ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that changes occurring in the world are making it possible for human beings to create a future which could be universally and positively ‘human’, but which may be destructively sectionalist and highly inhuman. It describes the transformation of a predominantly western capitalism into a genuinely globalised form of economy. The chapter considers the major structural shift–from manufacturing to services–which has occurred in all western economies as a concomitant of globalisation, and some of its domestic social and political consequences. Many conventional economists, while admitting that capitalist expansion is destructive in these ways, see that destruction as a merely temporary or short-term phenomenon which, ‘in the longer run’ will be more than compensated for by its broader, positive effects. Owners and managers of capitalist enterprises are primarily motivated by competitive success. The predominant focus of capitalism’s decision makers on competitive success, combined with their professional indifference to the aggregate effects of competition, has one important political concomitant.
