Globalisation is good for you

[Editor]

The nation state can no longer deliver the left's global agenda, says Nigel Harris in the latest Red Pepper debate. Globalisation is our best hope for reducing world poverty, he argues in an article on the Dec 2007-Jan 2008 issue of the magazine, also published on the Red Pepper website.

Robin Blackburn replies with some ideas for a new system of global welfare.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/mot67.html

[rob9443]

Marx would have regarded globalisation as progressive; indeed he predicted it in the Communist Manifesto. The problem is that we have the wrong rules. The liberal Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz outlines the necessary reforms in his latest book Making Globalisation Work. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Globalization-Work-Global-Justice/dp/0141024968/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196882128&sr=8-1

Ideally many of us would like to see the end of global capitalism, but since it's clearly not going to happen in our time this is the kind of program we should support. Far from being a sell out it will be resisted vehemently by the US imperialists and their market fundamentalist apologists.

[Brian]

Of course globalisation is good for you , just like ebola, the black death,flu,and TB.

If we do not defend the nation state , particularly the advances won at this level,what do we do?

In particular, do we allow the ruling classes to make inroads into what we have won at national level ,while we sit around idly debating a neverland of proposals which will never become reality?

Most people have enough commion sense to see the need to defend what we have achieved at national level , and to see it as the backbone of whatever else we may achieve at the international level,rather than accept the propaganda of the imperialists and dress it up as some kind of 'new left' .

yours,

Brian Precious

[treborc]

A question what do we have.

[Brian]

What we have here in the UK is a Parliament of elected representatives, won over decades of struggle in the 19th and 20th centuries, which members are far more accountable,and have far more legislative power ,than, for example, the MEP's in the enormously expensive focus-group-cum-rubber-stamp in Brussels.


Just one example.

yours,

Brian Precious

[treborc]

Well perhaps, we were told to pick a women as our MP we worked on a list of four, to be told forget it here she is vote for her, hence I left the Labour party, seems under Labour democracy is a mute point.

[Gitfinger]

Absolute bollocks: "Globalisation is good for you." As Noam Chomsky said we put the world in the hands of unaccountable, unelected private tyrannies. The whole point of the nation state and universal franchise is to give people through the ballot box what they don't have with money. Nothing is more powerful or equitable than democracy. This is so obvious and so pervasive an argument it's not worth lowering yourself to discuss it any further.

Of course this is the magazine that brought us "Babes without spice" this month, one of the most appalling bits of leftist nonsense I've read in years that leaves me in no doubt why half of Britain is reading the Daily Bloody Mail. If the left is constructing its arguments around the Spice Girls we might as well just all pack up and go home. Since when did a load of grasping yahoos represent anything more than the idolation of money?

[rob9443]

If you've got Bananarama you really don't need the Spice Girls...

As for globalisation it is a matter of defining your terms. I am all in favour of trade between the world's states.  Protectionism and autarky lead to poverty and xenophobic lnward looking cultures. Look at Ireland under De Valera compared with today. The problem is that the existing institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and WTO are systematically designed to rip off the Third World. This is not an argument against trade but for reform. For example if the dollar was replaced with Keynes' International Clearing Union Third World debt would vanish overnight.

http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/368keynesoncu.htm

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2001/11/20/making-generosity-redundant/

[Gitfinger]

The problem is the world's states can't possibly trade fairly for a myriad of reasons. Globalisation has fundamentally never worked, there are almost no historical examples of fair global trading. Just look at the present day when you have an artificially high dollar and artificially low yuan you end up with Americans buying Chinese goods for pennies.

I don't think Ireland is a particularly good example - it hoovers up six times more money than it contributes to the EC, their economic stagnation De Valera has been turned around by a huge influx of public money rather than economic growth.

I don't know if the problems with globalisation are so fundamental and and so deeply entrenched that we can ever truly reform them, there are no simple or magic bullet answers to it.

[richocol]

It's all well and good debating whether globalisation is good or not. While we sit in our air conditioned offices, or centrally heated homes.

But perhaps we should ask the dispossessed coffee farmers in Colombia, or the children who make clothes for Gap. Or Primark. Or Nike.

I'm sure they would suggest that it is not. No matter what form globalisation comes in, it's always intertwined with the economics of 'liberal' democracy. Globalisation. It's fucking capitalism.

[treborc]

Lets see my central heating has been off for months cannot afford to keep it on. As for farmers of the world do not forget our own farmers earning well below the min wage.

yes is stinks but who's fault is that governments who leaders sit on billions of back handers from companies.

I am disabled.

[richocol]

Yes, exacly Treborc. Free trade fucks our farmers as well. Globalisation, capitalism, free trade - it doesn't work!

[cybervigilantes]

Yes, exacly Treborc. Free trade fucks our farmers as well. Globalisation, capitalism, free trade - it doesn't work!

