NEW WORLD ORDER
As I begin to reflect on the economic and social situation of the world today, it is almost inevitable to immediately think about commonplace terminology, as such, “New Economy” or “globalization” - the understanding that the world is or is becoming a global village with its various barriers that inhibit the focused oneness of nations, peoples, and continents annihilated.
Indeed there has been some disappearance of many structures but with a simultaneous erection of some more demeaning ones as the “vital minority”, the superpowers domineer over the “trivial majority.”
In this article, I will take the approach that Michael Walzer employs in his “Spheres of Justice”. That is, the perspective of an inside observer rather than one who leaves the cave to analyse it from a distance. I will also borrow, as a skeleton, some of the “Four Faces of the Global Culture” from Peter L. Berger to situate and articulate the influence of the world economic giants on global economics. I will make reference to some concrete data about the world economics, their impact and implications on social life, especially on the developing countries.
In the “Four Faces of the Global Culture,” Berger gives the four ways in which the idea of globalisation has sifted through to the entire globe. In the “Davos Culture”, he highlights how a clique of individuals, a country, or region can so much influence those people it comes in contact with to the extent that they adopt the values and beliefs of the former. In the “Faculty Club”, the author tells how the Western world tries to internationalize its intelligentsia, its values and ideologies through academic influence.
In the third, “Popular Culture”, there is a “Hellenistic” spread of culture and “need” to be like the West, particularly American, in all styles of life by most people in other parts of the world. For instance, our local musicians sing local music with an American rap embellishment.
This “need” for conformism (doing as others do) or totalitarianism (doing as others would expect me to), critically analysed is a mark of incredible relegation as the subjects lose so much of themselves to the others’ foreign values. The last, “Evangelical Protestantism”, is a spiritual movement and culture, with a particular and foreign value system imbedded with a strong force of globalisation.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Before we critically analyse the subject at hand, some concrete economic data will serve us well. The world economics is based on terms of trade. That is, the values of countries’ exports vis-à-vis the values of imports; the higher the nation’s income, the stronger its capacity for economic building. Income is usually determined by the value of a nation’s products on the international market.
The 1999 findings, as compiled by Bob Sutcliffe, show that 75% of the total world’s exports were from developed countries, 25% from the developing countries. Of the 75%, most of the trade was and remains within the three major trade giants of the world (Western Europe, South and South East Asia, and North America) than between the world regions.
The role, therefore, played by Africa, Latin America and other developing countries in international trade is rather insignificant. Of course the developing world is lagging behind as it limps in both volumes and qualities of its manufactures.
The developing world is unable to enter the fast growing international market at any significant degree. Subsequently, the export earnings of developing countries are very or too low to build up competitive economies. Being that low key, therefore, the developing world is literary disenfranchised in trade policy-making and in determining the global trade character.
But this is only data. My quarrel here is about the social implications of such data on human dignity. Clearly globalisation has scored some success, but mainly for the already advantaged minority. By and large, it has created an incredible abyss between the rich West, “the vital minority” and the poor developing countries, “the trivial majority”.
Berger’s “faces” communicate volumes in this regard. The attempt to regulate the market flows has had serious harms for the poor majority. As can be deduced from the first face, the industrialised countries have penetrated more than just the trade market. There has been a simultaneous movement of both goods and cultures.
There is a hibernated agenda to deculturise and indoctrinate the developing countries in the process of globalisation. Who doesn’t know that commonalities in taste make it easier to find common ground politically? And obviously with politics comes power, ruler and ruled.
PRIVATISE OR ELSE?
In 1999, there was a clear example of this hypothesis when many poor countries entered a pact with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an agent of globalisation, with subsequent social complications. As always, the IMF gives directives and conditions for its aid. Some of its directives in the poverty reduction strategy were that nations in the developing world, in enhancing their economies, should reduce subsidies on many schemes, and that many state-owned enterprises be privatised.
But does reducing subsidies on medical expenses in a poor country where all drugs are imported and the majority of the citizens cannot afford health services enhance development, especially in the face of HIV/AIDS?
Michael Kelly in his recent study “HIV and AIDS: A Justice Perspective”, raises very serious questions in this regard. A similar question may arise in the education sector. Does it not escalate the level of illiteracy in a poor nation where the majority cannot afford school fees when subsidies on education are done away with?
