Simon Rorschach on the new global divide: producers and dependents.
Every great change in production redraws the political map of the world. The country that masters the leading technology gains power over those that buy its products, supply its materials, and depend on its markets. Marx understood that the relations between states often follow the relations between capital and labor. The factory, the mine, and the machine shape society as surely as the army and the state. Yet the present change carries a peculiar danger for poorer nations. Earlier forms of capitalism allowed dependent countries to acquire skills, build factories, and develop classes capable of demanding political power. The present age threatens to close that path. China has become the great workshop of the world at precisely the moment when machines are taking over much of the work that once gave poorer countries their chance to rise. The result may be a world divided between those who own the means of production and those who merely consume its products. Marx expected capitalism to create its own enemies by gathering workers into great centers of production. The new world economy may concentrate that process in a handful of countries while leaving much of humanity outside it.
