Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin R. Barber [25]
The authors of the North American Free Trade Agreement found it particularly cumbersome to decide which products could qualify for tariff-free status in the new zone since so many products “foreign” to North America were nonetheless assembled in the region with local parts. How about Japanese picture tubes installed in Mexican television chassis? Under traditional trade rules they were “domestic;” under NAFTA rules, the picture tubes and electron guns will also have to be domestic to qualify. But since Japanese companies own large shares of both of the “American” glass companies that manufacture tubes, “American” domestic television sets will still be substantially Japanese, even if they qualify as American under NAFTA rules.10 American-made cars will have to have 50 percent of their parts (by value) as well as 50 percent of their labor contributed domestically (rising to 62.5 percent in 2002) but does this really make the cars “American”? Putting identity labels on products turns out to be even more challenging than establishing ethnic identities for people, for products have to be disassembled and labeled part by part by part, by origin of material, nationality of labor force, and cultural identity of designer to arrive at an ad absurdum conclusion about their ethnic identity.11
Historically, there is something prototypically American about the automobile: Henry Ford’s commitment to a mass-produced motorized vehicle that would set every American family free has come to be associated with many of the virtues of American lifestyle and not a few of its vices. The internationalization of automobile culture—what George Ball once called “an ideology on four wheels”—as well as of automobile manufacturing is thus actually a globalization of America, no matter who is making the cars. The Chinese have recently committed to automobile manufacture as a foundation for economic modernization: more than any other decision they have made, this one may commit them to the Americanization they most fear.12
Yet however American cars are in concept, they are hardly American in their manufacture whether measured by parts, design, or even labor. Indeed, increasingly, corporations refuse to define themselves by reference to labor at all, let alone by reference to a particular parochial labor force with a local national character. Ignacio Ramonet argues that in the global economy neither capital nor work nor material is the determining factor, but rather the “optimal relationship between these three,” which pushes us into the world of information, communication, and administration where traditional nation-states can exert little control and are bound to feel more and more uncomfortable.13 Robert Kuttner reports that the state-of-the-art handle for the postindustrial company—which clearly is also the post—nation-state company—is “the virtual corporation” where “the company is no longer a physical entity with a stable mission or location, but a shifting set of temporary relationships connected by computer network, phone and fax.”14
McWorld is a kind of virtual reality, created by invisible but omnipotent high-tech information networks and fluid transnational economic markets, so the virtual corporation is not just a provocative turn of phrase.15 Without even trying, reporter Julie Edelson Halpert gives it concrete meaning in the portrait she draws of Ford Motor Company’s Mondeo project:
Seeking to shave months and millions of dollars from car design, Ford has consolidated management of its European, North American and Asian design operations into a single international network using powerful work stations based on Silicon Graphics Inc. technology linked by Ethernet networking software.
…The Ford system … was brought under a single “electronic roof” … based in Dearborn, Michigan. The other main sites on the