What is globalization?
this year started publishing a series of tests written by economist José Arcadio Guzman on globalization and neoliberalism. The issue is of vital importance in today's world, left devastating game of "market rules" and the interests of large transnational corporations, which have become the main form of neocolonial interference in countries dependent economies.
For Jose Arcadio Guzman Nogales (*) In the past three decades has appeared in the world a "new economy." For the first time in history, the entire planet is dominated by a new type of capitalism involved in computer networks. Transnational capitalism, which some naive call "globalization."
Globalization is a word of English, more American than British, and as the dominant culture today is the U.S., this term has settled comfortably in our vocabulary. Essentially intended to mean that we are now more interdependent, thanks to the internet and other communication and computer technology developments, that every day we become more like each other, because of the dominance of postmodern cultural style, and we live in a single economy, with to computer integration of markets subject to the neoliberal hegemony. In sum, the world is now a small village, a "global village."
To this, postmodernists, missionaries of "globalization", adding that this is a "new era" dominated by knowledge and information, that is the end of history and ideologies that nothing has an intrinsic nature, a real essence, that everything that seemed solid, disappears into thin air, that politics and the state is extinguished, and all we can hope for is a natural evolution " without purpose or meaning, subject to random from the "friendly rules" of the market. That is, we are in a globalization "happy" in a world forever free and fair.
These are the credentials of "globalization", crammed into a nihilistic and confused speech, a strange mix of cultural and political pessimism light entertainment, authorized by an invisible and omnipotent ideological politics, wants to trap and paralyze in its web of tales any germ of critical thinking.
But in fact, "globalization" is not only the mass of neoliberal economics, communication revolution and postmodern culture. It is above all a political project, led by transnational corporations and financial institutions, operating in each country against the objectives of national development. It is not in any way, an event "natural" but the result of a conscious policy aimed at these ends and carefully constructed, addressed to treaty law to law, by the G-8 (USA, Canada, United Kingdom of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Russia) and the agencies 'global' at your service (International Monetary Fund, IMF, World Bank, World Bank, World Trade, WTO).
These institutions (armed with neoliberal dogma, whereby the current "free" trade, capital and information, and state deregulation, produce the best outcome for human well-being) undertaken in the early 80's of XX century, a war of capital is still buries the Southern countries in poverty.
For these purposes, neoliberalism is complemented by the "internationalism", which was an approach of the socialists against the capitalists, and is now ideological heritage of transnational capital, worldwide, facing workers and the nation state. The current international capital unsettles states and societies, it threatens to capital flight and sent their profits to tax havens, if governments do not grant open markets, privatization of public enterprise, tax cuts, increasing subsidies billionaires or free infrastructure.
The collapse of the Eastern Bloc rewarding gave a boost to these "globalists" who, freed from the threat of dictatorship of the proletariat, is dedicated to building the dictatorship of the market: the mechanism of power and strength that its Board of Directors (IMF, WB, WTO) over the global economic squeeze.
undemocratic institutions
As if this were not enough, perfecting impoverishing neoliberal strategy of the organizations 'global' and articulating with it, multiply in every country the institutions called "undemocratic ", which are independent of the political democratic and legally irresponsible to them. A typical undemocratic institution is the central bank independent of government. In Colombia, for example, the 1991 Constitution provides that Bank of the Republic is organized with administrative, patrimonial and technical subject to its own legal regime. She adds that "the legislature may direct in any lines of credit to the State or individuals."
And if it is the legislature that decides on vital issues like this, then who?
appears here once again, the delirious neoliberal market appeal, "a fantastic animal," which has the uncanny knack of itself generate the best possible society. From here follows, "Logically" that the state intervention only serves to upset the delicate social harmony. Unless the case of more state intervention to abolish freedoms, social rights and ensure transnational capital accumulation, and less state intervention for social justice. The spokesmen of the "globalization" that hold workers economic and social crisis, they indicate that the large "defect" of democracy is that it generates pressures "irresponsible" leading to "excessive" social security schemes and "costly" public systems of education and health. And say: "These costs are beyond our means, and exacerbate the fiscal deficit." Therefore, according to them, democracy is detrimental to the effectiveness of the system to meet his "real" responsibility: the payment of external debt and fiscal balance to warrant, to make safe the transnational financial sector.
Al mentioned "default" of democracy, it adds a contempt for her cardinal feature of neo-institutional thinking, which now occupies a place of honor at the IMF and the World Bank as the savior of neoliberalism . According to Gary S. Becker, neoliberal neo institutionalist and Nobel Laureate in Economics: "Only states that are institutionally protected from these pressures can resist democratic states are not."
Christian speaking, this is a call for institutional changes ("rules") to ensure the efficient functioning of the market ("beneficial for society.") So be at the cost of not only democracy but also the social state of law. Well, according to the neoliberal view neo institutionalist, the states most effective are those that enjoy greater autonomy from the public and, in the absence of a "good" dictatorship, the best recourse is to state violence, to settle for reform "law," fundamental social rights contained in, in his view, "irresponsible" and "unworkable" existing social security schemes.
Thus, transnational capitalism, neoliberal and neo-institutionalist, "globalizing" and Darwinist, destroys the social state of law and democracy.
Consequently, governments and politicians see their power to shape the evolution of events is continuously reduced. No matter if justice must be respected social, environmental protection, and develop education and public health. In all these vital issues affecting the future of the peoples governments are limited to bow to the overwhelming pressures of the transnational economy. The only "globalization" actually sponsored by them is financial and neoliberal discourse, not human rights, economic and social, that of justice, or sustainable development, that are neglected and treated as empty rhetoric. Simply speaking, sponsoring a "globalization" mutilated and back to democracy.
But all these, if markets are in charge in all spheres of social life, and go beyond the decisions of elected representatives, there is indeed a shift of power from governments to markets. Thus, democracy loses its legitimacy. So: why vote if government policy is critical to the wellbeing of citizens? Why vote if the policy has become a game powerless anonymous and irresponsible action of operators in the market? Why vote if the only option is the neoliberal economic life?
Under the desert sun of "globalization" of democracy and melt social state of law. So it should be called post-modern neo-liberal capitalist globalization.
(*) in Economics from the Universidad del Valle (Colombia), MA in economics from Mexico Cide. The text originally appeared in the magazine Fonvalle Reports, Employees Fund Teachers Universidad del Valle, Issue No. 17, August 2008, pp. 8-10.
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