G-8 defenders tried to depict Genoa protesters as affluent and out of touch, but the anti-globalization movement is wringing aid out of rich nations -- over Bush's shameful objections.
By David Moberg
The needless point-blank police shooting of a protester was not the only outrageous official act as the leaders of the world's seven rich countries (plus Russia) met in Genoa, Italy, over the weekend. In a cynical ploy aimed at buttressing their own crumbling credibility and at isolating the growing ranks of protest against the emerging global economy, the leaders pretended that they were the champions of the world's poor, fighting on their behalf against the 50,000 to 100,000 people in the streets who were the real enemies of the poor.
"For those who want to shut down trade," Bush said before the G-8 meetings, obviously alluding to the expected protesters, "I say you are hurting poor countries." Echoing the theme, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times cheerleader for globalization, tried to divide the protesters into two camps, one composed of anarchists and Marxists along with naive students duped by "protectionist" trade unions who simply oppose globalization, and another made up by environmentalists, anti-poverty groups and others who "understand that globalization, properly managed, can be the poor's best ladder out of misery."
Both Bush and Friedman not only deliberately misrepresented the protesters and their aims but, more important, misrepresented what the current form of globalization is doing to the world's poor. Indeed, the global elite would not be making even the modest gestures they offered over the weekend to the poor if it were not for the pressures from the protesters in the rich countries (since they find it easier to ignore -- or shoot -- protesters in the poor countries).
It is a rich irony that Friedman is now writing about "managing" globalization, when his argument for years has been that globalization can't and shouldn't be managed -- poor countries should just put on the "golden straitjacket" imposed by the market and international financial institutions and blast off to prosperity. Environmentalists, unionists, sweatshop protesters, proponents of debt cancellation and the host of other campaigners drawn to protests like that in Genoa have long argued for management of the global economy to raise living standards, guarantee human and worker rights, protect the environment and expand democracy. Indeed, the main division among protesters -- other than the deadly serious question of tactics -- is what it will take to manage the new global economy so that working people in both rich and poor countries can have a voice and the prospect of a better life. It's not a debate over whether there should be trade or other international exchanges.
The track record of globalization for most of the world's poor has been grim. And where Bush's policies don't simply reinforce the worst of the status quo, they would actually make matters worse. Despite the tempering effects of the G-8's other members, the collective actions they took were pitifully inadequate either to help the poor or to stop the rising tide of discontent in their own countries.
Some poor people in a few poor countries have improved their standard of living over the past three decades of rapid globalization, even taking into account the big setbacks from economic crises in recent years in countries like Thailand and Korea. But by most standards inequality among countries and within countries -- at all levels of development -- has grown rapidly. Africa and the south Asian subcontinent have become poorer since the late 1960s, especially if the destruction and depletion of natural resources are taken into account, according to a recent study by Cambridge University economics professor Partha Dasgupta. Even worse, the International Labor Organization in Geneva reports a rise in slavery and forced labor, ranging from road clearing for global oil companies in Burma to producing cacao beans in West Africa for rich-country chocoholics.
Recently economist Mark Weisbrot and colleagues at Washington's Center for Economic and Policy Research tallied "The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000," comparing those decades with the previous two decades. It isn't pretty. Economic growth has slowed down, most of all in the poorest countries (where the economy in many cases is actually shrinking). Progress toward increasing life expectancy has slowed down in all but the healthiest one-fifth of the world, and progress in reducing infant mortality has slowed as well. In most of the world, the rate of growth in school enrollment has also slowed. Globalization may not be the cause -- it's certainly not the sole cause -- of all this slowdown in human progress, especially for the poor, but it clearly hasn't guaranteed improvement in their standard of living.
Copyright 2001 Salon.com:
