(This is the text of a talk introducing my book Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India (Columbia University Press, New York, and Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2011) at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, on 23 January 2012. It was subsequently published as NMML Occasional Paper: Perspectives in Indian Development, New Series 2.)
I started working on what became
this book more than ten years ago, because I felt there was so much confusion
in the way that large sections of the trade union movement and the Left
responded to globalisation. They took a straightforward anti-globalisation
position which, by default, reinforced a nationalist reaction against globalisation.
This went against all my Marxist internationalist instincts. Also, having been
involved in trade union research for decades, it was obvious to me that many of
the evils attributed to globalisation, such as subcontracting and the shifting
of production, had been rampant for years or decades prior to it. Most
disturbing of all, much of the anti-globalisation rhetoric was
indistinguishable from the rhetoric of the extreme Right. (I have given
examples of this in my book.)
Therefore one of the first tasks I set myself was to come up with a working definition of globalisation that sorted out some of these confusions.