Globalization: a fate that can be fought! - Issue Papers

Globalization: a fate that can be fought! - Issues

Globalization: a fate that can be fought!

Bert De Belder - People's Health Assembly - Issue Paper

Editorial of the bi-monthly magazine International Solidarity, Belgium October 2000

There is much ado about “globalization” nowadays. Thanks to technological progress, everything and everyone has become interconnected. The world’s culture finds its way to our dinner table and to our stereo kit. Via the Internet, you can chat and make friends in New Zealand, South Africa or Argentina. Your PC, your motorcycle or your automobile may contain parts that have been produced in three, four or maybe ten different countries. And yet, only 500 million people are living in relative comfort, while 5.5 billion are needy: they are jobless, landless, homeless, they have no documents, they have no rights. The 200 richest billionaires possess more wealth among them than the joint annual income of 45% of the world population. Over the past year, those 200 super-rich saw their wealth increase by some 4,500 dollar per second.

This criminal gap between the rich and the poor is being produced, maintained and widened by the big transnational corporations, banks and stockmarkets, that fuction according to the one and only principle of maximizing profits. They are assisted in this by the International Monetary Fund, prescribing free-market economics everywhere and imposing budgetary restraints in order to repay foreign debts. They are likewise assisted by the World Bank, imposing a dependent capitalist model of “development” everywhere. They are also assisted by the World Trade Organization, organizing world trade in a manner that benefits but the TNCs. Finally, they are assisted by NATO, intervening militarily where and whenever the other scenarios fail. Together, these institutions form a dangerous Gang of Four, claiming millions of lives every year.

“Globalization” is a misleading and superficial term. It is nothing else than the further development of imperialism, a process that has been going on for more than a century now. It is capitalism concentrating capital in ever larger monopolies; looking for higher profits through more international trade, investments and production; and ever increasing the exploitation of the Third World peoples as well as that of the workers in the entire world. It is a capitalism in which the role of the financial markets is exploding, with fabulous speculative capital flows. It is a capitalism that is producing a few large TNCs that are capable of controlling the entire world market and distributing the spoils among themselves. In fact, the whole planet has been neatly divided into “spheres of influence”, that the great powers consider as their backyard. The collapse of the Berlin Wall has added an immense economic hunting ground to that backyard. With the counterveiling politico-military power of the Soviet bloc gone, imperialism has become more greedy than ever.

Does this mean that globalization is reigning supreme, that it is a natural phenomenon that cannot be stopped? Far from it. Notwithstanding the existence of common instruments such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO and NATO, the rich North doesn’t form one mighty bloc that can carelessly submit the rest of the world. Between the transnational corporations, a deadly competition is raging, following the “dog eat dog” rule. The great powers - the US, the European Union and Japan - are each supporting their own TNCs in their life-and-death struggle, as with the trade wars between the US and Japan. The same goes for the relationship between the US and the EU. Washington isn’t happy at all with the advent of the Euro, and in the WTO, the US and the EU are having sharp disputes.

Both world wars were in essence attempts of the imperialist powers to take away a part of the pie from their competitors. Today, such military confrontations look most improbable. But the formation of a European army is already beginning to spoil the transatlantic solidarity. In times of globalization, potential conflicts are simmering, not only between the advanced capitalist powers, but also bottom-up conflicts, kindled by the Third World peoples and by the workers.

Transnational corporations and the four members of the Gang are no longer able to do as they like. In December 1999, a massive people’s mobilization paralyzed the WTO meeting in Seattle. In April and September, it was Washington’s and Prague’s turn, where the IMF and the World Bank were meeting. In between, there was the huge outpour of solidarity with French peasant leader José Bové in Millau, the mobilization against the G8 summit in Okinawa, the blocking of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne. Ever more people are demanding the annulment of the Third World debt and are taking the TNCs to account: Rio Tinto or Nike, Coca-Cola or TotalFina, Monsanto or H&M. Indian peasants, South-Korean workers, indigenous peoples in the Philippines, Colombian guerillas, landless peasants in Brazil, European and North-American automobile workers: all are fighting a “globalization” that is not theirs. And by doing so, they are interconnecting their struggles!