PRAXIS GRAMSCIANA

This is the world of globalization— a new context for and a new connectivity among economic actors and activities throughout theWorld In the early years of the United Nations, the General Assembly’s timely adjournment could be predicted with precision: its absolute limit was fixed by the year’s last voyage of the Queen Mary. That world, clearly, was a very different place from today’s. Indeed, when the United Nations was founded two thirds of the current Members did not exist as sovereign states, their people still living under colonial rule. The planet hosted a total population of fewer than 2.5 billion, compared to 6 billion today. Trade barriers were high, trade flows minuscule and capital controls firmly in place. Most big companies operated within a single country and produced for their home market. The cost of transoceanic telephone calls was prohibitive for the average person and limited even business use to exceptional circumstances. The annual output of steel was a prized symbol of national economic prowess. The world’s first computer had just been constructed; it filled a large room, bristled with 18,000 electron tubes and half a million solder joints, and had to be physically rewired for each new task. Ecology was a subject confined to the study of biology, and references to cyberspace would not have been found even in science fiction.