On 10/29/05, Michael Perelman wrote: > I was thinking about the meaning of outsourcing, which seems to turn old-line > manufacturing corporations into merchant operations. could we be reversing > the direction of history and moving back into merchant capitalism?<
my understanding of merchant capitalism implies "no" to this question. Merchant capitalism operated in a period when the global market was highly restricted, partly politically and partly due to very high transportation and communications costs. It involved (often) government-sponsored expeditions and profited from the differences in prices in different parts of the world. In addition, it was involved in the slave trade, the creation of trade outposts, and the conquest of territory. Today's outsourcing doesn't seem qualitatively different from 1950s capitalism. Instead of operating factories in two or twenty different states of the US, a company instead operates them in two or twenty different countries. New "globalized" capitalism does involve taking advantage of wage differentials, but so did the move by US manufacturing from the Northeast to the South. -- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
