American inuences on the

Economy policy and social

movements
Student: Alejandro Palma Cordero
Lecturer: Jolanta Szymkowska-Bartyzel
Course: Americanization and Anti-Americanization in the European Perspective.
Academic year: 2012/2013
Jagiellonian University, Krakw
1. Introduction
The Capitalism is the economic system that controls the market. The concept of
Capitalism was created in the eightieth century by Adam Smith. However, it has changed
so much since its creation. The actual Capitalism has been modied by some thinkers or
even politics because the old system did not work.
I am going to write about the two main dominations of the Capitalism, focusing on
the American one. Concepts like Finance Capitalism and Money Manager Capitalism will
be explained.
Furthermore, this essay is going to explain some social movements against the
domination of these countries.
2. Historical antecedents: Finance Capitalism
The American domination is not the rst one. We can think of the English Empire that
settled and dominated some territories. It was the time of the called Finance Capitalism,
from ninetieth century to the mind 1930s. The Worlds nancial centre was in London,
where the British Empire inuenced the rest of policies. The global monetary system was
working with the gold standard, which was very useful for the international trade because it
xed the exchange rates, and the pound was the global transaction and reserve currency.
The developing in transportation and communication and the fall in tariffs helped to the
global economic interconnection.Those are the characteristics of the Finance Capitalism.
The English Empire was inuencing on the international trade and its rules. For
improving its economic situation, the United Kingdom tried to persuade for global free
market and open markets. It wanted to increase its exports and beneted foreign
investment oriented domestic enterprises.
This Empire got its power conquering new colons and controlling and creating
commercial routes. It had many benets for its economy as the access to oil deposits or
the inuence on the international trade. In addition, it created new consumer markets, and
more labour supplies.
Multinationals appear in this time. For Van Lear and Sisk (2010), they are
manufacturing companies that build their supply chains by acquiring ever-larger quantities
of raw materials, some of which are only found in certain regions of the world. With the
colonialism, the United Kingdom had the control over commodities through charters and
other forms of government supported to private companies. This system led enough cash
resources for expanding commodity acquisition.
3. Movements against the colonialism.
3.1 India
For a century and a half, the area now known as India was ruled by either the
British East India Company, or the Royal Crown herself. The native people were subjected
to the whims of British colonialism, which involved a strict system of monopolisation to
afford greater prots for the English. But around the turn of the century, the move toward
Indian independence began to gather steam. The leader of this movement eventually
came to be Mohandas Gandhi.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) was the mental and political leader of the Indian
independence movement.
A repertoire is a limited set of collective action forms that a protest group learns,
shares and implements in its interactions with authorities and the public. The Gandhian
repertoire transformed the substance and meaning of resistance forms and collective
actions like strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation and civil disobedience. This repertoire
includes that nonviolent actions could be active and militant although they could use it and
that the ideas are based on concrete struggles. Campaign must follow the steps: resolving
injustice through honest negotiation and arbitration, raising public consciousness through
publicity and agitation, preparing for mass action through demonstrations and issuing an
ultimate to authorities. If this fails: initiating nonviolent direct action.
3.2 Africa
American activists became aware of Gandhi around 1917. The most important
diffusion channels in the knowledge stage were international correspondence, sermons,
speeches and the American press. In the 20ies and 30ies the diffusion networks
connected to Indian exile network. International travel, scholarly writing and organisations
contribute to the dislocation of the Gandhian repertoire. The secretary of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation (FOR) James Farmer developed an elaborate plan for reinvention and
implementation of the Gandhian repertoire in the early 40ies. 1941 the African-American
leader A. Philip Randolph created the March on Washington Committee. He also
dislocated the Gandhian repertoire by specifying the organisational and behavioural
prerequisites for mass nonviolent direct actions and formed smaller forms of direct actions.
These activists enabled the relocation of Gandhians repertoire by creative reinvention of
guidelines and methods and shared their expertise and practical experience with civic
rights activists of the next generation. After 1943 most activists went back to traditional
repertoire of agitation and publicity with direct action.
In 1955 the Montgomery bus boycott took place in Alabama and brought new life to
the transnational diffusion of the Gandhian repertoire. Blacks were only allowed to sit in
certain rows in busses. Rosa Parks refused to stand up and let a white passenger sit and
got arrested therefore. There was furore all over the country. Various pre-1944 Gandhian
networks provided the knowledge and experience that enabled it to grow to a Gandhian
social movement. 42 000 black people in town joined civil disobedient. There were
campaigns against the trials including M.L. King Jr. whose knowledge is based on the
Gandhian repertoire. The Montgomery bus boycott helped enforce civil rights campaigns
to a breakthrough and to mass implementation of the repertoire.
American civil rights activists didnt fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before
1955 because they were not prepared in terms of knowledge and experience and due to
the existence of unfavourable political conditions like the anticommunist hysteria.
