Chapters cover G8 attitudes to the key issues: war, corporate power, climate change, immigration, trade, debt, food. Ideal for anyone who is troubled by the current direction set by our world leaders, this book is also a great tool for activists.
Chapters cover G8 attitudes to the key issues: war, corporate power, climate change, immigration, trade, debt, food. Ideal for anyone who is troubled by the current direction set by our world leaders, this book is also a great tool for activists.
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Overview
Chapters cover G8 attitudes to the key issues: war, corporate power, climate change, immigration, trade, debt, food. Ideal for anyone who is troubled by the current direction set by our world leaders, this book is also a great tool for activists.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780745324203 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 04/18/2005 |
| Pages: | 264 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Globalization and war
Noam Chomsky
It is hardly exciting news that we live in a world of conflict and confrontation. There are lots of dimensions and complexities, but in recent years, lines have been drawn fairly sharply. To oversimplify, but not too much, one of the participants in the conflict is concentrated power centres, state and private, closely interlinked. The other is the general population, worldwide. In old-fashioned terms, it would have been called 'class war'.
Concentrated power pursues the war relentlessly, and very self-consciously. Government documents and publications of the business world reveal that they are mostly vulgar Marxists, with values reversed of course. They are also frightened – back to seventeenth-century England in fact. They realize that the system of domination is fragile, that it relies on disciplining the population by one or another means. There is a desperate search for such means: in recent years, Communism, crime, drugs, terrorism, and others. Pretexts change, policies remain rather stable. Sometimes the shift of pretext along with continuity of policy is dramatic and takes real effort to miss: immediately after the collapse of the USSR, for example. They naturally grasp every opportunity to press their agenda forward: 9/11 is a typical case. Crises make it possible to exploit fear and concern to demand that the adversary be submissive, obedient, silent, distracted, while the powerful use the window of opportunity to pursue their own favoured programmes with even greater intensity. These programmes vary, depending on the society: in the more brutal states, escalation of repression and terror; in societies where the population has won more freedom, measures to impose discipline while shifting wealth and power even more to their own hands. It is easy to list examples around the world in the past few months.
Their victims should certainly resist the predictable exploitation of crisis, and should focus their own efforts, no less relentlessly, on the primary issues that remain much as they were before: among them, increasing militarism, destruction of the environment, and a far-reaching assault against democracy and freedom, the core of 'neo-liberal' programmes.
The ongoing conflict is symbolized by the World Social Forum and the World Economic Forum in New York. The WEF – to quote the national US press – is a gathering of 'movers and shakers', the 'rich and famous', 'wizards from around the world', 'government leaders and corporate executives, ministers of state and of God, politicians and pundits' who are going to 'think deep thoughts' and address 'the big problems confronting humankind'. A few examples are given, for example, 'How do you inject moral values into what we do?' Or a panel entitled 'Tell me what you eat,' led by the 'reigning prince of the New York gastronomic scene', whose elegant restaurants will be 'mobbed by forum participants'. There is also mention of an 'anti-forum' in Brazil. These are 'the freaks who assemble to protest the meetings of the World Trade Organization'. One can learn more about the freaks from a photo of a scruffy looking guy, with face concealed, writing 'world killers' on a wall.
At their 'carnival,' as it is described, the freaks are throwing stones, writing graffiti, dancing and singing about a variety of boring topics that are unmentionable, at least in the United States: investment, trade, financial architecture, human rights, democracy, sustainable development, Brazilian-African relations, GATS and other marginal issues. They are not 'thinking deep thoughts' about 'big problems'; that is left to the wizards of Davos in New York.
The infantile rhetoric, I presume, is a sign of well-deserved insecurity.
The freaks at the 'anti-forum' in Porto Alegre are defined as being 'opposed to globalization', a propaganda weapon we should reject with scorn. 'Globalization' just means international integration. No sane person is 'anti-globalization'. That should be particularly obvious for the labour movement and the left; the term 'international' is not exactly unknown in their history. In fact, the WSF is the most exciting and promising realization of the hopes of the left and popular movements, from their modern origins, for a true international, which will pursue a programme of globalization concerned with the needs and interests of people, rather than of illegitimate concentrations of power. These, of course, want to appropriate the term 'globalization', and to restrict it to their peculiar version of international integration, concerned with their own interests, those of people being incidental. With this ridiculous terminology in place, those who seek a sane and just form of globalization can be labelled 'anti-globalization', derided as primitivists who want to return to the stone age, to harm the poor, and subjected to other terms of abuse with which we are familiar.
The wizards of Davos modestly call themselves the 'international community', but perhaps we should adopt the term used by the world's leading business journal: 'the masters of the universe'. Since the masters profess to be admirers of Adam Smith, we might expect them to abide by his account of their behaviour, though he only called them 'the masters of mankind' – that was before the space age.
