Globalisation as I view it

The Global(ization) Debate
Conflicting attempts to explain the phenomenon of Corporate Globalization


In a fierce debate in any topic, both sides claim to advocate the truth and denounce the lies. At occasions the logics of both the sides may seem reasonable. But so long as they have opposite implications, both can be never true. In the real life, however so many things cannot be explained with arithmetic precision. This allows both of the conflicting arguments to be partially true and they can run a long course.
In the 20th century the ever dominating topic of argument was capitalism vs. socialism. The economic depressions of 1930s would make the arguments of the socialists more logical while the social turmoil in post Lenin era Soviet Union would make those of capitalists more plausible. The sustained decline in the soviet regime’s capability to address people’s aspirations in the later decades helped the arguments opposing them flourish like never before. The sustained dysphoria among the people culminated in collapse of the seven decade long communist state precipitated by devastating Chernaboyl nuclear disaster and humiliating retreat of the soviet army from Afghanistan.
With china already deviated from the socialist principles, collapse of soviet union marked the end of an era making the marathon debate far less relevant. The successor of this issue in the worldwide debate now has been the globalization. Frequently, the term globalization is used to imply the process by which the latest version of capitalism, market economy, is driving the world. But many think this to be simply ridiculous . Noam Chomsky writes:
The term "globalization" has been appropriated by the powerful to refer to a specific form of international economic integration, one based on investor rights, with the interests of people incidental. Accordingly, advocates of other forms of globalization are described as "anti-globalization"; and some, unfortunately, even accept this term, though it is a term of propaganda that should be dismissed with ridicule. No sane person is opposed to globalization, that is, international integration. Surely not the left and the workers movements, which were founded on the principle of international solidarity - that is, globalization in a form that attends to the rights of people, not private power systems.
The term ‘Corporate Globalization thus seems to be more proper here to indicate what is meant by ‘globalization ‘ in common use. The debate about whether it is good or bad in its present form has become intense at intellectual level.