4. The American hegemony: Money Manager Capitalism
1980 is a year of americanising the worlds economies and ghting against the
Communism penetration. In this year started the money manager capitalism era. Now, the
dollar operated as a reserve and transaction currency, without the gold standard, and New
York is the new nancial centre. The global monetary system is built around free capital
ows and a exible exchange rate system sometimes affected by coordinated central bank
intervention. The transportation and communication costs decreased, free trade
agreements were created and American foreign policy encouraged a global economic
interconnection.
Multinational rms were converted in transnational. For Van Lear and Sisk (2010),
they are globally structured afliations of businesses that connect through intra-trade
channels that weaken afnity or loyalty to any single nation. Contemporary organisations
now operate under alliances which speed the process of globalising strategy, reap
economies of scale, gain access to technology or markets, and achieve benets without
giving up corporate independence or requiring an expensive merger (Porter 1990, 612).
Product ows in the current era are typied by international supply chains operating as
highly developed, amalgamative networks reaching around the globe with close and
ongoing interchange with suppliers and channels [that are] integral to the process of
creating and sustaining advantage (579).
These policies, designed to extend the specic ideas of free markets, deregulation,
and private property throughout the world, are know as the Washington Consensus.
On the next table, we can observe the differences between the two system.
Source: Van Lear, William and Sisk, James (2010) Financial Crisis and Economic Stability: A
Comparison between Finance Capitalism and Money Manager Capitalism
5. Some movements against the actual system
5.1 15-M Movement
This movement is originally from Spain. On 15th of May of 2011, much people
decided to camp to the main square in Madrid (Puerta del Sol). They were against the two-
party system, the banks domination and the wanted a real democracy. It was a peaceful
movement and it extended to the rest of Spain.
As we can watch on the picture, there were so much people camping. They did
some activities for attracting, having fun and reporting. They organised themselves and
they are still protesting. It movement has inuence in every city of Spain. Even they are
organised in some quarters.
The movement has been an inuence for the rest of the word. In Greece, Germany,
the United States of America, the Vatican... The transmission was easy because of the
developing of the new technologies. Twitter was crucial for this because everybody around
the world could know about the movement on this tool. In Spain, people were organising
on twitter and meeting at main square. Everybody knew where and when.
5.2 Occupy Wall Street
This movement is a spin-off of the 15-M movement. On 17th of september of 2011,
some people started to occupied the Zuccotti Park in New York City. They were protesting
about the high power of the companies and the tax evasion of the 1% richest people. They
wanted to camp there some moths and to extend this movement to the rest of the United
States of America.
The movement has the Anonymouss and Adbusterss support. They are still
camping and visiting some rich peoples houses.
6. Personal opinion
In my opinion, the hegemonic countries have been controlling the rules of the
international trade and inuencing on the policies. They did not care about poor countries
because they have been using them for their own benets. At rst, the United Kingdom
was using their colons for improving their companies and exports. The UK colonised those
lands because it knew it needed them for maintain as rst world power.
In the another hand, it is true the colonialism helped rich countries to develop them.
These countries increased their wealth so much. Their society experienced a big change.
The world started to develop. However, there are other ways to do that, maybe with more
time, but it is better than use poor countries for this goal.
Obviously, people started to be angry and desperate so they created social
movements against the repression because they did not have rights or even freedom.
They were used for the rich countriess proposals: they were not persons, they could not
chose anything on their own.
We have to say thank you to the original movement because it has helped us so
much. As we can see, we can gain many things without violence. In fact, they got their
freedom and the colonialism era ended.
About the Americanisation, the money has the rst role: it moves everything. After
the Second World War, the United States of America used its inuence for rule the world. It
created international organisms for that goal. USA gave so much money for controlling the
capitalism countries and ghting against the Communism.
The real wages have maintained constant while the benets of the companies have
been increasing. With the actual crisis, the real wages are decreasing while the benets of
the companies are maintaining constant or even increasing. The result is a high level of
unemployment while governments give money to banks.
As a consequence of this, society has created a lot of movements against the
capitalism, government, economic policy, politics, etc. They are ghting for a better world
but it is a difcult goal right now because the richest people have a lot of power.
7. References
1. Van Lear, William and Sisk, James (2010) Financial Crisis and Economic Stability: A
Comparison between Finance Capitalism and Money Manager Capitalism.
2. Charles P. Kindleberger (2005) From the Streets to the Internet: The Cyber-Diffusion of
Contention, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
3. Chabot, Sean (2002) Transnational Diffusion and the African-American Reinvention of
the Gandhian Repertoire, w: Jackie Smith, Hank Johnston (eds) Globalization and
Resistance. Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements.
4. Soule, Sarah (1997) The Student Divestment Movement in the United States and
Tactical Diffusion: The Shantytown Protest, Social Forces