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Taking Back Globalization for the Many
DAVOS – The World Economic Forum’s annual gathering is normally little more than a toast to the benefits of increasing global GDP, trade, and investment. But this year’s meeting comes at a time when economic expansion can no longer be taken for granted, and when the uneven benefits of past growth are sparking mass social unrest.
So it is little wonder that doomsday scenarios about the “seeds of dystopia” and the risks of “rolling back the globalization process” are being dangled in Davos. The world’s economic and political leaders stand warned: do globalization better, or it will be derailed by the growing legions of the discontented.
Leaders would be unwise to ignore this warning. Discussions in Davos must go beyond how to rectify the imbalances in developed countries’ debt-to-GDP ratios. They must finally pay attention to the wider imbalances generated by unfettered globalization.
Popular anger is directed not only at the bank bailouts, soaring public debt, and bleak employment prospects of recent years. All around the world, people have fallen afoul of a two-track economic process whereby whole industries have been sacrificed to cheaper imports, whole regions have been consigned to abandonment or degradation, and whole populations have been frozen out of economic progress.
Nowhere are these imbalances more evident than in the global food system. Globalization has been wholeheartedly embraced in the service of feeding the world: bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have been put in place to allow food to flow from food-surplus to food-deficit regions.
Yet this model has failed spectacularly. The food bills of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) increased five- or six-fold between 1992 and 2008. Imports now account for around 25% of their current food consumption. The more they are told to rely on trade, the less they invest in domestic agriculture. And the less they support their own farmers, the more they have to rely on trade. Countries that fall into this vicious cycle leave their citizens vulnerable to historically volatile prices on international markets, which means increased hunger and insecurity.
Despite the persistent challenges of hunger and food inequality, people are told to embrace more open markets, more trade, and more globalized economic processes. Yet open markets do not function as perfectly as many at Davos would like to think. Food moves where purchasing power is highest, not where the need for it is most urgent.
This blind embrace of globalization from above means missing out on key opportunities that do not fit the dogma. If we were to support developing-world small landholders, who are often the poorest groups, we could enable them to move out of poverty and enable local food production to meet local needs. Trade would complement local production, rather than justifying its abandonment.
Trade and investment agreements are the gateways through which globalization passes on its way to redefining a country’s economic landscape, and they are increasing at an impressive pace. There are 6,092 bilateral investment agreements currently in force, with 56 concluded in 2010 alone.
That growth reflects the flawed economic model of the pre-crisis years, which relied on indifference to where growth came from, how sustainable it was, and who was benefiting from it. If we are to learn anything from the ongoing crisis, it must be to start asking the right questions.
Every new bilateral agreement, every chapter of globalization, should be measured against new criteria. How sustainable and how evenly spread will the macroeconomic benefits be? Will they facilitate genuine development and provide dignified opportunities to those who become economically displaced?
An EU-India free-trade agreement is now imminent – and could be the litmus test for how we reengage with globalization in the wake of the crisis. Some estimates suggest that the proposed tariff liberalization in the dairy and poultry sectors could threaten the livelihoods of 14 million very poor households in India, half of them landless.
Globalization involves winners and losers – that has been established. But losing out, for a subsistence farmer, means sinking into dire poverty and hunger. Is the denial of a vulnerable population’s right to food an acceptable byproduct of a trade deal? Should the primary goal be to multiply the interests of powerful multinationals? Are these the economic processes that we want, or need?
These are the questions that leaders must ask at Davos. Globalization can survive the crisis. But not as we know it. Globalization must be taken back for the interests of the many.
23 Comments so far
Show AllMr De Schutter fails to see that the problem of globalization as it currently exists is that it is a purely private phenomenon driven by capitalist profit motives. Our distinguished author is therefore merely trying out a new brand of lipstick on a very sick pig. The only form of globalism that could benefit our long suffering planet at this point would be a cooperative model wherein disinterested national entities working in the public interest, both national and international, oversaw and regulated the inevitable global web of economic relations. The private aspect should be devolved to the local level. The problem is that most people in the so-called advanced industrial world are so brainwashed by the ideology of neoliberalism that such an overarching cooperative vision remains inconceivable to them. And in the current political climate, it is light years away. Or one great cataclysm away.
He actually is acutely aware that it is profit motivated, that is why he says the abundance is going to where people can afford it, not to where it is needed.
