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IS GLOBALIZATION THE PROBLEM?

Karsten J. Struhl
John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) U.S.A.

In this paper, I shall offer six theses on globalization. My overall claim is that globalization as such is not the problem, that the core problem is the lack of democracy, and that actually existing globalization has within it the dialectical seeds of its transformation. However, I do not present these theses as final conclusions but as openings to further discussion, debate, and reflection.

First Thesis: Globalization is a long term historical process which had its roots in ancient society. Its present form, however, is the necessary result of the expansion of the capitalist mode of production. Since Word War II, it has reached a qualitatively new level of development. The globalization of culture was already in process with the expansion of the world’s major religions and such early empires as the Roman Empire . In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, trade and financial interactions were connecting much of the emerging European markets. Michael Ignatieff has noted, “we have lived with a global economy since 1700, and many of the world’s major cities have been global entrepots for centuries.” By the middle of the nineteenth century, as a result the destruction of mercantile barriers, the accelerated growth of industrial technology, and the search for new markets, capitalism had become a global system. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere....The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls.” Since World War II, with the development communication technology, global capitalism entered a new phase. Radio, television, satellite communication, digital technology, and the Internet have made it possible to transmit information almost instantaneously across the globe. The world is becoming a global village.

Second Thesis: Globalization is a complex relation of technological, cultural, and political economic processes which can in principle be separated . The possibility of delinking these processes allows us to consider an alternative form of globalization. Although, as I have indicated above, globalization predates the twentieth century, it is often remarked that we live in the age of globalization. Manfred Steger has offered the following definition: “Globalization in its current phase has been described as an unprecedented compression of time and space reflected in the intensification of social, political, economic, and cultural interconnections and interdependencies on a global scale.” Defined in this way it is simply a set of social processes. However, as Steger himself immediately notes, not everyone is equally situated in the process. “Globalization seems to generate enormous wealth and opportunity for the few while relegating the many to conditions of abject poverty and hopelessness.” To understand this, we need to separate the idea of globalization as an ideologically neutral set of global processes from what he calls “globalism,” which is a neoliberal market ideology. I shall return to the significance of this ideological maneuver shortly. For the moment, I want to emphasize that the ideologically neutral idea of globalization contains essentially three processes (political economic, technological, and cultural), which although conjoined in historical reality, could be separated. Peter Marcuse has emphasized the conjunction of two of these processes, suggesting that what might be called “really existing globalization,” combines “developments in technology and developments in the concentration of power,” specifically economic power. The point of recognizing that globalization is the conjunction of these processes, writes Marcuse, is to “highlight the possibilities of an alternative globalization.” What Marcuse calls “really existing globalization” is specifically corporate capitalist globalization. It is a particular organization of the technology in which global corporations and other transnational economic agents – e.g., the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization – organize production on an international scale, determine the forms of technology and energy, and control the division of labor and the distribution of goods. The result is globalization from above. An alternative globalization “a globalization from below” would make it possible to develop and utilize the advanced technology for the needs of all the world’s population and the enrichment of our human capacities. We can extend Marcuse’s analysis to the cultural sphere. Let me quote The Communist Manifesto again: “In place of the old local and national seclusion and self sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property...and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.” Furthermore, under the direction of capital accumulation, this world culture becomes a cosmopolitan culture. “The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns....It has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.” There is no hint of irony in this last passage. Marx and Engels, trapped in the Eurocentric bias of their age, applauded this culturally imperialist process as progressive. The problem here is that not all cultures are situated equally in this process of cultural integration. Under the direction of capitalism, the integrity of indigenous cultures are destroyed, as they are penetrated by the culture of the urban centers of Europe and the United States . The result is cultural homogenization. Again, the point of seeing the way in which these world cultural processes are conjoined with the global organization of capitalism highlights the possibility of their delinking. As David Held has argued, it is possible to consider a cultural cosmopolitanism which “is not against cultural diversity” and “has the capacity to mediate between national communities, communities of fate, and alternative styles of life. It encompasses the possibility of dialogue with the traditions and discourses of others with the aim of expanding the horizons of one’s own framework.”

Third Thesis: The problem is not globalization as such but corporate capitalist globalization and the neoliberal organization of international agencies. The ideological legitimation of this form of globalization rests, in large part, on the assumption that it is inevitable and irreversible. In the above theses, I have entertained the possibility of delinking the neo-liberal capitalist organization of globalization from its cultural and technological processes. However, that something is analytically possible does not entail that it is historically possible. Thus, the ideological critique of this “really existing globalization” requires analysis of its origins. Let us begin with the origin of the major neoliberal institutions that dominate the global landscape. They did not simply evolve from impersonal forces. Rather, they were consciously designed for a specific end. “Modern globalization is not an expression of evolution. It was designed by human beings with a specific goal: to give primacy to economic – that is, corporate – values above all other values and to aggressively install and codify those values globally. In fact, the modern globalization era has a birthplace and a birthdate: Bretton Woods , New Hampshire , July 1944.” It was this meeting of the major corporate elite, politicians, and economists of the allied countries which produced the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank and which laid the foundations for the emergence of the World Trade Organization. In short, neoliberalism was constructed by conscious agents. Still, that the neoliberal organization of globalization was not inevitable does not in itself entail that it is reversible. The claim that there is an alternative to globalization as it now exists requires a broader historical analysis and that analysis must confront the failure of the socialist movements in the twentieth century to offer a viable alternative to capitalism on the world stage.

