Alfredo de la Lama García

Global Capitalism and “North-South” Unevenness: In Light of Ranking, Statistical Correlations, and Profits from the Forbes’ Worldwide List of 2000 Top Firms

AbstractWhile a ‘north-south divide’ in world capitalism has been pointed to for many years, in this article we examine how this unevenness continues in today’s epoch of capitalist globalization. To examine this phenomenon, we analyze a recent Forbes Magazine annual ranking of the leading 2000 companies in the world (G2000), by grouping or ‘boxing’ these companies by their 62 domiciles to calculate aggregated sales, profits, assets and market value and correlating these quantities with the GDP of the corresponding domicile. This is an approximation to reality, since the variety of transnational capital and associated global processes make it nowadays problematic to assign national labels to capital. Regardless of where the whole business circuit takes place, we found that the GDP of each country is directly proportional, more or less, to the economic strength of all G2000 top firms based or registered in that country. These proportionalities tend to hover around a certain level globally, yet the correlation is lower for the ‘global south’ (as some describe it). We can also identify important regional variations of ratios such as profits/sales. Other ratios could also be easily calculated from our results. Together these findings help lead to a more nuanced understanding of transnational corporations (TNCs), but also suggest more basically, for instance, that the ‘global north’ remains to some degree more penetrated by TNCs (of the G2000).

Global Capitalism and the Neoliberal Privatization of Energy Reserves: A Mexico Case Study

In 2013 state officials operating through the three federal government branches of Mexico mutilated the country’s constitution, privatizing upwards of seventy-five percent of the country’s hydrocarbon reserves. This article suggests that this neoliberal strategy, carried out by transnationally oriented elites operating through state apparatuses in Mexico (and promoted by officials in Washington and within the International Financial Institutions), is meant to benefit transnational capital. Such drastic change to Mexico’s legal order, we argue, in fact violated the country’s constitution and symbolized a break with the country’s earlier model of development. The federal government’s anti-constitutional behavior, specifically its violation of Article 136 of the constitution, provides a legal basis for dismissing top officials from their posts and moving toward a constitutional assembly.

Internal Violent Conflicts and Overt War among National States

We focus on geopolitical tensions, possibilities of internal violent conflicts or overt war among national-states. First, we examine the most important concepts and practices of the neoliberal globalization. The current world situation seems to indicate that neoliberalism is not a theory, a class strategy designed to redistribute wealth upward toward an increasingly narrow fraction of people, despite national contradictions. We review sources of international tensions and some important data of transnational corporations in the North and South. Historical experiences show that crisis can produce different kinds of changes and distinct political responses in societies, such as internal violent conflicts or overt war among national-states. Some of these conflicts can be analyzed by employing two frameworks; national-states framework and global class relations. We argue that in a highly globalized world, the existence of overt war among strong nation-states could seriously damage the globalist bloc transnational commanding class, whereas internal violent conflicts can easily appear almost everywhere as a natural consequence of social and economic inequalities. In order to counterweight the crisis and fascist movements we propose alliances among the dominated classes and other dominated groups.