Page 8 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Preface

Talk about globalization in the international political economy -
particularly discussions focusing on communication technology devel-
opments - all too often convey the dawning of seamless human
interactions linked in a complex web of commercial relations. This
certainly is the view held by most American state officials at the end of
the twentieth century. From the official Cold War policy of 'contain-
ment', the United States has turned to the awkward unofficial term
'enlargement' - enlargement of institutions friendly to open markets,
liberal democracy and corporate-friendly transnational technologies.
In the updated version of the old General Motors claim that 'what's
good for GM is good for America', today 'what is good for America
is deemed to be what is good for Boeing's exports, for Microsoft's
penetration of the world's computer operating systems and for Holly-
wood's screenings in cinemas across the globe'. Indeed, communica-
1
tions and information commodity activities together constitute the
largest and fastest-growing sector of the world economy. 2
What all this really means and precisely how 'enlargement' is taking
place remain remarkably under-assessed. This book is a contribution
to understanding this. In the following pages I argue that people make
history, and technologies, organizations, institutions and international
regimes are the vehicles and mediators of its construction. I also argue
that in the next century, the position of the United States in the
international political economy in large part will be determined by
human agents whose interests are directly shaped by past ways of
organizing and thinking. Nevertheless, because people are capable of
changing these ways of organizing and thinking - capable of changing
the structures of everyday life - the world of tomorrow is far from
being altogether mapped out. The fact that technologies, organiza-
tions, institutions and regimes require human intervention, both at the
time of their creation and as a condition of their perpetuation, gives
cause, I believe, for guarded optimism.
Perhaps the most important and recently most neglected institution
shaping this future is the nation state. As Leo Panitch writes, 'states
have become the authors of a regime that defines and guarantees,
through treaties with constitutional effect, the global and domestic
rights of capital'. In this book, the history of US policy in relation to
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one of the most significant technologies of the so-called information

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