Globalisation You are visitor number ( ) to this page, since 17/12/99 thankyou.

Many people in attempting to address the issue of globalisation attack global capitalism but in doing this we need to define our terms carefully. Do we mean global CAPITALISM or GLOBAL capitalism? Globlisation is the problem not capitalism. But maybe we need to, to borrow from an environmental catch-phrase, `act locally, think globally', so as not to globalise our reality in the lowest common denominator sense but rather to realise that the basis of global reality is, or could be, a summation of local realities. Act locally and the global situation will improve. Here-in lies, I believe, one of the real problems produced by globalisation, that we have all fallen for the belief that the global view must come first. Again we need to look at the environmental analogy to get a clearer picture. The world has always been a global eco-system but within that are contained a multitude of smaller, more or less autonomous eco-systems. The world or global economy can be seen in just the same way. We have to choose whether we want to submit to the 'globalist' view which subsumes our local conditions and defines local autonomy as impossible. That last view is a belief rather than a fact. I highly recommend John Ralston Saul's new book "The Unconscoius Civilization". It raises some important questions in this regard. Capitalism, very simply put, is individual enterprise and is not necessarily global. Saul identifies a particular breed of capitalism, corporatism, which is the bureaucratic collective style of capitalism, as the real enemy of a more democratic and just economic life. And global corporatism is a mighty foe. Corporatism is not individual and subsumes individual needs and a notion of the common interest or good under the goals of corporate bureaucracies that can be public of private in ownership. Ralston Saul suggests that individuals are capable of understanding the relationship between their personal interests and the common good, if they are capable of a degree of psychological maturity and detachment (read self reflection and understanding of one's motives). This he refers to as disinterest. Corporatism on the other hand has an inherent need to wed personal interest to corporate interest and to obscure any sense that the two are not synonymous. Corporatism is not confined to capitalism, it includes all forms or bureaucratic organisation aimed at preventing individual democratic participation in the organisation of society and the expression of the common good. It is a managerial ideology which sees management as the primary tool of power. Economic rationalism as the `theology' of the late twentieth century has arisen as a tool of corporatism to sell a `bill of goods' to governments and individual citizens, to convince us that the needs of the corporations are our needs - WHICH THEY ARE NOT!!. It seeks to manage our lives for us and resists all our attempts to manage it. Here the issue of ideology and its role in society must be examined and I hold the view that our primary problem here in dealing with current economic situations is the ideology of corporatist capitalism. All bureaucracy is not bad. Don't get me wrong, bureaucracy has its problems especially when it becomes self perpetuating, but in itself it is a tool of what ever guides and informs it. Unfortunately we forget that big corporations are bureaucracies and that they are often far more bureaucratic than public bureaucracies. And it is they that are telling us to corporatise then privatise public services and utilities in a form of covert asset stripping. Public bureaucracies are owned by the taxpayer/citizen and should not be sold off into the hands of corporations which are answerable primarily to entrenched bureaucratic managerial structures (boards of directors with only self interest/the corporations interests at heart). The notion that the shareholders are the primary interest group in corporations is a bit of a trick really. Most of the shareholders are other corporations and individual small shareholders tend to wield very little influence in large corporations. Corporatism is fundamentally undemocratic in a covert way also. It seeks to minimise individual democratic input into policy making by a variety of measures such as hijacking policy making via commissions, studies and professional consultation from groups which are invariably aligned with the corporations or able to be stacked or bought. It also invariably attempts to conflate the interests of the corporate world view with the public interest so that we are unable to justify policy directions which do not suit the corporations. Policy directions related to public rather than corporate interests are mostly portrayed as inefficient and outmoded by modern economic rationalism precisely because they represent areas of potential gain which have not been thus far brought under the corporations' managerial control. For example, why have the public sector providing employment services when public money could be provided to the corporations to do the same job? The issue is not one of efficiency or effectiveness but rather of distribution of public resources. If the corporations can make an industry and a dollar out of the welfare sector why not asset strip it? All that needs to be done is convince the citizens that their utilities are inherently unable to provide a good service and they'll elect a government that will agree to sell their asset to the corporations. It is our passivity as voters/citizens which is at the core of this problem. We need to reinvigorate democracy. All people who believe that democracy is the core issue here know how hard this is going to be because participation rates in internal democratic processes are hardly good in most of the western democracies. Where voting is not compulsory it is not uncommon for the turnout at elections to be 50-60%. It is the dynamics of democracy not the state of policy that is the main game. Why can we not get politicians to make the policies we need? Because we are not exercising our democratic power to influence their actions effectively. How can we do that? Not by sitting back and voting once and a while in elections and then complaining bitterly about politicians in between but never doing anything that might make them stand up and take notice of us. We need to stand up and be counted every step of the way, to be involved actively in all sorts of areas of public concern which require changes in policy. We need to write letters, hold public forums, join parties and make personal represent- ations to politicians. And most of all we need to be critical, to apply our critical faculties and not to accept the expert opinions that the corporations and governments in their service use the convince us that they know what is in our interests. We need to risk living in a less comfortable society where dissent and debate not are marginalised and ultimately only able to be expressed in their unconscious shadow form as criminal and antisocial behaviour. The real enemy, corporatism, is not capitalism in its original sense but bureaucratic interest and self perpetuation. It is insidiously anti-democratic and that is the issue which we need to address. It raises a very real question though of whether we are even the so called developed western democracies are mature enough as societies of individuals to live together in a truly democratic way. Democracy is CONCENSUS. And consensus is not everyone agreeing but the ability for people to accept differences openly and with maturity, not resorting to covert power games and manipulation to get their own way. To agree to differ and continue the dialogue, each open to the possibility of change is the essence of consensus and real democracy. This is not a recipe for efficiency and fast tracked change and evolution. It is a slower and more complex dance which requires more patience and less immediate gratification. The clamour for ever faster change and evolution of technology and systems is more illusion than real change. And it serves the vested interests which control the new technology more than the individuals to whom it is sold. The faster we move the more things really stay the same, if not get worse. And none of this is new. We've been around this cycle of growth and decay more than once before since the Industrial Revolution. It may be hard to sell this view but it may be the only way to put the brakes on the headlong rush to corporate dictatorship and potential ecological collapse which we are on. Time to slow down and catch our breath.