It's like a scene from the latest first-class American TV import, Six Feet Under - a dark comedy set in a family-run undertaking business. Picture the coffin sealed and varnished, the final farewells uttered and the conveyer belt humming into motion, gliding the dear departed into the flames. Suddenly there is the sound of knocking and muffled cries. "Omigod!" the mourners collectively realize: the corpse is alive!

The reaction to the wave of financial scandals from the US has felt a little like that. Enron, WorldCom and Xerox's fudging of the numbers - "a billion here, a billion there", as President Bush so coolly put it - has had the left putting on its best black suit as it gets ready to bury American capitalism. They've been bidding goodbye to a system they reckon is in grave crisis and terminal decline. Cause of death: the exposure of some of America's starriest corporate names as hollow shams. And, they predict, if the US economy is on the skids then surely the big bogeyman - globalization - cannot be far behind. Today, WorldCom; tomorrow international capitalism itself will lie in ruins!

Not so fast, as Hollywood might say. First, the American system is not ready for the embalming table just yet. Enron and its copycat debacles obviously represent a serious blow to the reputation of US business - but not a fatal one. This wave of scandals will trigger reform, not revolution. What comes next is not the unraveling of the whole game, but some long-overdue changes - few of which are likely to excite the May Day protest crowd.

So the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, author of Globalization and its Discontents and an intellectual pin-up to many in the anti-globalization movement, foresees not some fiery meltdown but "increased sensitivity to conflicts of interest" around the US boardroom table. He predicts a separation of the accountancy and consultancy functions of single firms along with a demand for greater transparency: necessary moves, to be sure - but hardly likely to make the hearts of Seattle and Genoa veterans skip a beat.

Couldn't we set our sights a bit higher, and hope that the current spate of scandals might do for 21st-century US capitalism what the media's exposé of collusion in the American oil industry did at the start of the 20th? Might we not see a shift as dramatic as the 1911 "anti-trust" court decision which broke up Standard Oil, and stood for decades as a bulwark against cartel capitalism? No, warn those who know the system inside out. Perhaps if there were 10 more WorldComs, then America might return to that progressive capitalist tradition which reached its zenith in FDR's New Deal. But short of an epidemic, radicals should brace themselves for changes which look a lot like tinkering.

And if those hotly anticipating the death of US capitalism should hose themselves down, those looking forward to the defeat of globalization ought to take an ice-cold bath. For one thing, the two are not the same. The Enron affair could have happened even if the American economy was entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Its origins lie in greed and the failings of US accountancy law rather than the contradictions of globalization

In other words, this easy equation of America and global capitalism may be a tad too simplistic: they are hardly synonymous terms. The problem, says Philippe Legrain, a former top official at the WTO, is that "globalization has become a catch-all phrase for everything you don't like about modern life". That's why he has taken on what may seem a daunting task - writing the upcoming Open World, a take-no-prisoners, progressive's defense of globalization

Legrain wants us to unbundle all our confused ideas about the g-word and decide what it is, and what it isn't. For him, that means a belief in free trade and in strong institutions to manage it - without endorsing every move every international company makes.

So rather than seeing systemic flaws inherent in the very idea of global capitalism, we should approve of, say, Nike opening a factory in Vietnam: those Hanoi workers may get less than their counterparts in South Carolina, but they're earning way more than they used to in Vietnam. Foreign investment and know-how comes in; managers get trained; a developing country is no longer solely dependent on its own means to build itself up - now it has outside money to give it a leg up. And, by opening up its markets to foreigners, it gets direct benefits: cheaper Coca-Cola, for sure, but also cheaper wheat. It is, he says, a win-win.

Think of that as good globalization: the only problem here, say Legrain and friends, is that there is not enough of it. Richer countries need to return the compliment and open up our own markets, letting developing countries sell us their food, textiles and steel. We need to make international trade a two-way street.

Which is not to say all globalization is good. Free trade in goods and services may bring benefits but, the defenders admit, short-term influxes of capital - cash coming in one day, flowing out the next - are bad news, destabilizing fragile economies. Poor countries need to protect themselves from that instability; capital controls may be the way.

The specifics are secondary. The key point is that the critics need to start making precisely these kinds of distinctions - and then argue each one on its separate merits. Stiglitz admirably distinguishes between globalization - which, he insists, can bring great benefits, spreading knowledge, improving life expectancy and quality of life - and the institutions which currently manage it. He is scathing about his former employer, the International Monetary Fund; but his remedy is reform of that specific body, rather than the abolition of international capitalism.

This seems a smart route for the anti-globalization movement to travel: to move beyond the sterile debate about whether globalization is good or bad, and decide what kind of globalization it wants. You can understand its reluctance: right now it enjoys the perfect unity of a cause which knows what it's against but not what it's for. As Charles Leadbeater points out in another optimistic defense of globalization, Up the Down Escalator: "The lack of an agreed program is a huge strength...they do not have to set priorities or fall out over the terms of messy compromises."

But it's time to grow up, to recognize that anti-globalization will not do even as a label. It's far too wide, embracing green ultras or anarchists on the left and Jean-Marie Le Pen on the right. And it is absurdly impossibilist. Globalization is now a fact of life: this article can be read, hours after it's been written, from Sheffield to Shanghai, thanks to that ultimate tool of globalization, the internet. To be against globalization is to want to turn the clock back, to wish that the earth can be flat. But it also fails to discriminate, to distinguish between the liberating globalization of, say, the net, and the menace of smash-and-grab capital flows.

So put away that black tie, quiet that funeral drum. The task for progressives is not to bury the modern world but - the same as it ever was - to change it.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

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