We economists tend to make extravagent claims when we discuss our vision. All work is (is not) being globalized. Would we not do better to take a step back and follow the old master of dialectics to look for the forces that make for globalization and those that impede it? I think that some of the new moves toward globalization are dramtic and yet overdramatized. We forget how globalized the colonial system was. Even Smith wrote: How much commerce and navigation ..., how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world? [Smith 1776,I.i.11, p. 23] In my Classical Political Economy book I wrote about how the British sent plant explorers about, including Darwin, to raid the planet for plants so that they could, say, grow rubber malaysia where masses of Indian labor were close at hand -- shades of modern bio-technology. Yet, the modern telecommunications revolution obviously goes far beyond the laying of transatlantic cables for telegraph communication. How do all these changes affect things on the shop floor or in the back office? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
