Globalization: 'In the long run we're all dead'

B. Herry-Priyono, Lecturer, Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta

As our global society moves ahead in an increasingly interdependent, international web, more global encounters are bound to become part and parcel of our historical condition. The next major global encounter is to take place from Sept. 10 to Sept. 14 in Cancun, Mexico, where trade ministers from around the world will hold high-level discussions on trade with far reaching ramifications for the future of the world's people.

As it is trade that has been the fulcrum of globalization, it is also the issue of trade that is most likely to shape the future character of globalization.

The issue of trade imbalances between the developed countries and developing ones has received a lot of media coverage. It forms the perennial realpolitik which, boiled down to essentials, means that the global rules of the game require developing countries to open their markets to the developed countries' products without the latter doing the same to the products closely associated with developing countries: agricultural products. In a subtler form, this rule is also true with regard to the issue of investment, medicine and intellectual property.

The hullabaloo of this realpolitik has often obscured the basic issues involved in the existing character of globalization. It is a virtue perhaps to remind ourselves of the basics.

First, globalization involves the shifting scope of our acting, thinking and feeling. Rather than being confined to a village, ethnic, religious or provincial scope, both the axis of our life and the unit of our reflection are being stretched to cover the entire globe. As always, some areas are more stretched than others.

Second, globalization is not a natural phenomenon. It is human-made, not inevitable, and subject to human actions. This is against claims usually made by some globophiles who argue that globalization is a natural phenomenon. To believe that globalization is a natural phenomenon is like mistaking the Bali bombings for the Krakatau volcano explosion.

Third, this mistake has far-reaching implications. Once we believe that globalization is as inevitable as the phenomenon of the Krakatau explosion or an earthquake, there is little room for the issue of the human agency, let alone assigning the working of the present character of globalization to human conduct.

This is as fatally dangerous as saying that nothing can be done about the character of globalization. As expected, this will only serve the purposes of those who reap handsomely from the existing character of globalization at the expense of others.

Fourth, to say that the existing character of globalization is not inevitable is not the same as saying that it has no structure that is too stubborn to change.

As we have seen in both the earlier Uruguay Round and the Doha Round, such a stubborn structure is incarnate in the working of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which, despite being ruled by a one-country-one-vote, is wrought with divide et impera politics. It remains true, however, that the stubbornness of the WTO structure is driven not by some nature-driven forces but by mundane human-made politics of interest.

Fifth, precisely because it involves the politics of interest, globalization is, to say bluntly, a matter of power struggle. Despite the real need to protect the hard work of innovators, the imposition of intellectual property rights, for instance, is less about a legal issue than about a dictate from the victors of globalization.

Despite the importance of cost recovery for drug research, what else can one say about the way several pharmaceutical firms deprive millions in developing countries of access to life-saving drugs, if not the game of financial power?

Sixth, this politics of interest is driven not by some creatures from Mars but by earthly mortals among us. Globalization involves transnational business practices primarily conducted by transnational business actors, reinforced by globally oriented government officials.

In a nutshell, the dynamics of the present character of globalization stand on the power of financial capital.

Seventh, that globalization involves seems to be run by the financial powers does not mean that it will never bring about beneficial impacts for most of us. If "power" is a constant factor in life, then the problem is not its presence or absence, but the way it is being used. The same is true with globalization.

Here we come face to face with the crux of globalization. If globalization is our historical condition, the problem is not its occurrence or non-occurrence, but how to devise and strengthen movements to make the power holders shaping globalization accountable to global welfare.

In this respect, the globophobes' antiposition is as self- defeating as the pro-position of the globophiles. Indeed, life is seldom a game of either/or, and ambivalence is forever the condition of our life. As such, critiques of globalization should be seen not as a vice but a virtue.

Eighth, the urgency should be focused on devising accountability mechanisms for the working of financial powers. Both the idea and practice of state-centered democracy has increasingly become obsolete. Not because it is wrong, but because the dynamics of societal power -- this is why democracy was invented in the first place -- have given rise to a new trend. The uncontested power of governments at best remains a de jure residue, while the working of de facto powers has left the existing practice of state-centered democracy behind.

Against the backdrop of these basics, the high-level global encounter in Cancun is most likely to be another intractable moment. The intractability should remind us that the issue is not pro or anti globalization, but how to make publicly accountable the oligarchy that has led us into this experience of globalization as breeding more and more injustice.

As always, the apologists would argue that in the long run we all will benefit from globalization. Never believe in such opium, because, the late British philosopher Bertrand Russell so eloquently put it, "in the long run we are all dead."