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SPEAKING FREELY
Disturbing colors of
anti-globalization
By Esam Sohail
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
Every
time there is a major global trade or finance
conference, we get an earful about how the corporate
purveyors of globalization are working overtime to
protect their power at everybody else's expense. What is
often overlooked in this idealized David vs Goliath
picture is that the anti-globalization crowd, especially
in the United States, is hardly the selfless, pro-poor
lobby it claims to be. Far from it, in fact.
The
anti-globalization movement in the US draws intellectual
leadership from left-leaning people such as consumer
advocate Ralph Nader and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Its colorful spark comes from twenty- and
thirtysomething yuppies demonstrating in front of World
Bank summits in the faint hope of emulating the 1960s
idealism of an earlier generation that marched for civil
rights and equal opportunity. Yet the muscle of the
movement and its bank of potential political power come
from the industrial labor unions. As an expanding
service sector and hefty competition from East Asia and
elsewhere have led to continuous decline in both
absolute and relative numbers for the once-mighty US
labor movement, the union bosses have everything to fear
from free trade. Free trade directly threatens an
industrial labor workforce that is ill-educated,
overpaid and ensconced in an entitlement mentality.
Almost singularly in the civilized world,
America's public pre-university education system has no
national standards of learning and functions only eight
months of the year, producing graduates who, in the
words of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, "cannot
read the diplomas they receive". Many such graduates
find their way into the blue-collar workforce in the
hopes that, like their parents, their 40-hours-a-week
factory job will get them into the middle class with
generous compensation, a lifetime pension, and quality
health care provided by the employer. With free trade
opening up a pool of more educated and less
entitlement-hungry workers in Latin America and Asia,
many US companies are no longer exclusively dependent on
their organized labor unions. With such direct
competition with foreigners, some of the subdued
xenophobia inherent in the less educated has also
resurfaced in the anti-globalization movement in the US.
The public relations gimmickry of concern for
labor and environmental standards in developing
countries cannot hide the fact that overtly xenophobic
candidates such as Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot draw much
of their political support from the anti-free-trade
crowd in America's decaying industrial heartland. When
political ads by labor unions openly lament the
exporting of high-paying jobs to China or India, the
barely coded message is that the yellow man or the brown
man is taking away the middle-class lifestyle entitled
only to his white brethren. Intentionally or not, the
rhetoric of anti-globalization in the US has become a
mask for unsavory attitudes of prejudice and fear. The
sad thing is that many mainstream politicians,
especially of the labor-allied Democratic Party, have
slowly begun to appease the anti-free-trade sentiment.
In doing so the Democrats, supposedly champions of
minorities and internationalism, are but encouraging
some very disturbing social trends that border on
racism.
If free trade and globalization are
about protecting power and privilege, so is their
nemesis. Shedding crocodile tears over the working
conditions of a teenager in a country you cannot find on
the biggest map is but a lame attempt to cover up the
fear of losing one's overpaid job to an "ugly foreigner"
who can do it better for less.
Unfortunately for
romanticists, the era of globalization has no clear-cut
heroes or villains. C'est la vie!
Esam Sohail is a Kansas City-based
banker and a former college lecturer on international
affairs. His writings appear regularly in publications
in South Asia, the Middle East and North America.
(Copyright 2004 Esam Sohail. All rights
reserved.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
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