I went to a seminar in Montreal where Dr. de Schutter spoke. He is very knowledgeable about globalization and its horrific effects in highly impoverished areas of the world where mono culture is promoted by the rich nations. Those nations whose limited resources should be directed towards feeding their own populations rather than sending cotton to the rich nations to be processed are those specifically targeted by our rich countries.
Excellent article. It poses all the right questions. If the neo-liberal trade policies do unto India what they've managed to do elsewhere, we may see nonviolent protests with numbers that may very well rouse the ghost of Gandhi.
Trade has always found the most distant lands.
The poverty and misery is due to globalized capitalism.
The jerks at the meeting will never ......
I appreciate the article for pointing out the need to change the current definition of "global" from slave labor from a few nations to seeing to it that people's hard work gets to be seen and respected. By this, I mean that evil MNCs such as Monsanto should never be allowed to dictate what foods should be available or be allowed to slap lawsuits against farmers even when it was Monsanto's fault. Before "free" trade and GMO took hold, there were plenty of produce choices in almost every culture. See how many food crops exist in this culture and other cultures compared to 50 years ago.
A couple of items related to this subject that you may find interesting...
The number of produce cultivars on the market has been steadily decreasing since around 1900. Regional and specialty varieties have mostly disappeared. The marketers are driving this, not farmers, not consumers, and not GMO. "Organic" advocates preach "consumer choice" and "converting people to organic" because they have something to sell, not because they support sound food and agricultural policy. Consumer choice, and sales and marketing pitches are p[art of the problem, and can never be part of the solution. Monsanto is a convenient scapegoat, just as WalMart is, and is used by the industry to drum up more sales and donations to the "non-profits" - actually marketing arms for various "alternative" products being hustled. In other words - $$$$$$$.
The point: Capitalism, and not Monsanto or GMO, has caused this loss of crop diversity.
What is happening with GMO is not so much alterations to the qualities of crop varieties. Rather, biotech firms are taking new varieties from the public research programs, and inserting "marker" genes for the purpose of then "owning" and controlling those varieties.
The point: it is the privatization of food that is the issue, and GMO is merely one expression of that, and Monsanto merely one of many players in the game.
Harping on GMO and on Monsanto is being done by people with an agenda, with their own commercial interest at stake, and there are big bucks in the "alternative" food market. It is privatization that is the danger, and "organic" advocates are on the wrong side of that issue, arguing for consumer "choice," for further de-regulation and "free markets," and demonizing public institutions.
"Free market" capitalism, and privatization and de-regulation are endangering our food supply and eliminating diversity.
I see what you are saying and yes, we should not get taken away by names while allowing others to sneak in and imitate the Walmarts and Monsantos. The reason I use those names is that they are the worst exploiters of disaster capitalism. On GMO, I find the concept to be all about putting profit before high quality crops. Thanks to GMO, growing unhealthy crops by depriving them of their natural abilities to produce healthy vitamins and minerals will be a boon to Big Pharma/Agri/Insurance in the long run.
There actually does seem to be a connection between the suppression of nutritional information and the agenda of the pharmaceutical industry.
Crops are not so much deprived of their natural abilities to produce healthy vitamins and minerals - although many crops are not allowed to fully ripen, due to market pressures, which does negatively impact nutrition levels as well as flavor. We are losing nutritional value mostly through the process of variety selection, and also through the way produce is handled.
There also seems to be an inverse relationship between where produce can be grown with the least risk, and where it can be grown for maximum flavor and nutrition content. Again, this is market forces.
The Farm Aid program insulates farm land from the ravages of banking and land speculation. We need a similar program to insulate food production from the financial predators in the same way.
Any manmade system that creates winners and losers is dysfunctional, barbaric and must cease.
The globalization of production under capitalism is undoubtedly a means for intensifying the exploitation of working people all over the world, resulting in worsening social conditions for the broad masses in the advanced and less developed countries alike. All the social reforms set in place in an earlier period have been placed under relentless pressure from the drive of global capital for increased profits and the removal of all barriers to its operations.
But this does not at all mean that globalization as such must be opposed. Capitalism, at every stage in its historical development, and above all in this latest phase, is a system of class exploitation. But more than that, it is also a form of organization of production, involving the continuous development of the productive forces, both through technological advances and through the development of the international division of labour. It is upon consideration of these issues that fundamental questions of perspective arise.
...While the productive forces have served under capitalism as a means of exploitation, they also embody the material pre-requisites for the abolition of that exploitation and the advance of mankind as a whole. It is upon this contradiction that Chossudovsky, like many others before him, has stumbled.
