ABSTRACT
Capitalist civilization has historically been dominated by the contest for control over markets. Rapid technological change from the Age of the Renaissance facilitated the integration of markets as the instruments of technical change transformed localized individual firms to large scale globalized production and distribution networks – both intra-firm and inter-firm division of labour. The exponential leap in synergies that followed technological breakthroughs helped quicken globalization. Economies endowed with little resources and lacking a clear policy framework to strengthen domestic accumulation have hardly achieved long-term growth. The struggle to dominate markets – both factor and product markets – has seen the replacement of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had interfaced with macroeconomic management under the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.
