-Caveat Lector-
>From Al-Ahram Weekly
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1999/456/op2.htm
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The globalisation brigade marches on
By Gamil Mattar *
Two warring camps: one championing globalisation (which 1�Snderstands to
varying degrees), the other attacking globalisation (sometimes with a
grasp of the issues, often with a refusal to comprehend). Both have their
fanatics. Thomas Friedman is one of the most zealous advocates of
globalisation. Certainly, by now he has run out of things he can say about
the subject, I thought after reading a book and several articles he had
written. I was mistaken. Last April, he came out with The Lexus and the
Olive Tree. The product of a flash of inspiration following the author's
visit to the Japanese car factory that produces the Lexus, the book may
well appear to be an endless series of trivial anecdotes posing as factual
portrayal of realities, or, worse, a compilation of determinist visions.
Such has been the frequency and influence of the teleological reasoning
characteristic of Friedman's work that it has brought some globalisation
evangelists to the brink of heresy. Several weeks ago, I read in a French
newspaper that the proponents of globalisation see world history in terms
of three phases. The first was the age of divinity, marked by a succession
of competing religious creeds. The second, the age of reason, began in the
eighteenth century, when all the bases of contemporary political thinking
evolved. Finally, the age of certainty has dawned, and with it the
unsurpassable and unrivaled religion of globalisation.
The debate over globalisation has been and, for many, is still exciting.
And so it may continue to be, if it remains confined to philosophers and
theoreticians. Intellectual debates can be stimulating as long as only
intellectuals are involved. But disaster is in store when one or both
sides of a debate begin to lure political authorities into taking part.
And when these authorities stop acting as impartial observers and begin to
adopt absolutist stands on one side or the other, as has increasingly been
the case in the debates over globalisation, we are really in trouble. The
debate over globalisation has become politicised. What was once
stimulating, sometimes amusing (given the absurdities that have often
passed as reasoning) has become nightmarish as idle drivel turns into
policy, fiction into law and fantasy into certitude.
Globalisation is on the rise. Of this there can be no doubt. I take issue,
however, with the inevitability or wisdom of capitulating resignedly to
the trend. Globalisation advocates themselves admit that it does not
necessarily promise the land of milk and honey. In fact, they say it can
often be bitter and painful. What they do not say is that the majority of
the world's population lives in hardship, that this majority is growing
and that their hardship is growing more acute. Nor do they say that most
of the evils of the process, whether we call it globalisation, unbridled
capitalism or the new age of certitude, are becoming increasingly brutal.
The critics -- the weaker of the two camps -- stress a number of
deficiencies which they believe threaten the stability of certain
societies that have plunged headlong into the process of globalisation.
These deficiencies, they argue, also jeopardise international peace and
security, as well as the very bases of globalisation: democracy,
transparency, broad-based participation in economic and political activity
and an expanding free market. Of greatest concern, they contend, is the
growing discrepancy between rich and poor, both within nations and at the
global level.
Years after the free market experiment became virtually universal and the
role of the state in steering the economy declined, one fifth of the
world's population continues to suffer abject poverty. More than 1.3
billion people in the world today live on the equivalent of one dollar a
day. How lamentable, then, is the remark of one of America's foremost
proponents of globalisation that the world's poor -- who, he confesses,
will increase in number and whose poverty will become more aggravated --
will be eating a Big Mac as their daily meal? Although poor, he says, they
will at least be taking part in the process of globalisation. I agree with
the editor-in-chief of Le Monde Diplomatique that there is no difference
between this comment and Marie Antoinette's proverbial utterance of 1789.
The second shortcoming cited by the critics of globalisation is the
deteriorating -- in every sense of the word -- relationship between the
state and the symbols of statehood. For the first time in 350 years, the
state is voluntarily -- so it appears -- relinquishing the most important
constituents of its existence, not least of which its national
sovereignty. More than ever, it is beleaguered by international financial
institutions, which use loans and debt servicing liberally as the whip to
impose conditions regarding the structure of government and its political
philosophy.
Equally debilitating to the state is the electronic herd, as Thomas
Friedman has described the masses of speculators on international
financial markets, and their agents within the state. This herd, steered
by institutions specialising in financial and economic assessment
operations, has become perhaps the most powerful strike force in modern
history. At the slightest signal that a nation's government bonds are
worth less today than they were yesterday, the value of the bonds drops,
the national economy teeters, hungry and destitute mobs launch violent
demonstrations and governments crumble.
There is no need for domestic or foreign military intervention; existing
democratic institutions are superfluous. One economic observer has
compared the alliance between financial assessment institutions and the
electronic herd with the atomic bomb. I found the analogy particularly
apt, but there is a difference. An atomic bomb with the horrible
destructive power witnessed in Hiroshima can demolish the infrastructure
of a province, kill tens of thousands and make tens of thousands of other
inhabitants homeless. The destructive power of the financial speculators
is infinitely more insidious. It can demolish a nation the size of Russia
or Indonesia, leaving its carcass easy prey to the smaller predators in
the jungle of globalisation. This has been one of the most important
developments to draw the attention of the military everywhere. In
Washington, they have their eyes trained on Indonesia, and in Indonesia,
they have their eyes trained on the new forces that have taken control of
that country's fate: the army of financial speculators and the IMF.
It would be wrong to believe that responsible political officials in a
number of nations are not aware of the peril posed by these forces. They
are on the alert; they have admitted that the "state" is fragile, and have
disclosed the extent of its weakness. Sometimes they have had recourse to
loans in the hope of strengthening it, only to find that these loans
acquired an impetus that threatened the state itself. They countered by
calling for "cultural authenticity", which goaded the forces of cultural
globalisation into an assault on any glimmerings of national culture, the
barrage of drivel and misinformation channeled through the ever-expanding
media. The state media in the developing nations, especially in Eastern
Europe and Latin America, was unable to get its fair share of air time.
The most powerful prevailed, again.
To both pro- and anti- globalisation theorists, globalisation has become
more connotative of dissolution than of assimilation and harmony. The
inexorable process seems to bring with it an inevitable corollary of
minorities rebelling against majority rule and demands for a multitude of
petty states, each with its own ethnic identity. The phenomenon has cast
the right to self- determination in a different light, particularly given
the increase in outside intervention to defend minority rights from "the
power of the state". The state is besieged increasingly by demands to
ignore the principle of national unity based on a shared culture, history
and fate, and, with a stroke of the pen, to adopt the principle of
cultural plurality. The powers exerting these pressures are well aware
that Third World governments cannot easily sustain rapid transformations.
On every continent, we can find an example confirming the rule:
international forces have intervened everywhere to remedy the disasters
resulting from relentless pressure to introduce plurality prematurely and
under unfavourable circumstances.
The growing gap between the preaching and the practice of globalisation
has begun to wreak havoc on domestic political arrangements in many
societies. Globalisation crusaders contend that their fundamental tenets
are political plurality, freedom of expression and respect for diversity
of opinion and belief. They overlook these tenets, however, when preaching
the inevitability of globalisation. The world is racing headlong toward a
new monolithic ideology, which heralds a new totalitarianism far more
dangerous than all those of the 20th century.
The strident and aggressive campaign for globalisation brooks no
resistance, no dissenting ideas, no constructive criticism and, indeed, no
free and open global dialogue on the notions of political and cultural
plurality. As such, it has come to depend on a propagandist style that the
West viewed with derision as long as it profited the communist machine.
Propaganda was grounded in endless repetition: the new capitalist system
has discovered this method serves very conveniently as the ultimate proof
of its superiority.
* The writer is the director of Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic
Research.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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