A Globalização
Por António Marques Mendes
Se há palavra que pode ser utilizada para retratar os anos 90 é “Globalização”. Os anglo-saxões designam por “buzzword” o estatuto que este conceito atingiu na década passada.. Como disse Keohane “tal como inter-dependência foi a palavra dos anos 70, globalização é a palavra do fim-de-século”.
“O mundo é uma cidade” poderia ser a expressão-síntese saída da boca de qualquer analista contemporâneo. No entanto, a frase foi proferida pelo Barão Carl Meyer von Rothschild em 1875 quando os mercados de capitais caíram por todo o mundo, no auge da maior crise económico-financeira do séc. XIX. Espanto? Nem por isso; como referiu Charles Calomiris, professor da Escola de Negócios da Universidade de Columbia “ainda não chegámos aonde estávamos há 100 anos atrás”. Com efeito o mundo laboral é menos fluído hoje do que era no séc. XIX. Nessa altura não eram necessários passaportes e qualquer um, tivesse meios, poderia viajar para onde quisesse. Só como referência, fica o número de 60 milhões de Europeus que se fixaram nas Américas e na Oceânia. Em 1900 15% da população dos EUA eram pessoas nascidas no estrangeiro, hoje esse número não ultrapassa os 8%. Nessa altura 7% do PNB americano resultava de exportações, enquanto hoje é de 8%.Em 1879, 95% das importações alemãs eram livres de impostos. Segundo um relatório de 1997 do FMI em que se apresenta o “capital mobility index”, defendia-se que os movimentos de capitais enquanto proporção/percentagem do produto económico, encontram-se hoje a níveis mais baixos daqueles que existiam em 1880.
Se isto é verdade como é que ficamos? Afinal de contas a globalização é um produto dos anos 90 do século XX ou, antes pelo contrário, o que vivemos hoje é uma sequela série B de um grande sucesso que aconteceu há 100 anos?
O problema, parece-nos, começa pela definição do conceito. O que é afinal de contas a globalização de que tantos falam? Quais as suas dimensões , as suas expressões, os argumentos dos que a defendem e dos que a atacam.?
Em primeiro lugar deve ser esclarecido que globalização é um conceito derivado, que encontra num outro a sua base de identidade, ou seja, a globalização é uma medida de extensão, aumento ou diminuição, de um certo estado de coisas que, para efeitos da nossa apresentação, e seguindo a linha de Robert Keohane, designaremos aqui por globalismo. Globalismo é um estado do mundo envolvendo redes de interdependência multicontinentais. As ligações entre os pólos destas redes ocorrem através de fluxos e influências de capital, bens, informação, ideias, pessoas e forças, assim como, substâncias biológicas ou ambientais. A interdependência a que nos referimos, traduz-se por situações caracterizadas por efeitos recíprocos entre países e actores socio-político-económicos dos diferentes países. Retomando o argumento original, a globalização, ou o seu reverso, a deglobalização, representam incrementos ou dimuições do nível de globalismo.
O globalismo é um tipo de interdependência que apresenta dois tipos de características especiais: i) refere-se a redes de conexões (i.e., relações múltiplas) e não a ligações simples (extrava-se, por isso, a circunscrição produzida por campos simples de análise, como sejam o económico, o militar o ambiental etc.); ii) para uma rede de relacionamentos ser considerada global deverá ter um impacto global e não simplesmente regional.
O globalismo é um fenómeno multi-dimensional, embora muitos o pretendam reduzir à sua faceta económica, como se a economia mundial possuísse uma omnipotência sobre outros campos da humanidade. Devemos, por esta razão, apontar outros campos que, exemplificativamente, podem ser expressões deste estado: i) globalismo económico diz respeito aos fluxos de longa-distância de bens, capital, informação e percepções que acompanham as trocas de mercado, envolvendo ainda, a organização de processos que acompanham estes fluxos (do trabalho, por exemplo); ii) globalismo militar refere-se a redes de interdependência em que a força e ameaça (ou promessa de ameaça) da força são empregues; iii) globalismo ambiental diz respeito ao movimento de longa-distãncia de materiais nos oceanos ou na atmosfera, ou ainda, de substâncias biológicas (como sejam patogenes ou materiais genéticos); neste sentido a depleção da camada de ozono, a expansão do HIV, a devastação da floresta amazónica com o consequente comércio de madeira, são caracterizações de globalismo ambiental ou biológico; iv) globalismo socio-cultural envolve o movimento de ideias, informação, imagens e pessoas.
