The Case against the Global Economy Edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith
Zmirak, John
The Case against the Global Economy BRAVE NEW WORLD edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith Sierra Club Books, $28,550 pp. John Zmirak When someone argues for a movement by saying that its...
...The authors in this collection try to debunk the central premises of glob-alist economic ideology, which run as follows: (1) Globalization is an inevit-able process of economic rationalization, (2) driven by autonomous technological and market forces that cannot be stopped, (3) which it is futile and self-destructive for any nation to resist, (4) since any shortterm pain caused by the process is outweighed by ultimate "gains" in overall prosperity and freedom...
...Such "progressivism" bor-rows the certainties of nineteenth-century physical science, to lend greater author-ity to its vision of the human future...
...Most of the essayists (including Nader, Kirkpatrick Sale, William Greider, and Jeremy Rifkin) come from points left of the political center...
...As Eric Voegelin liked to point out, such progressivism is a secular knock-off from Augustine's doctrine of history...
...It also shows a convergence of left- and right-wing thinkers into a consensus that values localism, traditional culture, and community values over economic and technological "progress...
...This is the favorite tactic of ideologues, who have used it to promote some of the worst causes in history-from Bolshe-vism to eugenics...
...John Zmirak When someone argues for a movement by saying that its triumph is "inevitable," it's time to be suspicious...
...Traces of this "pseu-do-inevitabilism" are to be found in many thinkers who have labeled them-selves "progressive," from French Jacob-ins to social Darwinists...
...Likewise, David Korten demonstrates that Adam Smith would not have approved of NAFTA and GATT, since his competi-tive theory was designed to diminish mo-nopolies-such as the transnational corporations which benefit from these treaties...
...Chesterton's distributism may have a future, after all...
...Only at the fringes of either party can dissenters be heard-what Al Gore dubbed the "Hallo-ween coalition" opposing NAFTA, in-cluding Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan...
...For good measure, they usually suggest that economic liberalization must bring political liberation (since cash is the great engine of history...
...The Case against the Global Economy, an eclectic compilation of essays, does a fine job of exposing the dark side of globaliza-tion...
...Likewise, this book features signifi-cant political variety between its covers...
...Third, this trend can be frustrated or rendered less harmful by concerted resistance of local and national communities...
...a few hail from the localist or nationalist right (such as Wen-dell Berry and Sir James Goldsmith...
...From the best essays in the book, which include the contributions of Berry, Goldsmith, and Hermann Daly, there is much to learn...
...These hard-left contributions harm the cause which the book is meant to serve-the creation of a broad-based coalition of skeptics to light the many blind spots in the emerging ideology of globalization...
...Now that the Marxist dream has dissipated, the weapon of pseudo-in-evitability works for a new political fac-tion-the ideologues of the "global economy...
...And so on...
...Second, its pro-ponents stand to benefit from this move-ment, through cheap labor, cheap goods, low environmental standards, and the destruction of smaller competitors...
...On what other policy do the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times consistently agree...
...A few of the authors are clearly hostile to private enterprise per se...
...Taken as a whole, they offer an alternative definition of the move toward globalization (which Daly prefers to call "universal economic dereg-ulation...
...Putatively "right-wing," be-cause their stance is probusiness, pro-ponents of globalization such as Newt Gingrich espouse a revolutionary pro-gressivism which promises to sweep aside every local industry, culture, and institution, and homogenize global so-ciety according to the dictates of eco-nomic efficiency (narrowly defined as maximized Gross National Product...
...The price of succumbing to the universalizing economy, he suggests, is the universal triumph of the "tech-nological monoculture" exported from Hollywood and Disneyworld, via Block-buster and Walmart...
...Nader's analysis of the cor-rosive politics of GATT must disturb any friend of constitutional government...
...And last, if not thwarted, its results will be eco-nomic inequity, cultural homogenization, environmental degradation, and ever-more-centralized economic and gov-ernmental power...
...These assertions have become so deep ly ingrained in our politics that they no longer seem open to debate...
...First, such deregulation is the result of conscious political decisions, promoted by multinational corporations and certain political elites...
...This book will appeal to (and I think, persuade) readers of many different in-terests...
...The more candid among the globalists (such as Milton Friedman) will admit this cheerfully...
...If these thinkers keep working together, who knows...
...Economists must take seriously Daly's argument that globalization is not real-ly efficient...
...in the absence of global environmental standards (a patent im-possibility), the freedom to operate any-where in the world allows companies to dump their waste (and externalize their costs) on innocent third parties-and thus to prosper by stealing...
...This collection is uneven, disturbing, eccentric, and provocative...
...They sweeten this bitter pill with promises that techno-logical progress and ever-increasing ef-ficiency must increase the overall well-being of the entire planet-just as the selfish operations of the free market produce more wealth for the poor than the altruism of socialist economies...
...they seem to pine for a socialist com-mand economy, rendered impossible by the slippery nature of wealth in a glob-al economy, among other reasons...
...in fact, it matches Marx's picture of the bourgeoisie as the first great revolutionary class, the leveler of distinctions whose progress reduces all social and family relations to the nexus of cold cash...
...According to Augus-tine, history was driven by Providence interacting with human wills...
...They may stumble right into the forgotten realm of Catholic social teach-ing...
...In a time of bubbling markets and heady promises, it makes for sober thinking...
...Support for globalization in America spans both political parties, forming a kind of corporate "center party" around which political money, muscle, and re-spectable opinion cohere...
...The objections they raise against the ratio-nale and results of globalization vary widely as well...
...Honest political thinkers cannot dis-miss Goldsmith's warnings about the im-pact of plummeting wages (only partly compensated by cheap goods) on the so-cial peace of Western nations, or the ef-fect of environmental dumping on the third world...
...There is nothing "conservative" about such an agenda...
...Instead, many modern thinkers imagined that the mechanistic "laws" of history act upon individuals, as gravity attracts particles of matter...
...Students of literature and culture will be moved by Berry's defense of local agriculture and local economics- which he argues are essential to local cul-ture...
Vol. 124 • July 1997 • No. 13
