Defending globalisation after the Twin Towers

Two sets of the "10 Propositions" series.

Part 1:

10 Propositions on globalisation and capitalism

1) Western methods have increased the world’s per capita wealth about tenfold in less than two centuries inspite of a more than fivefold population growth. More of the world’s citizens now do well than ever before. So who’s against this good stuff?

2) The enemies of globalisation are the rich, not the poor. Globalisation’s fiercest and cleverest enemies are middle class. From Marx and Engels, through Germany’s Bader Meinhoff, through Italy’s Red Brigade, to Osama bin Laden, people from comfortable backgrounds are the strongest enemies of Western-style progress.

3) Western academia, the cultural elite, most of the popular media and the NGO movements have always been and remain deeply sceptical of the rude vigour of capitalism. That’s most famously, Lori Wallach, Noreena Hertz, Naomi Klein, George Monbiot, Prince Charles, Christian Aid, Oxfam, World Development Movement.

4) The intellectuals believe globalisation is crassly commercial (GNP the only measure of success), vulgarly consumerist (media-driven materialism), aesthetically philistine (the manufactured triumphing over the natural), emotionally barren (greed celebrated over caring), imperialistic (imposing a conformity of Western thought and habit).

5) The defence must consist in stressing the cultural value of globalisation. This comes down to stressing the width of choice available within the “Western” paradigm: it shelters a plurality of taste, opinion, belief, lifestyle, work.

6) Even this is a hard “sell”. The difficulty is that globalisation’s critics believe that the masses do not have the strength to make the “right” choices. The intellectual enemies of globalisation hate mass culture. Oddly, these intellectuals are mostly of the Post Modern persuasion. In theory, they believe that everyone’s beliefs are to be equally valued. But actually they are natural control freaks. They pretend that protest is a popular uprising against tyranny, without noticing that they are a bossy minority interfering with a huge voluntary activity.

7) Appeasement is a limited strategy. Finding ways of taming capitalism is necessary on ethical grounds, and quite useful in co-opting moderate critics. Actually, it is the core values of enterprise which need defending. Capitalism cannot flourish without constant disruption (but poverty is even more unpleasant).

8) We can reach the young direct, with simple arguments put straightforwardly. The core of this case is a) capitalism first enriches the few; b) then it produces a demand for professional expertise, good flows of information, the rule of law; that c) these develop quickly into a strong force for democratic government and d) capitalism deepens wealth creation throughout society and e) increasing wealth leads to cultural maturity (the arts, nature conservation, debate, intellectual life, flourish). And f): the moral challenges facing rich societies are more to be desired than the moral challenges facing poor ones.

9) The defence of increasing affluence needs to be made on grounds of the emotional, intellectual and spiritual good that flows from it. The people who most need convincing are not interested primarily in health, food, etc.

10) Globalisation will increase the usefulness but diminish the power of multi-national corporations. They will have bigger operations and face greater scrutiny.

Part 2:
10 Propositions on globalisation and Western “imperialism”

1 ) The West is most elegantly criticised by its own pseudo-intellectuals (Naomi Klein, Laurens Van Der Post, John Pilger, Prince Charles, Noreena Hertz, George Monbiot, Bob Dylan), who hate it because they seek a parallel universe (in which commerce, rationalism, elitism are disparaged).

2) The West is defined by pragmaticism and pluralism: but Post Modern “narrativism” and “multiculturalism” parody both those principles in the name of progressing them. That’s to say: the West is deeply conflicted, which is how it operates.

3) The violent critics have simply to be put out of business. More than Westernism, they hate their own elites (historically in Germany and Italy and France, for complicity in the Second World War; now in the Arab world for multiple failures, only partly including a religious betrayal).

4) It is not easy being a Westerner. We no longer have serious needs; our families are fractured; we do not have the comfort of deference to our betters, trust in institutions or professions, faith in the miraculous. So what? The alternative is bigotry, oppression and poverty. Genuine cultural diversity may enrich the Western project.

5) We really did invent the Enlightenment in the West. The trail-blaizing Arab world failed to modernise (was it really because of Imperialism, or just bad luck?). The laggardly West woke up and said that the church should be kept for Sundays; that human rights were universal; that representative democracy was the least-bad polity; that one be intolerant only of intolerance, that property was sacred; that ethnicity was for the weekend; that evidence should inform hunch.

6) Capitalism fits this model. It takes greed and turns it into an engine of humaneness. Economic development requires a ready supply of educated labour, the rule of law, good regulation, a free press. That is: the modern state.

7) Westernism could cure the real problems of the Third World quickly, and everyone knows it. But in large swathes of the world – much of Asia, and the Arab world – it pays the elite to maintain an anti-Western pose which deflects internal criticism.

8) We can’t defend the West by only apologising for it. Western business did not build wealth and democracy by being obsessed with its responsibilities. Long-dead Western empires took very little that their colonies are now short of, and imposed very little that would not now be useful. We can accept a certain asymmetry and moral parity: the West’s historic brutality; the East’s historic backwardness (both egregious stereotypes of course).

9) Westernism is easy in one sense: it can be portable, private and partial. A state and individual can reach for it incrementally and selectively.

10) The non-Western world is welcome to invent another way to be modern, but why bother? We've done the hard bit for them in our damp, northern climes.