Quando falamos coloquialmente de globalização num contexto contemporâneo referimo-nos a um incremento do globalismo, embora não nos devamos esquecer que o globalismo não é um fenómeno contemporâneo, e muito menos a sua mais mediática expressão actual, o globalismo económico, tem hoje a sua expressão mais elevada, de tal modo que os analistas económicos coincidem em afirmar que o processo mais expressivo de globalização económica ocorreu entre 1851 e 1914.
Pegando nas palavras de Thomas Friedman (“The Lexus and the Olive Tree”) a globalização contemporânea é “farther, faster, deeper and cheaper”. Tal caracterização leva-nos a concordar com Keohane que nos diz que a avaliação do actual estado de globalismo e por consequência a caracterização do processo de globalização deverá ser efectuado atendendo ao factor “densidade”. As globalizações poderão, assim, ser caracterizadas como mais densas ou menos densas, e é este factor que revela que a globalização que enfrentamos hoje não só é mais densa do que aquelas a que assistimos no passado, como também envolve diferenças do tipo de densidade presente. Hoje presenciamos uma maior densidade das redes que se estabelecem, à qual as instituições estabelecidas têm que reagir com maior velocidade, já que as condições criadas produzem uma interdependência complexa fruto de um incremento da participação transnacional. As organizações internacionais tradicionais e as do característico estado-nação têm de responder a desafios cada vez mais complexos por força da evolução tecnológica e da capacidade que este desenvolvimento deu às pessoas espalhadas pelo mundo inteiro. Friedman apelidou esta consequência de “democratização da tecnologia, finanças e informação”. Só nos anos 90 em todo o mundo assistiu-se a um incremento de 6,000 para 26,000 de ONGs que transformaram as sociedades ocidentais (especialmente, mas não só) em sociedades “de assuntos-múltiplos-interrelacionados”. Cada vez mais os assuntos são agarrados internacionalmente e é questionada a legitimidade legal, tradicional, social e económica das práticas e regulações que as instituições estabelecidas adoptam ou estão a pensar adoptar.
Como processo extremamente complexo que é, os fenómenos mais diversos que provocam perturbação são associados à globalização. Como refere Auguste, num interessante artigo de 1998 do New Perspectives Quarterly, os fenómenos assim rotulados podem ser divididos em 3 categorias. Aquelas crenças que não são verdadeiras, aquelas que sendo verdadeiras não são novas e aqueles fenómenos que não são novos mas que cedo se desvanecerão.
Na primeira categoria incluem-se todas análises optimistas neo-liberais que indicam que a globalização está a conduzir a uma maior convergência entre ricos e pobres. O que é verdade no entanto é que em 1965, 52 de 108 países em desenvolvimento tinham um rendimento p.c. de 20% ou menos que aqueles dos países ditos ricos; em 1995, 88 desses países verificavam a mesma situação. Por seu lado os oponentes da globalização afirmam que a globalização está a produzir maiores disparidades salariais do que antigamente e maiores níveis de desemprego, quando na verdade as situações a que se referem se devem mais a ineficiências dos mercados sobretudo o do trabalho e a intervenções regulamentares ineficientes dos estados-nação, no campo da legislação de educação e, especialmente trabalho. Um terceiro argumento é que a globalização representa o fim da autonomia do estado-nação e dos governos nacionais ou a trivialização do papel do estado no que respeita ao sector privado. No entanto, como todos sabem a maioria dos benefícios positivos a extrair da globalização são barrados pela intervenção reguladora crescente dos governos que tem que subsidiar mecanismos de “welfare state” ineficazes. Na segunda categoria incluem-se maiores níveis de migração de mão-de-obra, de ideias , investimento directo em países estrangeiros e os níveis de comércio. Enquanto na última temos de referir a cultura popular e os mercados de capitais internacionais.
Com este esclarecimento feito, importa agora sintetizar alguns factos. Quais então as características principais da globalização que vivemos?
i) a globalização não é somente uma expansão quantitativa do investimento e do comércio internacional; representa uma transformação profunda a nível internacional dos processos de consumo, troca e produção com implicações económicas, sociais,
ii) culturais e políticas para as sociedades espalhadas pelo mundo inteiro
iii) a globalização é caracterizada por uma progressão sem precedentes dos níveis de utilização tecnológica com expressões sensíveis nos campos da indústria,
iv) comunicações, informação, engenharia
iii) alterações profundas das características fundamentais que marcaram a emergência do modelo de estado-nação. O estado centraliza e mantêm as suas funções nucleares de governação e de manutenção da lei e da ordem, mas as suas funções sociais e de intervenção económica, alteram-se para funções de regulação.
iv) alterações ao nível das organizações internacionais que vêm alteradas as suas permissas de funcionamento necessitando de reformular a sua organização e forma de funcionamento, assim como, os seus mecanismos de intervenção
v) alterações no funcionamento do sector privado que como consequência destas alterações assiste a uma expansão de mercados e vê-se obrigado a redefinir as suas formas de trabalho, produção e organização.
