Thus, they tend to treat such problems as child labor, unemployment, erosion of the ecological equilibrium of the planet, and the super-exploitation of the neocolonial world as if capitalism and capitalists have little or nothing to do with these and the many other connected social, economic and environmental evils. They act as though a solution can be reached merely by changing the policies of these regulatory institutions of world capitalism or by changing the personnel in charge-or at the most, achieve a solution by abolishing one or more of these institutions. A growing minority of mostly young people, however, have rightly concluded that it is the social and economic system of capitalism, as such, that lies at the root of all these and other evils. In contrast to these radicalizing youth, however, the loudest critics of globalization avoid mentioning that these great economic and social injustices are the natural fruits of the capitalist organism. After all, if by globalization was meant the abolition of borders artificially separating human beings according to imaginary lines drawn on maps, the roles of those for and against the accepted version of globalization today would be reversed.
Capitalist globalization is indeed the abolition of borders.
But only in regard to the free movement of commodities and capital to and from wherever the world's most powerful capitalists can realize the highest returns on their exports and investments. And they will use whatever force is necessary to open up those borders that remain closed to the unrestricted penetration by imperialist capital wherever it has been so far excluded. Exactly what capitalists mean by free enterprise, in particular, and freedom and human rights in general is their own freedom to ravish the planet. Moreover, it means running roughshod over the rights of the entire human race, as they have done to Africans, Cubans, Iraqis, and Yugoslavs, to mention only a few of imperialist capitalism's most recent victims. Thus, to free trade they counterpose protectionism-that is, the imposition of tariffs on imports to protect the internal markets of their capitalists from more efficient competitors.