Is Globalization, in its current form, serving the interests of humanity? The excerpt below is vintage Ignacio Ramonet not pulling any punches in a debate with one New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. Ramonet pokes some serious holes in and exposes the origins of the entrenched dogma regarding our articulation of what globalization entails. At bottom, the debate is less about globalization and more about what some critics have termed “Westoxification” instead: “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 pensée unique. The pensée unique, or single thought, represents the interests of a group of economic forces--in particular, free-flowing international capital. The arrogance of the pensée unique has reached such an extreme that one can, without exaggerating, call it modern 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 pensée unique, is the only ideology authorized by the invisible and omnipresent opinion police. The pensée unique was born in 1944, at the time of the Bretton Woods Agreement. The doctrine sprang from the worlds 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 off-guard, 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 pensée unique build upon the first. For instance, the markets 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 Schröders Third Way and New Middle), gives it such an intimidating power that it snuffs out every tentative free thought.” To this, Thomas Friedman, a strident proponent of the current global system and a man who prides himself with having made the observation that “no two countries have ever fought a war against each other while they both had a McDonalds”, responded at length but the crux of his response was summed up with the following words: “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 Misérables. Just ask them. “ Dueling globalizations: a debate between Thomas L. Friedman and Ignacio Ramonet , Foreign Policy, 1999. You be the judge little people.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 11:14:32 +0000
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