Earlier in openDemocracy, Paul Kingsnorth wrote of the anti-globalisers: They believe in certain common aspects of life which cannot and should not ever be commodified or privatised by global economic interests; water, agriculture, the airwaves, the atmosphere, traditional knowledge, biological diversity, gene lines and more; a concept some call the global commons.
Theres a wonderful song, by Leon Rosselson I think, about the Diggers in the 17th Century in England:
This earth divided
we will make whole
so it can be
a common treasury for all.
I have sung the song with tears as well as gusto, but heres the rub. The water Kingsnorth talks of in poor countries is too often disease-bearing, the agriculture unable to sustain populations, the airwaves brutalized by dictators, the traditional knowledge the very thing that oppresses women and children...
Need I go on? Kingsnorth seems to have no appreciation of how entire populations have been brought from life expectancies in the 40s to those in the late 70s, how water has been cleaned up, precious steps towards democracy gained, and new knowledge (germs, antibiotics) acquired. What has happened in wealthy countries is some kind of miracle for all the plentiful failings.
To discount it quite as totally as Kingsnorth does is not just to discount the big corporations, but the struggles of everyone from the Diggers on. Many of the specific political demands of the radicals of Cromwells army, and of many good people since, have been gained by centuries of struggle: universal suffrage, secret ballots, collective bargaining, womens rights.
Taming the wild goose
Popular struggles and principled reforms, combined with the wealth-producing power of the capitalist market system, have created the most hopeful societies in history, the best societies in which to be an ordinary person, with every chance of a full belly, roof, living children and as much education as one can take in.
No wonder this heady mix is spreading around the world: globalisation. The challenge is to maintain the popular struggles that will continue to curb the great power of wealth. I would hope that the anti-globalisers Kingsnorth celebrates would link hands to tame the goose that lays the golden eggs, but not kill it.
He would seem to want to kill it. This puts him in the company of all those dreamers and impractical idealists who condemn poor people to remain in poverty, drinking filthy water, passing on their traditional wisdom to their dying babies.
Let us honor the memory of past radicals who even in America! achieved Medicare, Social Security, trade unions, civil rights, not to mention all the laws of contract etc. that make economic activity possible, nor the scientific breakthroughs that underlie modern wealth.
To honor them is to organise now to create the global institutions, understandings, alliances and campaigns that can develop similar achievements on the world stage. Then we may yet see clean water throughout Africa, long life and a socially protected old age in India, democracy and gay rights in China...
So some traditional culture will get mangled in the process. True. It will. Let the people decide which they want. When they are well fed, munching their fast food, they will have time as many of us in wealthy countries do to rediscover the best parts of their heritage, relearn dead languages, provide living history re-enactments, leaving out the actual rapes and blood.
Have faith in the people! They may go through a homogenised phase when getting the industrial package together, but they will always make their own culture and individuality in the end, all the more when they have the wealth and leisure to do so. Buying stupid luxuries isnt so bad a price to pay well come out of that adolescent phase.
We will even do better by the environment to get economic health, which leads to stable or declining populations, and to peoples with the affluence to appreciate how much they need nature. Globalisation of the whole package laws and rights and reforms as well as markets and corporations is the only viable and hopeful route to making the world a common treasury for all.
Making the future happen
I sent this response to openDemocracy as a brief contribution, and they asked me to add some thoughts about how in practice this should be done did I think either Porto Alegre or Davos had the answer? Well, I look at this with a long lens and an appreciation for the many things people are doing. Even apparently contradictory approaches can help. Riots by anarchists with whom I, personally, disagree can focus attention and get people thinking just as Winstanleys little group of Diggers did.
Grotesquely growing inequality, if it grows the whole pie so that even the smallest fifth grows, is better than a static economy in which the smallest fifth is smaller in real terms, and doesnt grow. Philanthropic rich people, like George Soros, also play their part.
Nike sweatshops in poor countries, just like the satanic mills of the early English industrial revolution, may be one of the foundations of future prosperity. But appalled and well-meaning college students in the West who refuse to buy sweatshop clothes, thereby perhaps condemning the would-be sweatshop workers to even worse conditions back on the land, also play a useful part: the idealistic rich have to learn how to help the poor, and it isnt easy.
Rich world organizations that started out idealistically, and have spent decades working out how to do it realistically, like Oxfam, get my strongest vote. There are people in the World Bank whom I greatly respect, connecting with NGOs and trying to learn how to help the poorest.
The consumers of America, whose incessant trips to the mall almost alone kept the Asian economies from sinking into a serious depression in the late 90s, probably did more than anyone at that point for, say, the poor of Thailand: a rich irony.
Centrism & paradoxical capitalism
The biggest thing I feel is needed right now, though, is ideological confidence in the political center. Why allow conservatives to be the main boosters for capitalism? If the word capitalism stinks too much, call it the knowledge economy or invent another word.
Conservatives are in a strange bind, boosting capitalism while decrying its radical power to transform moralities. Why do we have civil rights, feminism, gay rights, if not for the creation of wages, cities, popular education? Just as the fundamentalists have stolen Jesus, the conservatives have stolen capitalism.
The best that we have today, from hip hop to womens rights, from antibiotics to a clean Hudson River, results from combining market capitalism with popular energy and reforming zeal. Capitalism itself is healthiest where ordinary people are free to be themselves, while the powerful are curbed by effective laws preventing monopoly and sharp practice.
Free marketeers whose deregulations led to the Savings and Loan scandal or Arthur Andersen shenanigans cant be trusted to run capitalism. They are ideologues, as linear-minded and out of touch with the ecological realities of the economy as the Communists they hate.
Those on the left, who have reluctantly and with shame come to compromise with capitalism, need to shake off their 60s romanticism. The left and the market should be natural allies. Together they make a powerful engine for good in the world today. Their conflict as long as neither side wins is healthy.
There are many good things to be done. Let your personal bent decide whether, for you, it is best to pursue corporate wealth or fight for workers rights. But give the other guy or gal credit: we are in the same business of human and ecological betterment. We need people who can express this kind of realistic idealism for the coming century. We need a militant appreciation of paradox.