Smith was referring to the 'principal architects of policy' of his day, the merchants and manufacturers of England, who made sure that their own interests are 'most peculiarly attended to' however 'grievous' the impact on others, including the people of England. At home and abroad, they pursue 'the vile maxim of the masters of mankind': 'all for ourselves and nothing for other people'. It should hardly surprise us that today's masters honour the same 'vile maxim'. At least they try, though they are sometimes impeded by the freaks – the 'great beast', to borrow a term used by the Founding Fathers of American democracy to refer to the unruly population that did not comprehend that the primary goal of government is 'to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority', as the leading Framer of the Constitution explained in the debates of the Constitutional Convention.
I will return to these matters, but first a few words about 'a world without war'. We cannot say much about human affairs with any confidence, but sometimes it is possible. We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won't be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others. The reason is familiar: humans have developed means of destroying themselves, and much else, and have come dangerously close to using them for half a century. Furthermore, the leaders of the civilized world are now dedicated to enhancing these dangers to survival, in full awareness of what they are doing, at least if they read the reports of their own intelligence agencies and respected strategic analysts, including many who strongly favour the race to destruction. Still more ominous, the plans are developed and implemented on grounds that are rational within the dominant framework of ideology and values, which ranks survival well below 'hegemony', the goal pursued by advocates of these programmes, as they often state quite frankly.
Wars over water, energy and other resources are not unlikely in the future, with consequences that could be devastating. In substantial measure, however, wars have had to do with the imposition of the system of nation states, an unnatural social formation that typically has to be instituted by violence. That is a primary reason that Europe was the most savage and brutal part of the world for many centuries, meanwhile conquering most of the world. European efforts to impose state systems in conquered territories are the source of most conflicts underway right now, after the collapse of the formal colonial system. Europe's own favourite sport of mutual slaughter had to be called off in 1945, when it was realized that the next time the game was played would be the last. Another prediction that we can make with fair confidence is that there will be no war among great powers; the reason is that if the prediction turns out to be wrong, there will be no one around to care to tell us.
Furthermore, popular activism within the rich and powerful societies has had a civilizing effect. The 'movers and shakers' can no longer undertake the kinds of long-term aggression that were options before, as when the United States attacked South Vietnam 40 years ago, smashing much of it to pieces before significant popular protest developed. Among the many civilizing effects of the ferment of the 1960s was broad opposition to large-scale aggression and massacre, reframed in the ideological system as unwillingness to accept casualties among the armed forces ('the Vietnam syndrome'). The Reaganites had to resort to international terrorism instead of invading Central America directly, on the Kennedy-Johnson model. The same changes explain the intelligence review of the incoming Bush-I administration in 1989, warning that in conflicts against 'much weaker enemies' – the only kind it makes sense to confront – the United States must 'defeat them decisively and rapidly', or the campaign will lose 'political support', understood to be thin. Wars since have kept to that pattern, and the scale of protest and dissent has steadily increased. So there are changes, of a mixed nature.
When pretexts vanish, new ones have to be concocted to control the great beast, while traditional policies are continued, adapted to new circumstances. That was already becoming clear 20 years ago. It was hard not to recognize that the Soviet enemy was facing internal problems and might not be a credible threat much longer. That is, presumably, part of the reason that the Reagan administration, 20 years ago, declared that the 'war on terror' would be the focus of US foreign policy, particularly in Central America and the Middle East, the main source of the plague spread by 'depraved opponents of civilization itself' in a 'return to barbarism in the modern age', as Administration moderate George Shultz explained, also warning that the solution is violence, avoiding 'utopian, legalistic means like outside mediation, the World Court, and the United Nations'. We need not tarry on how the war was waged in those two regions, and elsewhere, by the extraordinary network of proxy states and mercenaries – an 'axis of evil', to borrow a more up-to-date term.
It is a fair guess that the 'war on terror' will serve as a pretext for intervention and atrocities in coming years, not just by the United States; Chechnya is only one of a number of examples. The 'war on terror' has, of course, been the focus of a huge literature, during the first phase in the 1980s and since it was redeclared in the past few months. One interesting feature of the flood of commentary, then and now, is that we are not told what 'terror' is. What we hear, rather, is that this is a vexing and complex question. That is curious: there are straightforward definitions in official US documents. A simple one takes terror to be the 'calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature ...'. That seems appropriate enough, but it cannot be used, for two good reasons. One is that it also defines official policy, called 'counterinsurgency' or 'low-intensity conflict'. Another is that it yields all the wrong answers, facts too obvious to review though suppressed with remarkable efficiency.