Protest against the G8-meeting in Heiligendamm 2007.
In his widely acclaimed book “‘The World is Flat’ A Brief History of The Globalised World in The Twenty-first Century”, the New York Times global analyst Thomas Friedman presents in journalistic way the version of globalization as viewed from the capitalist poll. He begins the book with celebration of 11/9/89, the date when Berlin wall was brought down, effectively triggering the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then he explores ten major political events innovations and companies that made the world flat or removed all the barriers to competitions in every field.
As such there is very little that can be rejected as ‘flawed’ in the arguments of Friedman. But there are so many issues whose relative relevance in the contemporary world can be debated. After reading views of the leading figures in the opposite pole, Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy ,It can be concluded that the whole thing elaborated by Friedman in his book is only a part of truth. To what extent that part represents the realities of the world today is another issue for exploration and debate.
The euphoria brought by the ever-growing scope of market economy, and rise in living standard of millions of people was of course obvious. Especially in countries like India the liberalization of economy in concordance with the global tide yielded a lot for people. The economic power based in the foundations of sustained economic growth also rebuilt the national confidence and self respect enabling the Indians to seek major role in the world stage. Three decade long growth story of post Mao china is similarly impressive. Similar stories in the East European countries and Vietnam all favor the arguments of Friedman.
But there are issues of equal or more relevance that strongly disfavor that conventional argument. Though Friedman acknowledges the limits of the ongoing trend of ‘globalization’ in a relatively small chapter named ‘The Unflat World’, the real life implications of the phenomenon are far wider and deeper. The proportion of people really benefitting from liberalization in India, China, Russia and other countries is still to be significant. The ‘spill over’ hypothesis of wealth flowing from top to bottom has not worked well and uniformly. The disproportionate consumption of natural resources to the extent of depletion is another phenomenon promoted by the trend. This is bound to threaten the stability of the institutions worldwide.
Another contentious issue has been that of democracy. Though the Americans spend millions of words to make their billion dollar adventures appear aimed at promoting democracy, very few really believe this. The invasion of Iraq has been the latest example. From the end of second world war itself , the covert or overt military interventions by US have been aimed at demolishing the institutions that challenge the American interest. Many of them were obviously the democratically elected governments as in Chile, Guatemala and other Latin American countries. This promoted the rise of dictators, whose regimes sustained so long as they agreed not to dent on the foundation of mutual support irrespective of the issues like human rights.
Of course it is not only the US that is guided by market economy. The eastern economic giants China and India and the resurgent petroleum giant Russia have also compromised their moral stances for their ‘interest’, like the Americans. The undeclared competition between China and India to fetch the natural gases from Myanmar to sustain their economies has helped the brutal and one of the most oppressive regimes in the world to thrive unchallenged. The Burmese people have no way but to watch their natural resources being depleted for purchase of the lethal weapons used to kill and torture them, with the revolt of the monks already suppressed and Su-ki under indefinite house arrest. Similar is the fate of many African countries where corrupt and barbaric regimes are sustained with the help of the weapons from China in exchange for the oil and gas. The recent vetoing of the US-led proposal to punish the Zimbabwean dictator Mugabe by the Russia and China in the UN comes in this background. The US stance to avoid restrictions to Israel, in whatever magnitude it pushes its drive to murder the Palestinians, is thus caricatured by the rivals. Any attempt to penalize the guilty through UN has thus been made virtually impossible. Nobody bothers to calculate how many thousands are killed and how many millions suppressed or tortured in Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Palestine and other countries in order to create few hundred billionaires in Beijing, Mumbai, Tel-Aviv and New-York.
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As Arundhati Roy puts it, a new phenomenon is ripe all these days after the end of the cold war. This involves the subtle form of interventions by US led corporate globalization in everyday life. In her famous ‘Come September’ speech , she speaks -“Today, corporate globalization needs an international confederation of loyal , corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies . It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies , sterner immigration laws and watchful coastal patrols to make sure that it is only money , goods , patent and services that are globalized, not the free movement of people, not a respect for human rights , not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions , climate change , or god forbid , justice.”
With central role of the media in shaping the people’s attitude towards anything it can play potentially destructive role by delivery of the fabricated truths to the mass of billions. As explored by Chomsky in ‘Media Control’, the so called free media today has played just the opposite role. In the article ‘Fate of an Honest Intellectual’ Chomsky gives a typical example of how the free media in the corporate world works. The innumerable instances of manipulating anything at any cost for the American interest can be found on Chomsky’s book ‘Hegemony or Survival? ‘ Another example of powerful media distortion of facts is the presentation of 2002 US sponsored coup against the democratically elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. After few years of this, Chavez came under attack from ‘the world’ (phrase given by Chomsky to the US and European political elite) for closing a private channel RCTV in Venezuela. But in an article named ‘Chavez did not Start This Media War’ in Los Angeles Times, the former AP foreign correspondent Bart Jones explains how dishonestly the channel had promoted the coup effort and argues that such a channel promoting the destabilization of the state would have been closed outright if it had been in US. Chavez actually waited till the license of the channel to broadcast expired, for five long years.


