Globalization is both an active process of corporate expansion across borders and a structure of cross-border facilities and economic linkages that has been steadily growing and changing as the process gathers steam. Like its conceptual partner "free trade," globalization is also an ideology, whose function is to reduce any resistance to the process by making it seem both highly beneficent and unstoppable.
And as with free trade, while globalization may sometimes yield economic benefits, both the process and economic-political regime it is helping bring about threaten progressive ends, and should be recognized as such and fought at every level. Admittedly this is a formidable task, as the economic and political power of its beneficiaries, and its momentum, are great and contesting it seems an almost utopian undertaking. But globalization has its vulnerabilities, and attacking it intellectually, at the local level of plant abandonments and moves, as well as at the national political level can help build understanding and support for a larger oppositional movement.
Globalization as Ideology
Globalization is just one of an array of concepts and arguing points that have been mobilized to advance the corporate agenda. Others have been deregulation and getting government off our backs, balancing the budget, cutting back entitlements (non-corporate), and free trade.
全球化作為跨國擴(kuò)張合作與構(gòu)筑區(qū)域經(jīng)濟(jì)聯(lián)系的積極進(jìn)程，已經(jīng)獲得長足發(fā)展并繼續(xù)蒸蒸日上。正如與生俱來的“自由貿(mào)易”的理念一樣，全球化也是一種意識形態(tài)，并致力于依仗它的豐厚效益和不可阻擋的潮流來削弱任何試圖抵抗這一過程的障礙。
通過自由貿(mào)易，全球化有時候能夠產(chǎn)生巨大的經(jīng)濟(jì)效益，它協(xié)助處理了威脅社會進(jìn)步的處于末端的進(jìn)程和經(jīng)濟(jì)政治制度，并在各個水平層面上向著它所被承認(rèn)的那樣前進(jìn)。誠然，這是一個艱巨的任務(wù)，作為受益人的經(jīng)濟(jì)和政治力量亦呈現(xiàn)出與全球化相互爭奪領(lǐng)土的勢頭，使得這一理想似乎成為一個烏托邦似的許諾。但是全球化也有其弱點(diǎn)，它容易喪失理智，在國家范圍內(nèi)幫助建立起更大的有助于對立雙方相互理解的機(jī)制的同時，也使得地方政府贏得更多的主導(dǎo)權(quán)，
意識形態(tài)視野內(nèi)的全球化
全球化是推動了合作進(jìn)程的、飽受爭議的觀點(diǎn)和理念的綜合，這是是其中的一個方面。而另一方面，其他力量違反法規(guī)、平衡預(yù)算、削減權(quán)利（非企業(yè)）和自由貿(mào)易。
像自由貿(mào)易一樣，全球化擁有道德的光環(huán)。正如“自由”必須是正確的，全球化暗示了國家間的合作與協(xié)力，甚至不惜與民族主義和貿(mào)易保護(hù)主義分庭抗禮，勢必具有一定的消極意義。跨國貿(mào)易和投資在經(jīng)濟(jì)上打擊相對較弱的國家（或經(jīng)濟(jì)體）的可能性，或?qū)摇獰o論強(qiáng)弱——的內(nèi)部的民主控制產(chǎn)生侵蝕的后果，都被經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家和學(xué)者們忽略和排除掉了。這些缺陷同樣沒有被介乎自由貿(mào)易與全球化和保護(hù)主義之間的主流辯論考慮在內(nèi)，這可能將演變?yōu)閭鹘y(tǒng)合作模式與民主政治下的自由模式之間的爭斗，進(jìn)而影響到選民對非企業(yè)的民主促進(jìn)的興趣。