I agree! Globalisation is sold to the masses as a good thing but it's riches are built on the blood and suffering of others.

A recent book that is well worth reading. shocking and firmly backed up by research and supporting evidence is from the Guardian contributor, Naomi Klein. 'the shock doctrine' see a review here: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/143437-S...Shock-Doctrine-


"Disaster capitalism is according to Klein "...orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities." (6) It has its origins in the "Chicago School" of economics made famous and perpetuated for decades by University of Chicago economics professor, Milton Friedman, who actually coined the phrase "shock treatment" to describe the psychological pummeling of societies and individuals who might stand in the way of or could be made more useful to the advancement of corporate goals. One recent example was the dramatic use of shock and awe, including using those very words to describe it, against the nation of Iraq during the invasion by the U.S. in 2003. A more recent example to which Klein devotes a great deal of attention is the devastation of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.

The endgame of disaster capitalism is the total privatization of what have throughout American history been state services. Not surprisingly, the ultimate outcome of unbridled disaster capitalism will be the supplanting of government by corporations."
video here: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/142775-Video-The-Shock-Doctrine

[treborc]

you have been watching Robocop.

[cybervigilantes]

you have been watching Robocop.

sorry a bit late in replying.- very true -  although I have to say V for Vendetta is my particular favourite! have you seen my avatar floating around our closely monitored cyberspace then?

[Little Richardjohn]

The nation state can no longer deliver the left's global agenda, says Nigel Harris in the latest Red Pepper debate. Globalisation is our best hope for reducing world poverty, he argues in an article on the Dec 2007-Jan 2008 issue of the magazine, also published on the Red Pepper website.

Robin Blackburn replies with some ideas for a new system of global welfare.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/mot67.html

The nation state as we know it was a product of the steam engine, and died out with the H Bomb. It was not a species of society which lasted that long, in historical terms, because the technology which created it was overtaken in its range and killing power after only a centrury or so.

The world we live in now is created by universal mass communications, which is the most powerful tool in the hands of the masses since the invention of the printing press. And that led to the Reformation.

Global class consciousness has never been more possible. As is the decapitalisation of enterprise and co-operation. The music industry is the obvious example of the new freedom from the bankers. The African experience of mobile phone banking is another example opf a system which allows small farmners to sell directly to the markets without the Man From Del Monte taking his cut, and transferring money orders without the nobhi-walllah's bribe. Going round the traditional post-colonial impediments, and doing it for themselves.

The possibilities are almost endless.

[Johnnywas]

The nation state can no longer deliver the left's global agenda, says Nigel Harris in the latest Red Pepper debate. Globalisation is our best hope for reducing world poverty, he argues in an article on the Dec 2007-Jan 2008 issue of the magazine, also published on the Red Pepper website.

Robin Blackburn replies with some ideas for a new system of global welfare.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/mot67.html

The nation state as we know it was a product of the steam engine, and died out with the H Bomb. It was not a species of society which lasted that long, in historical terms, because the technology which created it was overtaken in its range and killing power after only a centrury or so.

The world we live in now is created by universal mass communications, which is the most powerful tool in the hands of the masses since the invention of the printing press. And that led to the Reformation.

Global class consciousness has never been more possible. As is the decapitalisation of enterprise and co-operation. The music industry is the obvious example of the new freedom from the bankers. The African experience of mobile phone banking is another example opf a system which allows small farmners to sell directly to the markets without the Man From Del Monte taking his cut, and transferring money orders without the nobhi-walllah's bribe. Going round the traditional post-colonial impediments, and doing it for themselves.

The possibilities are almost endless.

"workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains" ?

[Brian]

I know you posted a little while ago, Gitfinger, but well-said and thank you so much for your posts re globalisation, chomsky and the stuff re the spice girls.

I must say I do not have time to read such rubbish, but if it was as bad as you say then it deserves what you say.Such drivel is hardly joined up thinking - indeed if it is thinking at all.

There is an awful lot of simplistic claptrap talked by some sections of the left , when confronted by the capitalist strategy enabled by modern technology.

Many on the left talk in a way that shows they have fallen lock,stock and barrel for the assumptions behind the thinking of our rulers, or they miss the point entirely - witness the palpable crap talked by many 'lefties' when it comes to the EU.

The point is that the nation state remains the level at which the working class has gained the greatest amount of popular accountability,power and participation. This is why we see today such a concerted propaganda campaign against it ,from those interests who would love to turn Europe and the world into a jamboree of hire-and-fire with no public services,poor wages, bad conditions, poor environmental protection (environmentalism eats into profits, after all) , few rights and no prospects of any improvement for the great majority of the human race.

Globalisation is just another name for imperialism in the 21st century.

yours,

Brian Precious

[budugs]

globalisation good for you, are you kidding its just another whezz for the rich to get richer and as a result the poor to get poorer.