[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about why an anti-globalization movement is gaining strength as more-and-more of us become aware that the roots of Globalization are in crude Capitalism. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a new, equitable global anti-globalization order is the fact that all countries remain persistently embedded in global Capitalism
1. In these countries, the pursuit of profits remains the engine of economic expansion, both creating great vast inequalities and posing a threat to the planet. I spite of this disappointing fact, Capitalism continues to both penetrate the farthest reaches of the globe and deepen its entrenchment in areas it subjugates.* (Walden Bello, Shalmali Guttal)
*: From its early days on, Capitalism has long been an ‘adaptive-shape-shifter’ —a chamaeleon. (GHW7, PHM)
2. Staunch capitalists truly believe that the natural organizational form of life is the market so that the market takes precedence and so that state and citizens’ rights take the backstage. As a consequence, the value of life is its market price. In the market, there is no room for human rights (HR) –civil, political, social, economic or cultural– except those of private property and freedom of enterprise. This all results in a veritable predation of life.
The IMF is actually quite up-front
3. Let me recap: The IMF identifies Capitalism’s ‘founding pillars’ as a) private property, b) self-interest, c) competition, d) market mechanisms,** e) free choice (to consume, to produce, to invest) and f) limited government, as well as emphasizing that Capitalism’s “essential feature…is the motive to make a profit.” But ponder: Oh! There can be no increase in profits without a fall in wages… (Politika) —for sure a human rights (HR) concern…
**: Thanks to the prodigious law of supply and demand, a free and unfettered market sets the price of everything (and everyone). If the market allows freebies here or there, it deforms the market’s omniscience…. It sounds stupid, and it is, but this is how the gurus of Capitalism reason. (Louis Casado)
4. Now, in response to the rising global debt burden, the IMF is again prescribing austerity measures while dismissing a debt relief treaty (and the alternative of paying for it by raising corporate taxes) as “politically unfeasible”.*** (GHW7, People’s Health Movement)
***: Taxation is indeed a matter of HR and social justice so that upholding economic, social and cultural rights absolutely requires reforming the international financial architecture. It is un-contestable: states have a legal obligation to implement progressive tax systems, eliminate unjust tax privileges and avoid regressive taxes that disproportionately affect those with the least. (CESR) …But we know governments do not.
International financial institutions (IFIs) indeed have human rights obligations! (as much as they trickily deny it)
5. IFIs must, but almost never do, assess how their policy advice affects states’ ability to finance HR interventions, particularly in heavily indebted countries.**** This points the finger at IFIs’ too-seldom-claimed global accountability in terms of their explicitly integrating HR considerations into their recommendations/loans. (CESR) The task thus now is turning this demand for IFIs accountability into action. Bottom line here is the fact that international organizations are ineffective, because their structure no longer reflects today’s reality. They get away with unilateral and exclusionary actions that just show contempt for HR and for the growing collective demand for a more democratic governance –a challenge they persistently resist. (Lula)
****: The debt bondage of these countries actually represents a situation of modern slavery where a person’s life-long services are used as collateral to repay a debt. (GHW7, PHM)
Just as we have a poverty line —under which no one should fall— we now need an extreme wealth line: a limit above which no individual should rise (Olivier de Schutter)
—Extreme wealth creates, not solves, extreme poverty!
6. Exacting an international wealth tax of at least two percent on billionaires would be the next logical step after a minimum global corporate tax (of 15%?) was agreed in 2021. Many super-rich individuals would hardly even notice a tax rate of two percent. And after all, like that other old adage ‘noblesse oblige’ goes, is it not equally true for ‘richesse oblige’…? (D+C).
Indeed, most states of the Global South are dominated by elites that, whether via authoritarian or liberal democratic regimes, keep their people down and poor
—People are not just vulnerable: They are made/rendered vulnerable!
7. The levels of poverty and inequality/disparity in the South are shocking. The Gini Coefficient for Brazil is 0.53, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. The rate for China (0.47) also reflects tremendous inequality, despite remarkable successes in poverty reduction. In South Africa, the Coefficient is an astounding 0.63, and 55.5 percent of the people live under the poverty line. In India, incomes have been polarizing over the past three decades with a significant increase in billionaires and other ‘high net worth’ individuals.
