. These “forces of production” include  but are not limited to technological progress in transportation and information exchange; computerization of economic data processing; automation and robotization of production; growing numbers entering the work force; and rising levels of education.  

These factors facilitate the globalization of productive activity. This occurs by reducing obstacles in coordinating goods and services across great geographic and cultural divides. 

In this sense, the technological ability to coordinate the forces of production efficiently across international boundaries does not have a class character. It is an objective process and operates as one of the laws of motion of the economy. The class character lies in their application. 

The capitalist economy takes advantage of these changes. It does so in order  to globalize its relations of production correspondingly. By “relations of production” is meant private appropriation of wealth that characterizes  the capitalist system. 

This, in turn, stimulates even more development of the forces of production in directions that escalate the process further. Any stimulation of the development of the forces of production for the purpose of producing profit for capitalists does indeed have a class character. 

Some confusion in a Marxist understanding of the many-sided character of globalization arises from the term relations of production. 

This is because of  two distinct kinds of relations among people involved in production:

1. the ownership relations; 2. those aspects of  social relationships in production that do not specifically reflect the interests of the owners of the means of production.

These two aspects are not the same. Confusion arises when they are equated. In traditional Marxist literature, the class character of the relations of production is a consequence of the ownership or property relations in regard to the “means of production.” The term “means of production” refers to the factories, farms, etc. used for production. In other words,ownership, determines class character. However, there are dimensions of production that do not have to represent the interests of the owners.  For example, technology or equipment can sold by a US company to another country.  

Depending on use, this part of the forces of production, need not necessarily have a class character. A socialist oriented or a developing country use might give it a different quality.  

For these reasons, the globalization of the forces of production do not have a class character, although the direction in which they develop is primarily the result of the operation of class forces.  

These relations and forces of production comprise what classical Marxist political economy calls “the mode of production.”. Marx argued that there was a “unity” or “correspondence” between these two elements.

While class character is determined by ownership, the productive forces have several components:

1. One component consists of the objects undergoing transformation in the production process (objects of labor). They include natural resources such as land, water, raw materials, oil, gas, other sources of energy and chemicals, auxiliary materials, and semi-processed components.

2. Another component is made up of the means of labor (e.g., tools and places of production such as factory plants, transportation and communications and electric grids). Taken together these constitute the means of production.

3  A third and most important component of the forces of production, however, is formed by the social productive forcesalso called forces of labor. 

The social productive forces are workers and the way they are related to one another in the production process. The organization of production and the technology employed in it can be considered to fall partly with the means of production (for example, the nonhuman elements of an assembly line), and partly within the social productive forces (workers on an assembly line). The relationship among the workers in the organization of production can be called the technological relations of production. More on this later.    The statement that the forces of production do not have class character immediately seems to raise a paradox in regard to the forces of labor. Since those performing the labor obviously have a class character, how can one assert that this most important component of the forces of production does not have a class character? 

In Marxist terminology, the term class is used to distinguish social relationships between one group of people and other groups in regard to the control over the means and product of production. Thus the term class refers to social relations (that is, property relations) among people, and not to the production relationship between those performing the labor and the means of production. 

In a class-divided society, the particular technology used can be imposed on the laborer for purposes of exploitation, such as technologies that are dangerous to the health or even life of the laborer. The imposition of the technology on the laborer therefore can, and indeed often does, have a class character, but the class character does not reside in the technology, but in the way it is used. Members of preclass societies have also (wittingly or unwittingly) used methods of labor that shortened their life spans. 

The fact that Marxists can refer to an early communal people as a preclass society or a classless society indicates that the forces of production do not have a class character. A conquering horde, such as the legions of Caesar, can exploit the same group of people by extracting tribute from them without any change in the forces of production. 

In a class-divided society, the technological relations of production can have a class character if they are structured so as to reflect the interests of the owners to the detriment of the workers. Thus the relationship of supervisors to the workers being supervised can have a dual character. Insofar as supervisors are necessary for the organization of production on a shop floor, their role has the class character of a worker. But insofar as the supervisors takes on the task of intensifying the labor of the workers or otherwise enhancing the extraction of surplus value, the work of the supervisors has the same class character as of that of the owners of the factory. 

In keeping with what has been said above, the globalization of the means of production do not have a class character. They way they are put to use, however, is controlled by those who own them. This is what imparts a class character to the relations of production. A technology of production, as part of the means of production, does not in itself have class character even if it endangers a worker’s health. But the use of such technology is determined by whoever owns the means of production, so that its actual use in production clearly has a class character. 

For example,  the technology that greatly reduced the cost of international long-distance calls does not have a class character. The ability of appropriately educated workers in India to work in English-language call centers that serve the United States does obliterate their working-class character. Their employment by US firms to displace call-center workers in the United States is what gives this side of globalization a class character. 

These economic processes are objective and independent of human will.

Globalization of the forces of production cannot be fought any more than the destruction of machinery in England in the nineteenth century could reverse the industrial revolution there. Our attention has to be focused on the way technological development is applied economically. 

Marxist economists of Cuba, China, and Vietnam are very much aware of the positive and negative consequences of economic globalization. On the whole, they view it positively, utilizing globalization of the forces of production in three ways.

1. They use it to establish cooperative economic relationships in the socialized sectors of their economies without the exploitation of labor. 2. China, Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Cuba, are using globalization to attract capitalist investment in order to speed the development of their own productive forces. 3. They are also beginning to make foreign direct investment in capitalist countries in areas that are beneficial to their own domestic production.

This last initiative – export of capital that clearly involves the exploitation of labor in other countries – obviously raises new questions requiring Marxist analysis. For example, how are labor-management relations shaped by state-owned enterprises operating in a capitalist economy? 

Globalization of the forces of production – a law of motion of the world economy – is not the problem. Marxist political economy has always understood that social problems do not arise from the forces of production, but from the relations of production under which forces of production are put to work.



--Erwin Marquit is editor of Nature, Society and Thought.