As leituras efectuadas para a produção desta síntese de conceito permitiram ainda que nos confrontássemos com inúmeros textos onde fortes argumentos pró e contra a globalização eram brandidos por inflamados escritores. Em anexo a esta prosa encontrarão, um interessante diálogo travado entre Thomas Friedman e Ignacio Ramonet
Como os “fellow members” terão reparado a apresentação do conceito procurou ser isenta e por isso desadjectivou-se a escrita, tendo-se buscado, sem matriz ideológica de referência, as marcas os signos e as visões sobre os fenómenos a que apelidamos de globalização.
E o que interessa para a nossa reflexão, que se quer rica e pluridisciplinar, é explorar estes “globalismo e globalização” à luz de alguns eixos: o indivíduo no seio da globalização; As ideologias na globalização; as instituições neste processo de integração global; os estados e os governos; os limites inferiores e superiores da regulação dos processos de globalização e a liberdade de iniciativa individual; exigências da responsabilidade individual nas sociedades globais.
São temas complexos, como complexo é o objecto que os motiva. Espero vê-los discutidos sem paixão.
Foreign Policy
Fall, 1999
Dueling Globalizations.(opposing views of
globalization)
A DEBATE BETWEEN THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN AND IGNACIO RAMONET
DOSCAPITAL
Thomas L. Friedman
If there can be a statute of limitations on crimes, then surely there must
be a statute of limitations on foreign-policy cliches. With that in mind, I
hereby declare the "post-Cold War world" over.
For the last ten years, we have talked about this "post-Cold War
world." That is, we have defined the world by what it wasn't because we
didn't know what it was. But a new international system has now clearly
replaced the Cold War: globalization. That's right, globalization - the
integration of markets, finance, and technologies in a way that is shrinking
the world from a size medium to a size small and enabling each of us to reach
around the world farther, faster, and cheaper than ever before. It's not just
an economic trend, and it's not just some fad. Like all previous international
systems, it is directly or indirectly shaping the domestic politics, economic
policies, and foreign relations of virtually every country.
As an international system, the Cold War had its own structure of power:
the balance between the
Today's globalization system has some very different attributes, rules,
incentives, and characteristics, but it is equally influential. The Cold War
system was characterized by one overarching feature: division. The world was
chopped up, and both threats and opportunities tended to grow out of whom you
were divided from. Appropriately, that Cold War system was symbolized by a
single image: the Wall. The globalization system also has one overarching
characteristic: integration. Today, both the threats and opportunities facing a
country increasingly grow from whom it is connected to. This system is also
captured by a single symbol: the World Wide Web. So in the broadest sense, we
have gone from a system built around walls to a system increasingly built
around networks.
Once a country makes the leap into the system of globalization, its
elite begin to internalize this perspective of integration and try to locate
themselves within a global context. I was visiting
Integration has been driven in large part by globalization's defining
technologies: computerization, miniaturization, digitization, satellite
communications, fiber optics, and the Internet. And that integration, in turn,
has led to many other differences between the Cold War and globalization
systems.
Unlike the Cold War system, globalization has its own dominant culture,
which is why integration tends to be homogenizing. In previous eras, cultural
homogenization happened on a regional scale - the Romanization of Western
Europe and the Mediterranean world, the Islamization of Central Asia, the
Whereas the defining measurement of the Cold War was weight,
particularly the throw-weight of missiles, the defining measurement of the
globalization system is speed the speed of commerce, travel, communication, and
innovation. The Cold War was about Einstein's mass-energy equation, e =
m[c.sup.2]. Globalization is about
If the defining economists of the Cold War system were Karl Marx and
John Maynard Keynes, each of whom wanted to tame capitalism, the defining
economists of the globalization system are Joseph Schumpeter and Intel chairman
Andy Grove, who prefer to unleash capitalism. Schumpeter, a [TABULAR DATA
OMITTED] former Austrian minister of finance and
If the Cold War were a sport, it would be sumo wrestling, says
Last, and most important, globalization has its own defining structure
of power, which is much more complex than the Cold War structure. The Cold War
system was built exclusively around nation-states, and it was balanced at the
center by two superpowers. The globalization system, by contrast, is built
around three balances, which overlap and affect one another.
