"Global Capitalism" and its Historical Phase(<SPECIAL ISSUE>The Structure of Global Capitalism)

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the historical significance of "global capitalism" which emerged in the 1980s and gained momentum since the 1990s. If the globalization of capitalism means simply the expansion of the domain of market economy, we can almost always recognize such a tendency since the beginning of capitalism in the 16th century. The new feature of the contemporary globalization is that it was accompanied by the neo-liberalist policy and the market fundamentalist policy. These policies replaced the welfare state policy which was the ideal model of the post-war capitalist world until the early 1970s. British Thatcher government originally started these new policies. Then the United States took strong initiative throughout the recent two decades. Therefore, substance of globalization is Americanization in brief. Although the Americanization extends not only in economic field but also political and cultural fields, its main sphere is the financial market including money, capital and foreign exchange markets. To say nothing of euro-currency market, most of financial markets in the world have been deregulated more or less under the pressure of the US government and its de facto confederate, the IMF. The main actors of the deregulation are various kinds of the US financial institutions, which manipulate huge amount of surplus US dollars. What kind of circumstances brought about such a situation? In my opinion, one of them is the change of the US-Japan relation. In the late 1970s, UK and US economies suffered from serious difficulties such as stagflation and absenteeism. Neo-liberalist policy was introduced as a booster shot to revive market discipline for the economic recovery. However, the stagnation of the US economy lasted until the end of 1980s with twin deficit of budget and current balance. On the other hand, Japanese economy was the height of her prosperity in the late 1980s and her manufacturing competitiveness exceeded that of the US. Japanese production and management system were highly admired in the world. Japan had no reasons to introduce neo-liberalist policy. Under such circumstances, the US, which had comparative advantage in the financial sector, forced Japan to deregulate her financial markets. The critical Japan-US economic conflict forced Japan to compromise with the US. Then Japanese economy fell into long stagnation with serious financial crisis. Thus, the financial deregulation played an important roll for the US to recover her economic hegemony. IT revolution and the collapse of the USSR type of socialist economies supported the US recovery, and the global financial market surrendered to the US financial hegemony.