I personally worked in a place in the Gwembe valley in Southern Zambia where a grade nine is considered the “most learned.” For certain, development without education is a nightmare. What about privatisation? Naom Chomsky rather cynically, comments; “But the successful economies are the ones that have a big government sector. Capitalism is fine for the third world”. Pardon my economics innocence; it seems the IMF, a body propelled by the same “vital minority” countries, is prescribing for the “trivial majority” poor exactly the opposite of what rich nations follow. They subsidise so much developmental programs (education, agriculture, transport, etc.), and they ask the poor countries not to follow their example!
The second face suggests some positive facet of the movement of globalisation, education, some positive NGOs, etc., but not wholly acquitted of subtle agendas to transmit through educational programmes the Western ideologies and values, amounting to structural “colonisation.”
Some organisations give scholarships with the condition that the recipient works in their country for a “short” time afterwards. But many do not return home where they know there are no prospects of a good job. Adieu to the four faces of global cultures, but further probing into the social implications of such vast economic inequalities.
It is clear in our analysis that underlying all inequalities is the lack of the sense of the common good – the notion that there exists some shared or public values that transcend the rights of individuals and the individual nations or regions. Robert A. Isaak comments:
“If the world were a global village of 100 people, 70 of them would be unable to read, and only one would have a college education. Over 50 would be suffering from malnutrition, and over 80 would live in what we call substandard housing. If the world were a global village of 100 residents 6 of them would be Americans. These 6 would have half the village’s entire income, and the other 94 would exist on the other half ”.
Inversely, we could say there is no sense of solidarity. The “vital minority” are so comfortable that the economic quagmires of the “trivial majority” seem not to matter at all. There is no resemblance between the acclamations of globalisation and factual reflections.
For instance, there is a United Nations resolution that the developed countries give as aid every year 0.7% of their income to the poor countries. But only Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden have committed themselves to the cause.
The rest of the “vital minority” countries are too selfish to honour the resolution, even the “most vital”, the United States of America, gives only 0.35% as both aid and debt servicing. Most other rich countries give aid only where they have interest. For instance, the United States of America gives a lot of aid to Egypt not as aid but in an effort to bolster development order on the Middle East. Most of the disturbances and tensions that the world is going through result from such economic, social and political tensions.
The current threat to the African continent and to many other poor countries around the world at the moment is the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Its alarming levels and sporadic attention has a lot of politico-economic inertia. Poverty, coupled with inequalities, is a volatile breeding atmosphere for the pandemic. As it is, it is a problem for Africa, for the “trivial majority” and not a global one. Who then lives in the global village? About this Michael Kelly comments:
“International trade relations currently don’t favor poor countries in Africa. Instead they are heavily weighted in favor of the wealthier countries, whilst simultaneously creating barriers to market access of goods from poor countries…this serves to maintain countries in poverty… and maintain AIDS. Much the same could be said about debt with many countries spending as much or more on debt servicing than they do on their health [and education] services”.
AN IMBALANCED GLOBAL VILLAGE
We might ask, what has been the reaction of the poor at the realisation of such huge and inhuman discrepancies? Hope? Yes, but also incredible frustration to the extent that, as Charles Chilufya notes, like their fore-parents in the sixteenth century taken as slaves, “they too are slaving away” for survival to the West. This is called “brain-drain”, when the very intellectual fiber of a nation, out of dissatisfaction, seeks a better working ground.
In the same article, Chilufya gives us statistics from the Global Data Centre, that 582,314 Africans have gone to live in USA between 1990 and 2003; 200,000 between 1991 an 2001 to the United Kingdom. Most of these are highly qualified medical doctors, nurses, economists, engineers, on whom the task of developing Africa depends. I concur that this is a resurgence of the 16th century labor drain. Yet Africa and the poor nations are expected to keep their heads above the waters in such economic doldrums.
Clearly and safely we could conclude that globalisation has scored some success, but for whom? For the “vital minority.” It has enhanced many a “structure of sin” as John Paul II puts it. The world, more than ever before, is divided according to wealth more conspicuously. John Paul II observed that the world economic system is today based on “unlimited free-market, or laissez-fair, capitalism that insists that the distribution of wealth must occur entirely according to the dictates of the market forces.”
This is a very exclusive hypothesis, fatally paralysing poor countries, effectively obliterating them from the economic platform. As Victor Frankl, in his concentration camp experience asserts, an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal. With such imbalances in wealth distribution and inequalities, despair, permissiveness, and dejection are inescapable for the “trivial majority”.
May I end with words of John Paul II: “The obligation to earn one’s bread by the sweat of one’s brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can that society attain social peace.” It remains a question, therefore, if the effort to make the world a global village will ever take a balanced course.
Privilege Haang’andu, S.J.
Arrupe College
Harare
