globalization & Pynchon?

[Jane Sweet]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> I suspect Pynchon's after fish bigger than even global capital, instead the
> spiritual/metaphysical/philosophical conditions of existence that predispose
> us to the sorts of abuses -- Nazi war crimes, colonial exploitation,
> marijuana eradication, etc. -- he depicts with such power in his writings.
> I suspect as well he's got enough of the 50's beatnik/60's radical in him to
> not care a great deal for these companies and what they're doing to the
> kinds of local cultures he celebrates throughout his fiction. But none of us
> knows enough about him personally to say with any authority, and many of us
> question whether that's an appropriate line of inquiry in this discussion
> group.

Well I think we can draw some conclusions from his fiction.
Globalization? Nope, not a Pynchon concern. In fact, the
term is worthless, it's a propaganda term. We have to talk
about regionalization and not globalization. If we study the
development of the world economy we will not speak of
globalization, but rather of capital flows and production
that is not global, but that is in and among the countries
of the European Union,  NAFTA (USA, Canada, and Mexico) and
the trade bloc around Japan. 

Again, if we talk about the USA economy, we are not talking
about globalization. The USA economy is a domestic economy,
this is almost too obvious, but here are some figures: 

Exports and Imports of goods as a percentage of Gross
Domestic Product in current market prices for the USA is
around 15-16 percent. That's Exports and Imports and that
includes intangibles and tangible products. Take away the
financials and services and Imports and  as a percentage of
GDP, what the USA exports is very little. So the argument
that runs, the USA is exporting its culture and products all
over the globe, manufacturing it in the developing world
with cheap labor blah, blah, is, to put bluntly, Bull. 

Pynchon is certainly against colonialism and genocide, be it
in Africa, America, Europe, or Asia.  This is clear not only
in the novel V. but his comments on Vietnam, Hitler,
American colonialism, the African Herero, in for example,
that Hirsch letter. 
His critique of American foregin/domestic police state
policy (Vineland, war powers, war on drugs, expansion,
executive aggrandizement, civil rights and liberties, I know
you are familiar with Thoreen's essay) is not about
globalization. In GR P makes extensive use of Richard
Sasuly's IG Farben, a book not about globalization, but
nearly the opposite. Remember that Hitler attacked IG Farben
for its foreign concerns, even creating a cartoon to
satirize it not only in Germany but in South America.  P
shows the connections to Standard Oil, Dupont, GE, and so
on, the film industry, the inflation policies, nothing very
profound in that in itself, and moreover it is not a satire
of globalization, but of cartelization and robber barons, a
horse of a different color. P is concerned about WAR and
what drives it. IG Farben did not want to go to war, but the
political environment, brought about in part by debt and
restrictions, inflation, isolationism, not global free
trade, and their expansionist/cartel/pattent policies, made
it nearly impossible for them not to go to war.