The problem of finding a definition of 'terror' that will exclude the most prominent cases is indeed vexing and complex. But fortunately, there is an easy solution: define 'terror' as terror that they carry out against us. A review of the scholarly literature on terror, the media and intellectual journals will show that this usage is close to exceptionless, and that any departure from it elicits impressive tantrums. Furthermore, the practice is probably universal: the generals in South America were protecting the population from terror directed from outside, just as the Japanese were in Manchuria and the Nazis in occupied Europe. If there is an exception, I haven't found it.
Let us return to 'globalization', and the linkage between it and the threat of war, perhaps terminal war.
The version of 'globalization' designed by the masters of the universe has very broad elite support, not surprisingly, as do the so-called 'free trade agreements' – what the business press, more honestly, sometimes calls 'free investment agreements'. Very little is reported about these issues, and crucial information is simply suppressed. For example, after a decade, the position of the US labour movement on NAFTA, and the conforming conclusions of Congress's own Research Bureau (the Office of Technology Assessment, OTA), have yet to be reported outside of dissident sources. And the issues are off the agenda in electoral politics. There are good reasons. The masters know well that the public will be opposed if information becomes available. They are fairly open when addressing one another, however. Thus a few years ago, under enormous public pressure, Congress rejected the 'fast track' legislation that grants the President authority to enact international economic arrangements with Congress permitted to vote 'Yes' (or, theoretically, 'No') with no discussion, and the public uninformed. Like other sectors of elite opinion, the Wall Street Journal was distraught over the failure to undermine democracy. But it explained the problem: opponents of these Stalinist-style measures have an 'ultimate weapon', the general population, which must therefore be kept in the dark. That is very important, particularly in the more democratic societies, where dissidents can't simply be jailed or assassinated, as in the leading recipients of US military aid, such as El Salvador, Turkey and Colombia, to list the recent and current world champions (Israel–Egypt aside).
One might ask why public opposition to 'globalization' has been so high for many years. That seems strange, in an era when it has led to unprecedented prosperity, so we are constantly informed, particularly in the United States, with its 'fairytale economy'. Through the 1990s, the United States has enjoyed 'the greatest economic boom in America's history – and the world's', Anthony Lewis wrote in the New York Times a year ago, repeating the standard refrain from the left end of the admissible spectrum. It is conceded that there are flaws: some have been left behind in the economic miracle, and we good-hearted folk must do something about that. The flaws reflect a profound and troubling dilemma: the rapid growth and prosperity brought by 'globalization' has as a concomitant growing inequality, as some lack the skills to enjoy the wondrous gifts and opportunities.
The picture is so conventional that it may be hard to realize how little resemblance it has to reality, facts that have been well known right through the miracle. Until the brief late-1990s boomlet (which scarcely compensated for earlier stagnation or decline for most people), per capita growth in the United States in the 'roaring 1990s' was about the same as the rest of the industrial world, lower than in the first 25 post-war years before so-called 'globalization', and vastly lower than the war years, the greatest economic boom in American history, under a semi-command economy. How then can the conventional picture be so radically different from uncontroversial facts? The answer is simplicity itself. For a small sector of the society, the 1990s really were a grand economic boom. That sector happens to include those who tell others the joyous news. And they cannot be accused of dishonesty. They have no reason to doubt what they are saying. They read it all the time in the journals for which they write, and it accords with their personal experience: it is true of the people they meet in editorial offices, faculty clubs, elite conferences like the one the wizards are now attending, and the elegant restaurants where they dine. It is only the world that is different.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Arguments against G8"
by .
Copyright © 2005 Gill Hubbard and David Miller.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Barbarism Inc.
Gill Hubbard and David Miller
Section One Concentrated Power
Chapter 1 Globalization and war
Noam Chomsky
Chapter 2 Britain and the G8: a champion of the world’s poor?
Mark Curtis
Chapter 3 Democracy
Colin Leys
Chapter 4 War
Lindsey German
Chapter 5 Corporate power
Olivier Hoedeman
Chapter 6 The Gang of 8: the good governance roadshow
Emma Miller
Section Two Issues 103
Chapter 7 Climate change
George Monbiot
Chapter 8 Trade
Susan George
Chapter 9 Food security
Caroline Lucas and Michael Woodin
Chapter 10 ‘War on terror’ on racism, asylum and immigration
Salma Yaqoob
Chapter 11 Privatization and workers’ rights: but neo-liberals are such nice people …
Bob Crow
Chapter 12 Poverty
Tommy Sheridan
Chapter 13 Debt: the debt crisis and the campaign to end it
Vicki Clayton
Chapter 14 Health and HIV/AIDS: fine words and fatal indifference
Ronald Labonte, Ted Schrecker and David McCoy
Chapter 15 Genoa 2001: which side to be on?
Haidi Giuliani
Chapter 16 Where do we go from here?
Sam Ashman
Conclusion Naming the problem
David Miller and Gill Hubbard