8. The vast masses of people throughout the Global South, including indigenous communities, blue collar workers, peasants, fisherfolk, nomadic communities, and women are economically disenfranchised, and in ‘liberal’ democracies, such as the Philippines, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, and Kenya, their participation in democracy is often limited to casting votes in periodic, often meaningless, electoral exercises.
9. Investment and cooperation(?) models such as free trade agreements and foreign direct investment frequently entail the capture of land, forests, water and marine areas, and extraction of natural wealth for the fallacious purported purpose of helping national development. Local populations –many of whom are indigenous– are disposessed of their livelihoods, territories and ancestral domains with scant legal recourse and access to justice.
10. During this current moment of global transition, as the old Northern-dominated multilateral system falls into irreversible decay, the new multipolar word will need new multilateral institutions. The challenge, especially for the big powers of the Global South, is not to create a replica of the old Western-dominated system, where the dominant powers merely used the UN, the WTO, and the Bretton Woods institutions (IFIs) to indirectly impose their will and preferences on the vast majority of countries.
11. Will the BRICS or any other alternative multilateral system be able to avoid replicating the old order of power and hierarchy? To be honest, the current political-economic regimes in the most powerful countries in the Global South do not inspire confidence. (W. Bello, S. Guttal)
Bottom line
12. We are now living in a world of rules-based disorder. Is the rules-based international order credible if its rules do not apply equally to all nations? Rules constructed by the victors of the Second World War are confused and abused. They promise peace and prosperity, but on terms that leave many behind, while entrenching unfair power inequalities. Inevitably, historically aggrieved nations became discontented as their post-colonial self-consciousness evolved. The construction of a fundamentally different, fairer rules-based international order is ever more urgent.***** This is not easy. A step-by-step approach is essential with many reversals expected along the way. (Mukesh Kapila)
*****: A true multipolar world will be born when the geopolitical weight of Asia, Africa, and Latin America matches their rising economic weight. (Jeffrey Sachs)
13. A true anti-globalization movement calls for a wide public education/HR learning campaign of the citizenry so as to coalesce and collectively demand and work towards greater democracy. It also is to call the attention to the gross political failures of the reformist left parties that came to power during the height of the globalization period.
14. Indeed, while the contradictions of neoliberal globalization led to electoral victories of left parties in scores of countries across the world during the last couple of decades, global neoliberalism was not countered by the parties of the reformist left that came to power. They may have criticized neoliberal hyper-globalization while they were in opposition, but they did very little once they came to power to combat its destructive effects. At the very best, they increased spending on social programs, but did not try to diminish the invasion and spread of globalization in their economies and societies.
15. Subsequently, by failing to tame, let alone shrink, capitalist globalization, they quickly saw their political fortunes decline and found citizens changing sides. This is the principal factor that has activated a turn to the Far-Right across the globe.
16. The problem with the reformist Left vis-à-vis neoliberal globalization remains to this day. That is, it advances a critique of the consequences of capitalist globalization, but seems to accept the phenomenon as inevitable and unalterable. In doing so, it leaves the field open for far-right populists to make inroads with disgruntled voters by appealing to their worst instincts as in the case of immigration.
17. So, if the Left fails to develop the courage to engage itself economically, politically, ideologically and culturally in the making of an alternative world order, capitalist globalization will continue to reign supreme, and the Far-Right will be its main political beneficiary. (C. J. Polychroniou)
18. So, what is to be done? Adapting is, for sure, not an answer, but rather an invitation to accept a present and a future of global injustice. (Riccardo Petrella) It is much easier to critique Capitalism than it is to imagine it morphing into something fit to see us through our existential poly-crises. It is simply unrealistic to assume that a capitalist economy can resolve the very crises it has created and continues to create. (GHW7, PHM)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
—Economists have for (too) long helped shape policy by offering analyses to guide decisions on trade, taxation, regulation, and economic stability. Mainstream economic expertise has led major policy debates, influencing governments around the world. Today, however, economists are increasingly sidelined. While they still dominate the staff of central banks and multilateral institutions, political leaders are more likely to prioritize ideology and expediency over economic analysis. Meanwhile, public trust in economists has been eroded by high-profile policy failures, growing political polarization, and mounting challenges to expert authority from new and often unreliable information sources –and from modern-day extreme leaders. Economists simply do not, but need to, take what people say seriously. They will never be universally popular, nor should they strive to be. They are not to tell decision-makers what they want to hear (but they do!). (Karen Dynan)