In his famous Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explained the dynamic relationship between the productive forces and the class organization of society as follows: “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/cho1-f21.shtml
"Despite the persistent challenges of hunger and food inequality, people are told to embrace more open markets, more trade, and more globalized economic processes"
You can whine about elites' success in stealing the people's self-determination, or you can celebrate the people's success in defending their self-determination. Notice that when you whine, you promote further hopeless dependence. It's important to vilify the elites, but at the same time we have to promote the people, in their pursuit of self-determination, and most of these pundits fail miserably to do this.
Localism is the antithesis to globalism. Globalism is dedicated to concentrating production/power in the hands of the few. Localism is dedicated to concentrating production/power in the hands of the many. Localism is left. Globalism is right, in the political spectrum. Bill Clintok promoted globalism. He is of the right, while claiming to be left, to overshadow the real left.
But the real left is growing, out of the shadow of Clintok and his Demoks. The real left is the people. The people's platform includes localism. Localism keeps the production/power in the local community. Please go back and read the article with localism in mind. Then notice how most pundits fail to write in the people's frame, neglecting to talk about localism. Because they own stock in Monosonto, or something similar. Their agenda is evident.
Globalization has always been for the one per cent. To take it away from them will take a move back to Wendell Wilkie's "One World" idea. Now if that's the reality. We could also use a return to the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 Franklin D Roosevelt put through.
Time for democracy in the European Union! Time to put the real power in the hands of the people's elected representatives in the European Parliament not the appointed bureuacrats in the European Commission or the European Central Bank!
Good artilce, fellow.
What we really need are the rules proposed by Keynes at Bretton Woods that were vetoed by the US Empire led by FDR.
Seven billion humans not only WANT more than they can PRODUCE, they feel they DESERVE more, in orders of magnitude. In a tantrum they will reproduce as fast as possible.
No cow arriving at a lush meadow says: "Is this all there IS? I want a hundred meadows. I deserve twice that many. If I don't get the meadows I deserve, I'm going to take it out on somecowy else! I will join the Kill Undeserving Cows political party. I will join Motorcycle Cows for Christ. I will eat marijuana plants for cow medicinal purposes. I will hire Cowthugs to obtain the meadows I deserve. I will pray nightly for the return of The Ubercow. I will do anything but recognize biological reality. I don't have to take any shit from reality. "
Trylon
Interesting comments!
Diversity is the key element to human survival. Globalization decreases diversity in a race to a mono-cultural bottom.
The root of this flawed concept of commercial globalization is the corporation---non-human, artificial, not found in Nature.
However, globalization will certainly cure the kind of over-population and "uneven benefits" it creates, if Great Nature doesn't do it first.
Don't like it? Don't support it. Talk about alternatives with your neighbors.
With local control, "diversity" can and has meant such things as one community lynches Black people, and another one doesn't; one community trades in slaves, the other doesn't; one community oppresses women, another doesn't; one community throws infants into the fire as religious worship, another doesn't. How is any of that "the key element to human survival?"
Humans, and our activities are "found in nature." How could it be otherwise? To deny that is to deny our interconnectedness.
Globalization will certainly cure the kind of over-population and "uneven benefits" it creates? What does that even mean?
That would be cultural and biological diversity...50 different kinds of corn replaced by one kind grown on factory farms and transported to everywhere else is a bad idea that only makes sense to a corporate mind set. Hundreds of different cultures planet-wide offer humanity a better chance of survival than the homogeneous one put forth by global commercialization.
Indeed, we and all our creations are found in nature. Point taken. However, to conduct our activities "for profit only" leaves us out on a limb alone, putting all our eggs in a basket that no other successful species or lifeforms have used.
Corporatism is a bet against Nature. State-corporatism and globalization present on a planetary scale exactly as cancer presents in a human body. And for virtually the same reasons.
Simply stated, commercial globalization based on the corporate business form will end in chaos ("even" benefits), maybe worse.
Strong statements for anyone to make. Check it out for yourself.
I don't disagree with you about crop diversity. Preservation of traditional cultivars, and fighting against the corruption of the agricultural infrastructure by corporate interests has been my mission for the last couple of decades.
Yes, Capitalism is a threat to the environment and human existence. Corporatism and globalization are inevitable effects of Capitalism.
I would suggest that the statements I am making here are quite a bit stronger than the statements you made, and I would encourage you to check out what I am saying for yourself.
Seems like we're kicking the shins of the same giant, 2Amer. See you on the street.
Very good.