Fourth Thesis: While capitalism was the major force in the construction of globalization, globalization can transcend its economic origins. The continued development of globalization pushes against the straight jacket of corporate capitalist control and of neoliberal economics. Marx, in his preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” said that “no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.” The only barrier to complete globalization was the existence of the Soviet Empire and China . But the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. China , under the directions of its communist party, is now trying to become a capitalist country and a full player in the arena of “really existing globalization.” Without the counterweight of the Soviet Union and China , capitalism can finally fulfill its agenda of penetrating every corner of the globe, which it is now doing under the hegemony of the United States . However, it is precisely the fulfillment of capitalist globalization, which reveals its limits and is dialectically creating its world historical opposition, the movements of globalization from below. Symptoms of this limit are everywhere: the financial meltdowns of countries under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s, e.g., Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Argentina; the debt crisis of most of the underdeveloped countries; militant nationalist and fanatical religious movements which reject the globalized monoculture; the pathological assumption by the world’s only superpower that it can be everywhere at once and that it can control history; and the international networking of movements against globalization from above. In fact, it is precisely globalization which creates the pre-conditions for this international networking, e.g., the use of the Internet to provide critical coverage of events which are inadequately reported in the mainstream media and to organize global resistance to neoliberal institutions.

Fifth Thesis: The core of the problem of actually existing globalization is the lack of democracy. The overcoming of globalization in its corporate capitalist, neoliberal form requires the emergence of a global consciousness which recognizes our planetary interdependence and demands radical democracy on a global scale. “At the heart of globalization from below lies democratization – making institutions accountable to those they effect.” Democracy is not so much a state of affairs as a process by which people can control the social, economic, and political institutions that control their lives. As such, it cannot be identified with any particular set of political institutions. It can exist outside political institutions – in civil society, in educational and professional associations, in the workplace. Specific political institutions which may foster democracy in some situations may hinder it in other situations. Cultural differences also play a role. Commitment to democracy “is grounded in the faith that each culture must contain a democratic version of itself.” Each culture must develop its own indigenous version of democracy. The form of democracy that develops will be shaped by the needs and values of that culture. Democracies in cultures that are predominantly Confucian will surely be different from the liberal democracies of the West. So also will democracies that take root in Islamic cultures. Of course, the apologists for actually existing globalization also claim to support democracy. However, what they actually support is a “one size fits all” democracy, specifically, liberal, representative democracy within the framework of a market economy and the nation state. At the same time, they endorse neoliberal institutions which interfere with the ability of the nation state to make decisions concerning the needs of its people, e.g., the structural adjustment policies of IMF and the constraints of WTO, which protects the corporations at the expense of public good. In contrast, the demand for democracy, in its original meaning as the rule by the people, is radical. Democracy means respecting the rights of people in each community to determine their collective destiny. However, insofar as we come to recognize our increased interdependence, we must construct international financial and trade institutions that are genuinely responsive to people’s needs, institutions which are controlled collectively by the people of the world rather than by transnational corporations. At the most modest political level, this would entail the democratic reconstruction of the United Nations, e.g., the abolition of the veto power of the security council, the creation of a people’s assembly. It might also entail the creation of a World Parliament based on the principle of one vote for each of the world’s citizens. It might even entail forms of direct democracy, e.g., global referendums on significant international issues and on the general framework for global governance. This requires that we see each other as citizens of the same polis, as citizens not only of our specific cultures but also as citizens of the global community.

Sixth Thesis: The agent of global change is already emerging as a new form of consciousness but its political organization does not yet exist. The World Social Forum provides a space for organizing a global civil society. It is a space within which agents for social change can coordinate their activities on an international scale and, through dialogue, attempt to develop a unified sense of purpose. However, the overthrow of globalization from above will require a coordinated political strategy which involves more than having various groups support each other’s projects, and such a strategy will need to be implemented by an international political organization. Furthermore, this strategy and political organization must contain within it the seeds for a radical cross-border democracy. While there are many proposals for and visions of an alternative globalization, we do not yet have such a strategy or political organization. The self-organizing of civil society at a global level is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the radical transformation that will be required to create a radical cross-border democracy.

NOTES

. Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1933), p. 12.

. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto: a Norton Critical Edition, edited by Frederick Bender (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988), pp. 58-59.

. Manfred B. Steger, “Globalism and the Selling of Globalization,” in Planetary Politics: Human Rights, Terror, and Global Society, edited by Stephen Eric Bronner ( New York : Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), p. 22.

. Ibid.

. Peter Marcuse, “The Language of Globalization,” Monthly Review 52, no. 3 (July-August, 2000), P. 24.

. Ibid., pp. 24-25.

. Marx and Engels, op. cit., p. 59.

. Ibid.

. David Held, “National Culture, the Globalization of Communications, and the Bounded Political Community,” in Planetary Politics: Human Rights, Terror, and Global Society, edited by Stephen Eric Bronner ( New York : Rowman and Litllefield, 2005), p. 45.

. Jerry Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, eds., Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Report of the International Forum on Globalization ( San Francisco : Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004), p. 33.

. Karl Marx, “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2 nd edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1972), p. 5.

. See Robert Jay Lifton, Superpower Syndrome ( New York : Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003).

. Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brenden Smith, Globalization from Below ( Cambridge , MA : South End Press, 2000), p. 70.

. C. Douglas Lummis, Radical Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966), p. 43.

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