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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 175
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WCL 175 September 2000
Unwitting world citizens
A recent book, No Logo, bids fair to become a bible of the protestors against globalization. Its author, Naomi Klein, a 30-year old Canadian, has become a leading spokesperson for the campaign almost despite herself. Radicalised as a result of observing how the global market has victimised workers in the poorer countries, she now sees it as "the next big political movement - and the first genuinely international people's movement". Klein has focused attention upon the way that the giant global brands not only reap excessive rewards - trainers sold for $120 in San Francisco are being produced by workers earning two dollars a day in Indonesia - but also are involved with such disreputable rulers as the Nigerian military.
'Twas ever thus. The enormous profits made by large companies are no new phenomenon: nor are protests against it. Nor even is it new to find protest directed against capitalism and the whole international system of profit-making by a network of monopolies. This is what the communists used to rail at, before their system of national socialism (or state capitalism) collapsed in the Soviet Union and fell into decline in China. The difference today is that there are no interested nationalists, Russian or Chinese, able and willing to take advantage of the protests and convert them into ammunition for the Cold War. The converse is also true: it is hard to see these protestors as part of a Communist conspiracy to seize the world and thus blacken them to the public.
Protests against McDonalds in several countries, leading to the longest libel action in British history when the company won a Pyrrhic victory; the objection to genetically modified foods and the destruction of GM crops; targeting of Nike adverts and other famous symbols; these are growing and are linked to the specific protests against the moves by the World Trade Organization to assist the march of globalization. One can argue that the abuses illustrated and publicized are as temporary as the sweat-shops of the 18th century industrialization and that led to the vast increase in wealth that the world new enjoys. That will not wash with those millions who are being roused by understanding the vast gulf in wealth and power between themselves and the leaders of industry. Bill Gates could buy up dozens of small governments if he cared to spend some of his wealth: that may be the way the economic system works but it doesn't have to be accepted by all.
So what are the inchoate and disorganized protests really about? The answer, whether or not they know it, is that these are world citizens, protesting about a world in which they lack democratic representation and there is no machinery to address their concerns, because the global political structure was designed in a bygone age, when the march of globalization could be ignored or written off as part of the inevitable development of the Great Powers which dominated the globe from Europe for two hundred years.
The take-over of the world by the giant corporations in concert with the United States government has been too successful. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the carte blanche given to the thrusting entrepreneurs and fraudsters in Russia and elsewhere, the defects of globalization have been cruelly exposed. The United States is likely to be increasingly seen as the culprit, although guilt and blame are inappropriate in a situation where the entire world shares responsibility for failing to bring the international system up to date. Petty governments have often been almost the keenest to cling to the outworn trappings of sovereign independence, thus obstructing the move to a reformed world authority.
The targets for the protestors are principally the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both creatures of the wealthy countries and as such, agents of the wealthy few who dominate every country and every large business. If they buckle under the pressure, as is not unlikely, they will offer economic concessions but will neither be willing nor capable of reforming the United Nations and its agencies. So the protests will recur and this will lead to the building of the first united global reform movement. And that is already the work of world citizens, whether they call themselves or consider themselves to be such.
John Roberts
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