The first is the traditional balance between nation-states. In the
globalization system, this balance still matters. It can still explain a lot of
the news you read on the front page of the paper, be it the containment of Iraq
in the Middle East or the expansion of NATO against Russia in Central Europe.
The second critical balance is between nation-states and global markets.
These global markets are made up of millions of investors moving money around
the world with the click of a mouse. I call them the "Electronic
herd." They gather in key global financial centers, such as Frankfurt,
Hong Kong, London, and New York - the "supermarkets." The United
States can destroy you by dropping bombs and the supermarkets can destroy you
by downgrading your bonds. Who ousted President Suharto in Indonesia? It was
not another superpower, it was the supermarkets.
The third balance in the globalization system - the one that is really
the newest of all - is the balance between individuals and nation-states.
Because globalization has brought down many of the walls that limited the
movement and reach of people, and because it has simultaneously wired the world
into networks, it gives more direct power to individuals than at any time in
history. So we have today not only a superpower, not only supermarkets, but also
super-empowered individuals. Some of these super-empowered individuals are
quite angry, some of them quite constructive but all are now able to act
directly on the world stage without the traditional mediation of governments or
even corporations.
Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her contribution to
the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She managed to build an
international coalition in favor of a landmine ban without much government help
and in the face of opposition from the major powers. What did she say was her
secret weapon for organizing 1,000 different human rights and arms control
groups on six continents? "E-mail."
By contrast, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the February 26,
1993, World Trade Center bombing in New York, is the quintessential
"super-empowered angry man." Think about him for a minute. What was
his program? What was his ideology? After all, he tried to blow up two of the
tallest buildings in America. Did he want an Islamic state in Brooklyn? Did he
want a Palestinian state in New Jersey? No. He just wanted to blow up two of
the tallest buildings in America. He told the Federal District Court in
Manhattan that his goal was to set off an explosion that would cause one World
Trade Center tower to fall onto the other and kill 250,000 civilians. Yousef's
message was that he had no message, other than to rip up the message coming
from the all-powerful America to his society. Globalization (and
Americanization) had gotten in his face and, at the same time, had empowered
him as an individual to do something about it. A big part of the U.S.
government's conspiracy case against Yousef (besides trying to blow up the
World Trade Center in 1993, he planned to blow up a dozen American airliners in
Asia in January 1995) relied on files found in the off-white Toshiba laptop
computer that Philippine police say Yousef abandoned as he fled his Manila
apartment in January 1995, shortly before his arrest. When investigators got
hold of Yousef's laptop and broke into its files, they found flight schedules,
projected detonation times, and sample identification documents bearing
photographs of some of his co-conspirators. I loved that - Ramzi Yousef kept
all his plots on the C drive of his Toshiba laptop! One should have no illusions,
though. The super-empowered angry men are out there, and they present the most
immediate threat today to the United States and the stability of the new
globalization system. It's not because Ramzi Yousef can ever be a superpower.
It's because in today's world, so many people can be Ramzi Yousef.
So, we are no longer in some messy, incoherent "post-Cold War
world." We are in a new international system, defined by globalization,
with its own moving parts and characteristics. We are still a long way from
fully understanding how this system is going to work. Indeed, if this were the
Cold War, the year would be about 1946. That is, we understand as much about
how this new system is going to work as we understood about how the Cold War
would work in the year Churchill gave his "Iron Curtain" speech.
Nevertheless, it's time we recognize that there is a new system
emerging, start trying to analyze events within it, and give it its own name. I
will start the bidding. I propose that we call it "DOScapital."
A NEW TOTALITARIANISM
by Ignacio Ramonet
We have known for at least ten years that globalization is the dominant
phenomenon of this century. No one has been waiting around for Thomas Friedman
to discover this fact. Since the end of the 1980s, dozens of authors have
identified, described, and analyzed globalization inside and out. What is new
in Friedman's work and debatable - is the dichotomy he establishes between
globalization and the Cold War: He presents them as opposing, interchangeable
"systems." His constant repetition of this gross oversimplification
reaches the height of annoyance.
Just because the Cold War and globalization are dominant phenomena in
their times does not mean that they are both systems. A system is a set of
practices and institutions that provides the world with a practical and
theoretical framework. By this right, the Cold War never constituted a system
Friedman makes a gross error by suggesting otherwise. The term "Cold
War," coined by the media, is shorthand for a period of contemporary
history (1946-89) characterized by the predominance of geopolitical and
geostrategic concerns. However, it does not explain a vast number of unrelated
events that also shaped that era: the expansion of multinational corporations,
the development of air transportation, the worldwide extension of the United
Nations, the decolonization of Africa, apartheid in South Africa, the
advancement of environmentalism, or the development of computers and high-tech
industries such as genetic engineering. And the list goes on.