The other significant argument of Friedman is that the role of all of the communist regimes of the world has been to keep poor people poor thus avoiding economic disparity. This conclusion might have seemed absurd had it been drawn during 1930s or 1950s when Soviet prosperity was threatening the capitalist pole, one example being the successful launch of ‘Sputnik’ in the space. But after these decades of failure for communism when the spirit of ‘workers ruling the world’ was replaced by self proclaimed ‘leaders’ and the arrogant beaurocracy ruling the people, the tragic conclusion seems no longer absurd though not completely true.
A proportion of poor people have obviously been able to earn a lot with the advent of globalization and liberalization. Even Chomsky and Roy are not advocating the establishment of soviet style authoritarian regimes. But this never means that the cost at which the current global order is maintained is to be ignored. With the UN intentionally proved handicapped by the US with Afghanistan and Iraq invasions , almost all the international developments and conflicts are now within the political radar of the US and most of them within the military radar also. This has created an environment in which some of the competitors are in a position of disproportionate advantage relative to others when a ‘free’ competition is supposed to take place. Ironically the skilled manpower from the developing countries developed consuming their scarce resources is free to move to the US or Europe in search of ‘suitable opportunity’ and enrich them further by its innovations and the research. This further paralyzes the competing ability of the underdeveloped countries and is in fact helping to maintain and increase the gradient between the rich and poor.
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In the past few years there have been few significant efforts to explore the causes of rampant conflicts in the world outside the conventional paradigms. The controversial 1996 book ‘The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order’ by Samuel Huntington provoked a bitter debate worldwide. ssEspecially his remark that ‘the muslims have the bloody borders ‘ drew the sharpest criticisms. In the book he concluded that with the effective end of the ideology-based conflicts with collapse of the USSR, the identity based conflicts have occupied the vacuum making the world potentially inflammable. The five or six major civilizations in the world can collide in potentially multiple ways threatening the stability.
Attacking the foundations of Huntington’s argument, Amartya Sen in his book ‘‘Identity and Violence’ The Illusion of Destiny” argues that the categorization of the people in few ‘civilizations’ while ignoring their other identities is fundamentally flawed. The promotion of unitary identity of people in that way can actually have devastating effects by justifying the polarization of the people by the religious extremists. He further argues that the only way to maintain peace and harmony in the world is to prevent any single identity of people from overwhelming all the others.
Though quite thought-provoking, these efforts have less appeal to the mass compared to those based on conventional paradigm. The ever increasing spectrum of the conflicts has been the most important cause of suffering and death of the people worldwide. The increasing bulk of the refugees, both internal and external is leading to the other potentially destabilizing consequence. The unchecked consumption of the natural resources and dangerous rise in pollution and loss of biodiversity have been the other intractable problems. The rapidly growing price of the fuel and the food items has already gone beyond the control of the states in the developing countries. An imminent economic depression of unknown magnitude has been the other serious concern. The increasing friction between the US-led NATO and Russia can pose a potential threat to the stability in the world. The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the failed reconstruction of Iraq pose the other problems.
Obviously the leaders of the present world must lead the efforts to resolve all these problems if they are to be effective. Unfortunately the US and its allies, the leaders of the ‘globalised’ world appear to be proceeding in just the opposite way. So long as the grievances of the billions of people are ignored and their rebellion crushed, no more smooth course can be guaranteed for the ongoing trend of market capitalism and corporate globalization. Constructive engagement of every body in the process of making this world a better and safer place is essential, but so long as the leaders of ‘globalization’ keep on justifying the crusade against the weak and poor like Palestinians, this is practically difficult. A major reshuffle in the strategy of the major powers in the world towards the contentious international issues is the primary requirement.
Debates on the topic can continue indefinitely but the voices of those crushed by conflict, poverty, illiteracy and ill health need the urgent attention. Constructive engagement of all the stakeholders is the obvious requirement for this. The self glorifying attitude of the proponents of the market economy and corporate globalization may prove devastating for them as well as the world. While the works of Chomsky and Roy may not have directly helped the poor of the world, they are at least challenging the hegemony of the half truths supplemented by the propaganda and lies that dominate the today’s corporate mass media. This may form the first step towards the new and meaningful ‘constructive engagement’ in which each side promises to bury the prejudices and accept the undistorted truth.

REFERENCES:
1. The World is Flat………….Thomas Friedman, Allen Lane , 2005
2. http://www.chomsky.info/
3. Wikipedia.org :Anti globalization movement
4. Frontline Fortnightly, 11 oct 2002 article by Arundhati Roy’Come September’ (published from Chennai)
5. The Kathmandu Post June 1st 2007 ‘Chavez did not start this Media War’ by Bart Jones
6. ‘The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order’ by Samuel Huntington, Penguin Books INDIA 1996
7. ‘Identity and Violence, The illusion of Destiny’ by Amartya Sen Allen Lane 2006

JIWAN KSHETRY
jiwankshetry@yahoo.com, jiwan.kshetri@gmail.com www.jiwankshetri.blogspot.com
RANGKHANI-1 BAGLUNG, NEPAL
Now: UNIVERSAL COLLEGE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES, BHAIRAHAWA, NEPALs