ABSTRACT
I would like to set the stage for my reflections on the current dynamics of globalization with a few truisms. It is hardly exciting news that we live in a world of conflict and confrontation. There are lots of dimensions of and complexities to this reality, but in recent years, lines have been drawn fairly sharply. To oversimplify, but not too much, one of the participants in the conflict involves concentrated power centers, state and private, closely interlinked. The other is the general or working population, worldwide. In old-fashioned terms, this situation would have been called “class war.”