Furthermore, tension between the West and the Soviet Union, contrary to
Friedman's ideas, dates from before the Cold War. In fact, that very tension
was formative in shaping the way democratic states understood Italian fascism
in the 1920s, Japanese militarism in the 1930s, German rearmament after the
rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933, and the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939.
Friedman is right, however, to argue that globalization has a systemic
bent. Step by step, this two-headed monster of technology and finance throws
everything into confusion. Friedman, by contrast, tells a tale of globalization
fit for Walt Disney. But the chaos that seems to delight our author so much is
hardly good for the whole of humanity.
Friedman notes, and rightly so, that everything is now interdependent
and that, at the same time, everything is in conflict. He also observes that
globalization embodies (or infects) every trend and phenomenon at work in the
world today - whether political, economic, social, cultural, or ecological. But
he forgets to remark that there are groups from every nationality, religion,
and ethnicity that vigorously oppose the idea of global unification and
homogenization.
Furthermore, our author appears incapable of observing that
globalization imposes the force of two powerful and contradictory dynamics on
the world: fusion and fission. On the one hand, many states seek out alliances.
They pursue fusion with others to build institutions, especially economic ones,
that provide strength - or safety - in numbers. Like the European Union, groups
of countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, North Africa, North America, and South
America are signing free-trade agreements and reducing tariff barriers to
stimulate commerce, as well as reinforcing political and security alliances.
But set against the backdrop of this integration, several multinational
communities are falling victim to fission, cracking or imploding into fragments
before the astounded eyes of their neighbors. When the three federal states of
the Eastern bloc - Czechoslovakia, the USSR, and Yugoslavia - broke apart, they
gave birth to some 22 independent states! A veritable sixth continent!
The political consequences have been ghastly. Almost everywhere, the
fractures provoked by globalization have reopened old wounds. Borders are
increasingly contested, and pockets of minorities give rise to dreams of
annexation, secession, and ethnic cleansing. In the Balkans and the Caucasus,
these tensions unleashed wars (in Abkhazia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Moldova,
Nagorno-Karabakh, Slovenia, and South Ossetia).
The social consequences have been no kinder. In the 1980s, accelerating
globalization went hand in hand with the relentless ultraliberalism of British
prime minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Quickly,
globalization became associated with increased inequality, hikes in
unemployment, deindustrialization, and deteriorated public services and goods.
Now, accidents, uncertainty, and chaos have become the parameters by which
we measure the intensity of globalization. If we sized up our globalizing world
today, what would we find? Poverty, illiteracy, violence, and illness are on
the rise. The richest fifth of the world's population owns 80 percent of the
world's resources, while the poorest fifth owns barely .5 percent. Out of a
global population of 5.9 billion, barely 500 million people live comfortably,
while 4.5 billion remain in need. Even in the European Union, there are 16
million people unemployed and 50 million living in poverty. And the combined
fortune of the 358 richest people in the world (billionaires, in dollars)
equals more than the annual revenue of 45 percent of the poorest in the world,
or 2.6 billion people. That, it seems, is the brave new world of globalization.
Beware of Dogma
Globalization has little to do with people or progress and everything to
do with money. Dazzled by the glimmer of fast profits, the champions of
globalization are incapable of taking stock of the future, anticipating the
needs of humanity and the environment, planning for the expansion of cities, or
slowly reducing inequalities and healing social fractures.
According to Friedman, all of these problems will be resolved by the
"invisible hand of the market" and by macroeconomic growth so goes
the strange and insidious logic of what we in France call the pensee unique.
The pensee unique, or "single thought," represents the interests of a
group of economic fores - in particular, free-flowing international capital.
The arrogance of the pensee unique has reached such an extreme that one can,
without exaggerating, call it modem dogmatism. Like a cancer, this vicious
doctrine imperceptibly surrounds any rebellious logic, then inhibits it,
disturbs it, paralyzes it, and finally kills it. This doctrine, this pensee
unique, is the only ideology authorized by the invisible and omnipresent
opinion police.
The pensee unique was born in 1944, at the time of the Bretton Woods
Agreement. The doctrine sprang from the world's large economic and monetary
institutions - the Banque de France, Bundesbank, European Commission,
International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development, World Bank, and World Trade Organization - which tap their deep
coffers to enlist research centers, universities, and foundations around the
planet to spread the good word.
