I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the tenets of the anti-globalisation movement. Books like Naomi Klein’s No Logo deftly document serious socio-economic concerns, but then, when it comes to proposing solutions of their own, ride roughshod over their own arguments with an unsubtle blend of pie-in-the-sky utopianism and New Left sermonizing. Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul’s The Collapse of Globalism, published in 2005, boils the debate down to its constituent elements. At the outset, Saul’s skepticism is clear, but it’s uncertain where his line of reasoning will end: a return to across-the-board protectionism? A dismantlement of the institutions of international economic organisation (which, judging by the title of his book, are presumably in decline anyway)? Or merely an echo of Klein’s call for us to join the loose coalition of anti-globalisation groups that turned the streets of Seattle into a smoke-filled cauldron of violence?
None of these, as it turns out. The book opens with an exposition of the history of globalisation, familiar to any student of economic theory. Saul chronicles the birth of the Davos World Economic Forum – a court of the ‘corporate technocracy’ – and the genesis of the G7 (today’s G8) as Henry Kissinger’s wishful resurrection of the 1814 Concert of Vienna. He also rightly flags President Nixon’s 1971 decision to float the US dollar as a central landmark in the development of the global economic order.
From there, Saul’s argument emerges in fits and starts. Following the sluggish opening chapters, ideas begin to crystallize around his critiques of ‘managerialism’ – transferred to the public sector via crash privatization – and the corollary assumption that all human activity can be reduced to a series of economic indices and ‘managed’ accordingly. This has been paralleled by the rise of PR spin (not least in the current Federal election campaign) that a recent audit on the state of free speech in Australia identifies as a central impediment to the free flow of information in this country.
Saul’s central thesis – that the project of globalisation is collapsing under the widespread reassertion of national prerogatives – is hardly provocative. But unlike, say, Naomi Klein, Saul avoids directing his fire against capitalism as the demonic adversary of social justice. Indeed, he is at his most effective when contrasting the effects of neoliberal economics to the classical liberalism of Adam Smith: ‘the consolidation of transnational corporations has very little to do with open global markets in the free trade tradition and everything to do with the dark side of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mercantilism’ – that is, with monopoly capitalism in the British East India Company mould. This can also be seen in the waves of international trade that take place within and between corporate subsidiaries as a means of obtaining inexpensive resources outside the marketplace. In actuality, this is a form of price-setting – once a vile, socialist tactic but now legitimized in the name of profit and efficiency, hardly a natural outcome of the interplay between producers and consumers in a free marketplace.
The economic resurgence of India and China proves Saul’s point that the logic of economic globalisation is not always clear-cut. As he points out, ‘the principle Chinese obsession is neither free trade nor free markets. It is dealing with internal poverty’, a perennial concern of the CCP since 1978. Likewise, both India and China emerged from the 1997 Asian financial crisis relatively unscathed, precisely because they maintained strict controls on capital flows, contrary to neoliberal orthodoxy. Compare this to the Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian economies, which were gutted by massive capital outflows and rapid devaluation in the wake of the crisis.
As Saul is right to point out, the rise of non-government organisations – themselves a by-product of globalisation – is no panacea to the vagaries of the free market. While NGOs represent a ‘clear sign of the citizen’s desire for choice’, he laments that they are also ‘a threat to the solid idea of elected government as the basis of responsible choice’. British political scientist David Chandler agrees: ‘the rejection of the formal [national] political sphere… leaves political struggles isolated from any shared framework of meaning or from any formal processes of democratic accountability’. Few NGOs are electorally accountable. And while ‘Make Capitalism History’ and Greenpeace may be the logical counter-ideology to neoliberalism, existing with the international economic technocracy in a self-reinforcing, adversarial symbiosis, they are hardly a prescription for the sort of ‘democratic renewal’ advocated in The Collapse of Globalism. (That is not to say that NGOs should have no role in the international community. Indeed, the United Nations relies on many such organisations to fulfill its aid, development and famine relief projects. But NGOs are a varied bunch, running the gamut from business lobbyists and religious organisations to anti-system anarcho-syndicalist ‘collectives’. Levels of credibility and accountability vary widely).
Overall, it’s refreshing to read a critique of neoliberal economics that doesn’t fall into the predictable cant of the anti-globalisation movement, with its righteous chest-beating and suspicions of state-based political action. Rather, Saul demonstrates just how far the neoliberal economic order has loosened from its classical liberal (and Keynesian) moorings, failing to achieve even the objectives of welfare maximisation and wealth creation that supposedly lie at its centre. The metaphor employed by Margaret Thatcher and others in the 1980s was that the new global economic tide would raise all ships. But Thatcher showed scant knowledge of seamanship. ‘If you raise tides’, Saul points out, ‘a lot of crafts capsize.’
4 comments
gelatinoushands says:
Nov 24, 2007
Well, look who’s joined the blogosphere! SEBOTRON!
You should review Martin Wolf’s Why Globalisation Works as a companion piece. Some of the tone is a little OTT, defensive even–I think he lumps together all the “market-sceptics” (anyone from Mao Zedong, Greenpeace, Pat Buchanan) and basically paints anyone who doesn’t believe in the liberal economic framework as a fascist — but there’s some interesting stuff on capital account liberalisation, suggestions for institutional reforms within the WTO/IMF, and the ‘invisible hand’ theory.
That also means you should totally add Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments to your reading list this summer.
mary k says:
Nov 24, 2007
Not an area I consider myself well-versed in, but I definitely agree with the point you made about books like No Logo. Interesting, but I struggled to finish it, mainly because it felt like Klein was repeating the same anti-capitalist rhetoric continually, to different problems that supposedly arise from globalisation, without actually questioning whether it is a cause/effect relationship or what she believes is a viable solution.
It’s a problem with a lot of non-fiction books in this area- they tend to talk at you, rather than discuss.
By the way, welcome to the BLOGZ. Kthanxbai.
Jess says:
Nov 26, 2007
Nice (anti-communist?) propaganda art! A plus for nice design and use of the phrase “smoke-filled cauldron of violence”. F minus for actually telling people about this blog.
Seriously, I don’t wanna have to stalk my friends, yo.
Hugh says:
Nov 30, 2007
I despise left wing discourse, largely because it tends to ignore whole swathes of economic complexities and inevitabilities which are results of globalisation. It’s the same dogmatism that comes from the Marxist dichotomy of worker and capitalist, it assumes that all people from either persuasion are identical in their needs and wants. It’s very sloppy thinking based on emotion rather than reason. I’m no great fan of Saul given his “pop-philosophy” which doesn’t engage particularly agressively with issues. I do find myself agreeing with him quite often, though.
Good post.