Just what does the new global capitalism that we've heard so much about really bode for us in the United States?   It can be instructive to look more closely at business' emerging role in other societies.

Among the most striking examples of business’ expanding global role are the rapidly industrialized "tiger" states of East Asia.  Their spectacular sucesses as well as their more recent failures at increasing general economic wellbeing tend to obscure a deeper social implication, from the  standpoint of traditional American values:  in the East Asian model the megacorporation, not the individual, is the more central building block of society.

A sense of discordance with our own historic core values tends to grow as we look elsewhere in the world.  In Russia, although the old Party-centered power structure has been supplanted by a new economically-based system, a disturbingly high number of the "entrepreneurs" have in actuality been just old Party bosses throwing their weight around in new ways.   Perhaps the most significant new force on the Russian business scene has been organized crime, which is now said to control up to 40% of the economy.

As for China, its continuing disregard for human rights and intolerance of dissent, combined with a bustling new wave of officially encouraged business activity, signals a major strategic decision.  The world’s most populous society is now overtly organizing itself around the principle that the primary yearning of the masses, as well as the cornerstone of the modern social compact, is not  freedom or democracy, but increased access to Western-style consumer goods.

Although "popular" ownership of the means of production  has been deemed more or less irrelevant, a large and dominant central "people's" government will still remain.    Its mission will be to provide an ultra-stable, ultra-orderly environment where corporate powers can go about their work of producing and marketing VCRs and cell phones and chain restaurants—Brave New World with a franchise logo.

In sum, what is dramatically sweeping the world today is only capitalism and consumerism, not traditional American-style democracy and free enterprise.  And today's global capitalism has mutated into forms quite different from anything advocated by our own American founding fathers.