Almost everywhere, university economics departments, journalists (such
as Friedman), writers, and political leaders take up the principal commandments
of these new tablets of law and, through the mass media, repeat them until they
are blue in the face. Their dogma is echoed dutifully by the mouthpieces of
economic information and notably by the "bibles" of investors and
stockbrokers - the Economist, Far Eastern Economic Review, Reuters, and Wall
Street Journal, for starters - which are often owned by large industrial or
financial groups. And of course, in our media-mad society, repetition is as
good as proof.
So what are we told to believe? The most basic principle is so strong
that even a Marxist, caught offguard, would agree: The economic prevails over
the political. Or as the writer Alain Minc put it, "Capitalism cannot
collapse, it is the natural state of society. Democracy is not the natural
state of society. The market, yes." Only an economy disencumbered of
social speed bumps and other "inefficiencies" can steer clear of
regression and crisis.
The remaining key commandments of the pensee unique build upon the
first. For instance, the market's "invisible hand corrects the unevenness
and malfunctions of capitalism" and, in particular, financial markets,
whose "signals orient and determine the general movement of the
economy." Competition and competitiveness "stimulate and develop
businesses, bringing them permanent and beneficial modernization." Free
trade without barriers is "a factor of the uninterrupted development of
commerce and therefore of societies." Globalization of manufactured
production and especially financial flows should be encouraged at all costs.
The international division of labor "moderates labor demands and lowers
labor costs." A strong currency is a must, as is deregulation and
privatization at every turn. There is always "less of the state" and
a constant bias toward the interests of capital to the detriment of the
interests of labor, not to mention a callous indifference to ecological costs.
The constant repetition of this catechism in the media by almost all political
decision makers, Right and Left alike (think of British and German prime
ministers Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder's "Third Way" and "New
Middle"), gives it such an intimidating power that it snuffs out every
tentative free thought.
Magnates and Misfits
Globalization rests upon two pillars, or paradigms, which influence the
way globalizers such as Friedman think. The first pillar is communication. It
has tended to replace, little by little, a major driver of the last two
centuries: progress. From schools to businesses, from families and law to
government, there is now one command: Communicate.
The second pillar is the market. It replaces social cohesion, the idea
that a democratic society must function like a clock. In a clock, no piece is
unnecessary and all pieces are unified. From this eighteenth-century mechanical
metaphor, we can derive a modem economic and financial version. From now on,
everything must operate according to the criteria of the "master
market." Which of our new values are most fundamental? Windfall profits,
efficiency, and competitiveness.
In this market-driven, interconnected world, only the strongest survive.
Life is a fight, a jungle. Economic and social Darwinism, with its constant
calls for competition, natural selection, and adaptation, forces itself on
everyone and everything. In this new social order, individuals are divided into
"solvent" or "nonsolvent" - i.e., apt to integrate into the
market or not. The market offers protection to the solvents only. In this new
order, where human solidarity is no longer an imperative, the rest are misfits
and outcasts.
Thanks to globalization, only activities possessing four principal
attributes thrive - those that are planetary, permanent, immediate, and
immaterial in nature. These four characteristics recall the four principal
attributes of God Himself. And in truth, globalization is set up to be a kind
of modem divine critic, requiring submission, faith, worship, and new rites.
The market dictates the Truth, the Beautiful, the Good, and the Just. The
"laws" of the market have become a new stone tablet to revere.
Friedman warns us that straying from these laws will bring us to ruin
and decay. Thus, like other propagandists of the New Faith, Friedman attempts
to convince us that there is one way, and one way alone - the ultraliberal way
- to manage economic affairs and, as a connsequence, political affairs. For
Friedman, the political is in effect the economic, the economic is finance, and
finances are markets. The Bolsheviks said, "All power to the
Soviets!" Supporters of globalization, such as Friedman, demand, "All
power to the market!" The assertion is so peremptory that globalization
has become, with its dogma and high priests, a kind of new totalitarianism.
DOS CAPITAL 2.0
by Thomas L. Friedman
Ignacio Ramonet makes several points in his provocative and impassioned
anti-globalization screed. Let me try to respond to what I see as the main
ones.
Ramonet argues that the Cold War was not an international system. I
simply disagree. To say that the Cold War was not an international system
because it could not explain everything that happened during the years 1946 to
1989 - such as aerial transport or apartheid - is simply wrong. An
international system doesn't explain everything that happens in a particular
era. It is, though, a dominant set of ideas, power structures, economic
patterns, and rules that shape the domestic politics and international
relations of more countries in more places than anything else.
