[Onthebarricades] Confronting Globalisation by Shelley Walia

[Andy]

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/09/09/stories/2007090950080400.htm

 

Confronting globalisation 

SHELLEY WALIA 

      When everything from seeds to genes are being patented and corporatised, we need to snatch back our past and the future. 
     

Photo: AFP 

Voicing dissent: A protestor at a G8 summit. 

The Western history of violence has scarred the deep-seated liberal philosophy prevailing in Europe and now the dismal state of affairs in the world: mafia-style politics in Russia and China, nationalism in North East Asia with rivalries growing between Japan, China and the two Koreas and, most of all, the unrestrained voracity and blitz of the United States' military-industrial complex. 

Fall and rise 

David Harvey, the political historian, remembers in his recent book on imperialism, the picture of the British monarch on stamps from India, Sarawak, Rhodesia, and Jamaica, which was enough to make evident the history of imperialism, the idea of the British Empire and Western hegemony. However we saw the empire fast crumbling with the Indian independence signalling its demise. The Suez Canal crises of 1956 led to the British and the French entering into a military conflict with Nasser, only to receive, a "rap on the knuckles" by the U.S., which wanted a peaceful containment to the conflict. It is here that we see the fall of one empire and the rise of another. A further blow to Europe came with the rise of American capitalism; international capitalism was no longer controlled from Europe. From now on, international politics and economic dominance would be in the hands of the U.S. rather than with Europe which previously enjoyed the supremacy in international commerce and politics.

In the words of Michael Ignatieff, it is clear from the recent upheavals in West Asia that "America's entire war on terror is an exercise in imperialism." Interestingly, a Philippines government advertisement in Fortune magazine in 1975 reads thus: "To attract companies like yours. we have felled mountains, razed jungles, filled swamps, moved rivers, relocated towns. all to make it easier for you and your business to do business here." Enough evidence is obvious here of the power exercised by global economics on "third world" nations.

Novel situation 

The forces of globalisation have created a novel situation, taking on a rather different charm. The worry at the moment is globalisation with an American face underpinned by the overwhelming impact of American brands. In this context, it is interesting to take into consideration Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, where he discusses how globalisation has reached a scenario from 2000 onwards when the individual becomes all powerful in contributing to the world. Here, at this stage there are no walls and each individual is powerful in his own right. At least he thinks he is, existing as he does in a world where it is difficult to separate illusion from reality.

This is the fallout of neoliberalism, the embodiment of free market economy that lays out the rules of the world we live in. We are restricted by transnational corporations, the World Bank, the IMF, symbols of the hegemony of a corporate-led global trade. But as economies are liberalised, democratic forces gradually take a beating and the client States are engaged to reign in the hostility of the masses. Standing on the fringes, the "third world" becomes an onlooker of the steamrolling effect of the juggernaut of Western capitalism. The people of the developing world, in the words of the "Notes from Nowhere" collective, remain "disconnected from what they produce and what they consume, from the earth and from one another", living in an "arid homogenised culture". Corporate globalisation pushes farmers off their land; crops, water, patents are corporatised with no respect for human rights or ecology or justice.

Using the false message of prosperity and progress from the West is one form of strategic dominance. If this does not work, the alternative of "economic muscle" is ruthlessly employed. It is a known fact that "between 1990 and 1997 developing nations paid out more in servicing their debt than they received in loans - a transfer of $77 billion from South to North, through the machinery of the IMF and the World Bank, organisations which ensure the continued dominance of the rich nations. Meanwhile, ironically, those rich nations are being 'structurally adjusted' too, as the World Trade Organisation rolls back democracy in the name of trade, unravelling decades of social progress." All the institutions behind the global economy, like the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, the G8, and the World Economic Forum represent deep-rooted and often imperceptible interests.

Strands of resistance 

Opposed to such an overwhelming control of "third world" economies and life at large, the cries of rebellion by the Zapatista movement have inspired activism manifested in various movements around the world. I saw this tangible resistance a couple of years ago at Gleneagles in Scotland, where the G8 met to confer on the hunger and poverty in Africa and the rest of the developing world. Amusingly, this luxurious site was in stark contrast to the meagre contribution that the world's elite group of rich nations spends on international development. An estimated 2,00,000 people converged on the hotel for a rally organised by Make Poverty History, a coalition of about 450 non-governmental organisations. The protest was intended to draw attention to more than 12, 000 children who die every day from poverty-related diseases; if the millennium targets are not met by 2015, sub-Saharan Africa will be burial ground for two in every three child deaths in the world. Such a reaction also highlighted that AIDS and other major epidemics like malaria, which kills one child every minute, are all related to the overwhelming shroud of poverty and malnutrition. The lack of clean drinking water and the absence of any national health services or supply of medicines together multiply the burdens of a society that now looks towards the West for some tangible aid programs to avert one of the biggest tragedies of the human race. Similar demonstrations at Genoa saw 3,00,000 protestors which got the impetus from the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in Southern Mexico. The agitation gradually spread to many other cities around the world. 

Walled worlds 

These meetings of the rich are surrounded by fences; seeds, medicines and genes are patented, and "democracy turned into purchasing power". To oppose these free market strategies, the protesters in Quebec City tear down the fences surrounding the summit meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The radical guerrillas in South Africa break the fence of privatisation that keeps the poor from having electricity by installing illegal connections themselves. Peasant women in Asia freely exchange seed, defying the restrictions of market logic that would have them go into debt to buy commercial seed.

Emma Goldman, the anarchist philosopher, forcefully wrote almost a century ago, "And you, are you so forgetful of your past, is there no echo in your soul of your poets' songs, your dreamer's dreams, your rebels' calls?" These were the sentiments behind resistance movements from the days of Columbus when the indigenous people of the Americas resisted him. We have seen it in the anti-slave movement in the U.S. and in the working class revolutionary demonstrations all over the world. We are now seeing the encouraging move by nations in Latin America putting an end to the interventions of neoliberalism or the eye-catching challenges to the neo-liberal agenda as in the Asian uproar to the financial crisis in 1998, and the South's antagonism to the "Singapore conditions".

Languages of resistance 

Time is ripe now to counter the oppression of globalisation with a new "language of resistance - of land, poetry, indigenous culture, diversity, ecology, dignity". In this great globalisation debate, we have to ask the pertinent question: "Who rules, and in whose interests and to what ends?" We have to snatch our past, our present and our future from the stranglehold of the powerful and the rich. Apparently, hostility towards the weaker sections, manipulation of the global media and double speak has led to a deep-seated global antipathy. All discourses on pluralism and multiculturalism stand interrogated and suspect. The intellectual at this juncture needs to self-reflect and strive to counter the blatant support given to the neo-conservative agendas of global supremacy and regional control. 
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