Not only was the Cold War such an international system, but France had a
very comfortable, unique, and, at times, constructive niche in that system,
bridging the two superpower camps. Now that this old order is gone, it is
obvious France is looking for a new, singular, and equally comfortable niche in
today's system of globalization. Just as in the Cold War, France, like every
other country, will have to define itself in relation to this new system. The
obsession with globalization in the pages of Le Monde diplomatique is eloquent
testimony to the fact that this search is alive and well in France.
Ramonet says that I "forget to remark that there are groups from
every nationality, religion, ethnicity, etc., who vigorously oppose...
globalization." In my book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, however, I have
five separate chapters dealing with different aspects of that backlash. The
penultimate chapter, in fact, lays out why I believe that globalization is not
irreversible and identifies the five major threats to it: Globalization may be
"just too hard" for too many people; it may be "just too
connected"so that small numbers of people can disrupt the whole wired
world today; it may be "just too intrusive" into people's lives; it
may be "just too unfair to too many people"; and lastly, it may be
"just too dehumanizing." My approach could hardly be called the Wait
Disney version of globalization.
Frankly, I can and do make a much stronger case for the downsides of
globalization than Ramonet does. I know that globalization is hardly all good,
but unlike Ramonet, I am not utterly blind to the new opportunities it creates
for people - and I am not just talking about the wealthy few. Ask the high-tech
workers in Bangalore, India, or Taiwan, or the Bordeaux region of France, or
Finland, or coastal China, or Idaho what they think of the opportunities
created by globalization. They are huge beneficiaries of the very market forces
that Ramonet decries. Don't they count? What about all the human rights and
environmental nongovernmental organizations that have been empowered by the
Internet and globalization? Don't they count? Or do only French truck drivers
count?
Ramonet says I am "incapable of observing that globalization
imposes the force of two powerful contradictory dynamics on the world: fusion
and fission." Say what? Why does he think I called my book The Lexus and
the Olive Tree? It is all about the interaction between what is old and inbred
- the quest for community, nation, family,, tribe, identity, and one's own
olive tree - and the economic pressures of globalization that these aspirations
must interact with today, represented by the Lexus. These age-old passions are
bumping up against, being squashed by, ripping through, or simply learning to
live in balance with globalization.
What Ramonet can accuse me of is a belief that for the moment, the
globalization system has been dominating the olive-tree impulses in most
places. Many critics have pointed out that my observation that no two countries
have ever fought a war against each other while they both had a McDonald's was
totally disproved by the war in Kosovo. This is utter nonsense. Kosovo was only
a temporary exception that in the end proved my rule. Why did airpower work to
bring the Balkan war to a close after only 78 days? Because NATO bombed the
Serbian tanks and troops out of Kosovo? No way. Airpower alone worked because
NATO bombed the electricity stations, water system, bridges, and economic
infrastructure in Belgrade - a modem European city, a majority of whose
citizens wanted to be integrated with Europe and the globalization system. The
war was won on the power grids of Belgrade, not in the trenches of Kosovo. One
of the first things to be reopened in Belgrade was the McDonalds. It turns out
in the end the Serbs wanted to wait in line for burgers, not for Kosovo.
Ramonet falls into a trap that often ensnares French intellectuals, and
others, who rail against globalization. They assume that the rest of the world
hates it as much as they do, and so they are always surprised in the end when
the so-called little people are ready to stick with it. My dear Mr. Ramonet,
with all due respect to you and Franz Fanon, the fact is the wretched of the
earth want to go to Disneyworld, not to the barricades. They want the Magic
Kingdom, not Les Miserables. Just ask them.
Finally, Ramonet says that I believe all the problems of globalization
will be solved by the "invisible hand of the market." I have no idea
where these quotation marks came from, let alone the thought. It certainly is
not from anything I have written. The whole last chapter of my book lays out in
broad strokes what I believe governments - the American government in
particular - must do to "democratize" globalization, both
economically and politically. Do I believe that market forces and the
Electronic Herd are very powerful today and can, at times, rival governments?
Absolutely. But do I believe that market forces will solve everything?
Absolutely not. Ramonet, who clearly doesn't know a hedge fund from a hedge
hog, demonizes markets to an absurd degree. He may think governments are
powerless against such monsters, but I do not.
I appreciate the passion of Ramonet's argument, but he confuses my
analysis for advocacy. My book is not a tract for or against globalization, and
any careful reader will see that. It is a book of reporting about the world we
now live in and the dominant international system that is shaping it - a system
driven largely by forces of technology that I did not start and cannot stop.
Ramonet treats globalization as a choice, and he implicitly wants us to choose
something different. That is his politics. I view globalization as a reality,
and I want us first to understand that reality and then, by understanding it,
figure out how we can get the best out of it and cushion the worst. That is my
politics.
Let me share a secret with Ramonet. I am actually rooting for France. I
hope that it can preserve all that is good and unique in its culture and way of
life from the brutalizing, homogenizing forces of globalization. There is
certainly room for a different path between the United States and North Korea,
and good luck to France in finding it. But the readers of Le Monde diplomatique
will get a lot better idea of how to find that middle path by reading my book
than by reading Ramonet's critique.
Unfortunately, his readers will have to read The Lexus and the Olive
Tree in a language other than French. The book is coming out in Arabic,
Chinese, German, Japanese, and Spanish. There is only one major country where
my American publisher could not find a local publisher to print it: France.
LET THEM EAT BIG MACS
by Ignacio Ramonet
It is truly touching when Thomas Friedman says, "The wretched of
the earth want to go to Disneyworld, not to the barricades." Such a
sentence deserves a place in posterity alongside Queen Marie-Antoinette's
declaration in 1789, when she learned that the people of Paris were revolting
and demanding bread: "Let them eat cake!"
My dear Mr. Friedman, do reread the 1999 Human Development Report from
the United Nations Development Programme. It confirms that 1.3 billion people
(or one-quarter of humanity) live on less than one dollar a day. Going to
Disneyworld would probably not displease them, but I suspect they would prefer,
first off, to eat well, to have a decent home and decent clothes, to be better
educated, and to have a job. To obtain these basic needs, millions of people
around the world (their numbers grow more numerous each day) are without a
doubt ready to erect barricades and resort to violence.
I deplore this kind of solution as much as Friedman does. But if we are
wise, it should never come to that. Rather, why not allocate a miniscule part
of the world's wealth to the "wretched of the earth"? If we assigned
just 1 percent of this wealth for 20 years to the development of the most
unhappy of our human brothers, extreme misery might disappear, and with it,
risks of endemic violence.
But globalization is deaf and blind to such considerations - and
Friedman knows it. On the contrary, it worsens differences and divides and
polarizes societies. In 1960, before globalization, the most fortunate 20
percent of the planet's population were 30 times richer than the poorest 20
percent. In 1997, at the height of globalization, the most fortunate were 74
times richer than the world's poorest! And this gap grows each day. Today, if
you add up the gross national products of all the world's underdeveloped
countries (with their 600 million inhabitants) they still will not equal the
total wealth of the three richest people in the world. I am sure, my dear Mr.
Friedman, that those 600 million people have only one thing on their minds:
It is true that there is more to globalization than just the downsides,
but how can we overlook the fact that during the last 15 years of
globalization, per capita income has decreased in more than 80 countries, or in
almost half the states of the world? Or that since the fall of communism, when
the West supposedly arranged an economic miracle cure for the former Soviet
Union - more or less, as Friedman would put it, new McDonalds restaurants -
more than 150 million ex-Soviets (out of a population of approximately 290
million) have fallen into poverty?
If you would agree to come down out of the clouds, my dear Mr. Friedman,
you could perhaps understand that globalization is a symptom of the end of a
cycle. It is not only the end of the industrial era (with today's new
technology), not only the end of the first capitalist revolution (with the
financial revolution), but also the end of an intellectual cycle the one driven
by reason, as the philosophers of the eighteenth century defined it. Reason
gave birth to modern politics and sparked the American and French Revolutions.
But almost all that modem reason constructed - the state, society, industry,
nationalism, socialism has been profoundly changed. In terms of political
philosophy, this transformation captures the enormous significance of
globalization. Since ancient times, humanity has known two great organizing
principles: the gods, and then reason. From here on out, the market succeeds
them both.
Now the triumph of the market and the irresistible expansion of
globalization cause me to fear an inevitable showdown between capitalism and
democracy. Capitalism inexorably leads to the concentration of wealth and
economic power in the hands of a small group. And this in turn leads to a fundamental
question: How much redistribution will it take to make the domination of the
rich minority acceptable to the majority of the world's population? The
problem, my dear Mr. Friedman, is that the market is incapable of responding.
All over the world, globalization is destroying the welfare state.
What can we do? How do we keep half of humanity from revolting and
choosing violence? I know your response, dear Mr. Friedman: Give them all Big
Macs and send them to
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN is foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times
and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 1999).
IGNACIO RAMONET is editor of Le Monde diplomatique