I am greatly privileged to speak to you this evening on the theme of “Globalisation: Who are the Winners and the Losers”.
When I first began reflecting on this subject, I was beset by doubts, not because I had a sense of inadequacy or paucity of knowledge - but rather because of the abundance, indeed surfeit, of information on globalisation.  I asked myself what else could I add to this proliferation of analysis and information on globalisation. We run the risk in fact of being inundated with data that can overwhelm us to the point of paralysis.
What is also interesting us that while not too long ago many had been ambivalent about globalisation, that is, many spoke of the ambiguity of globalisation, having both positive and negative aspects, today a new consensus diametrically opposed to the so called Washington consensus which sees globalisation as the panacea to the ills of humankind has emerged: an alternative anti-globalisation consensus.  I remember only seven years ago at the World Council of Churches general assembly in Harare, the statement issued on the challenge of globalisation took so cautious a position and was cloaked with ambiguities that one found it hard to be truly challenged. The dominant ecumenical view has since changed considerably.

Later after Harare in a talk at a meeting of the WCC Advisory Group on Regional Relations and Ecumenical Sharing, I began my discussion by raising my discomfiture over the subject assigned to me, “looking for alternatives to the negative consequences of globalisation”. I said this could be construed as presupposing that globalisation is intrinsically good and is in harmony with the ecumenical vision of a global order founded on justice, peace and integrity of creation. Thus for all its imperfections, globalisation must be embraced and we need work only towards its betterment by searching for alternatives to its negative effects or providing safety nets for the vulnerable sectors. It can also be constructed as uncritically accepting the line peddled by its proponents that globalisation is a global process that is ineluctable and inevitable or a global reality from which there is no escape, so we need only ensure that it works in our favour by taking advantage of whatever opportunities it may open up. What they are silent about is that somebody’s gain and advantage in this global game of competition is another’s loss and disadvantage. Though I aired this discomfiture, I nonetheless took a position that would now sound as rather timid, if not overly guarded. I said, “Globalisation may be likened to a toxic fruit with some edible spots which we have no choice but to swallow for the moment. But the fruit is not for eating. We need to search for something more wholesome and life-giving.” 

Again in those days globalisation was still very much associated with the myth of a global village, a rosy scenario of globally interlinked communities and nations living in prosperity, peace and harmony. But the experience of the past years has all but shattered this myth, making it amply clear that globalisation is not really about eliminating barriers: it actually draws borders that divide, that fragment societies. It is about exclusion and marginalisation, where miniscule elite enjoys the benefits while the overwhelming majority are denied these benefits. Where there is unspeakable hunger, disease and destitution amidst unprecedented wealth and plenitude. Where there is widespread backwardness in the midst of mind-blowing scientific and technological advances. Where there is widespread backwardness in the midst of mind-blowing scientific and technological advances and where the rapid integration of economics has resulted in massive mobility and dislocation of labour, displacement of the peasants, fisher folk and indigenous peoples, irreversible destruction of eco-systems, and the “commodification” of women and youth and children. It is about economic domination of the weak by the powerful, which as you will all agree, is simply incompatible with the biblical injunction of justice to the poor and empowerment of the weak.

The reality of division, dichotomy and polarisation is best captured in Robert Kaplan’s description of a bifurcated world in which the advanced industrialised countries of the North occupy a luxurious limousine travelling the smelly and pot-holed streets where homeless beggars live. “Inside the limo are the air-conditioned post-industrial regions of North America, Europe, the emerging Pacific Rim, and a few other isolated places, with their trade summitry and computer information highways. Outside is the rest of mankind going in a completely different direction.” A similar picture emerges from Viggo Mortensen’s depiction of globalisation:  “A rising tide of wealth is supposed to lift all boats. But some are more seaworthy than others. The yachts and ocean liners are indeed rising in response to new opportunities, but the rafts and rowboats are taking on water. And some are sinking fast.”  Indeed what makes globalisation particularly disastrous and morally reprehensive is its destructive impact on the very social fabric of local and global society, i.e. the ties that link communities, people and nations across the globe are seriously strained because the few winners in the global game become disconnected from the vast majority of losers and the already wide gap between the few rich and the masses of the poor widens even further to the point of creating what some analysts call the global apartheid.

In his thought-provoking book, “Capitalism in the Age of Globalisation”, Samir Amin develops the theme of polarization as a recurrent episode in human history and which in fact is inherent in actually existing world capitalism. He lays particular stress on contemporary globalisation characterized by increasing and sharpening polarization between the heartlands or core industrialised countries (North America, Western Europe an Japan) on the one hand, and the peripheral industrialised countries (Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe) as well as the non- industrial or non-competitive peripheral countries of Africa, most of Asia, and the Arab world. He speaks of the latter in fact as the Fourth World, which in his analysis, cannot even qualify as a player in the global game of competition. A similar concern is echoed by a UNDP administrator: “if present trends continue, economic disparities between industrial and developing nations will move form inequitable to inhuman.”

It may be said that globalisation is not entirely new. The world has been becoming more “global” since the depredations of the Roman Empire and the voyages of Columbus in the service of mercantilist powers. Analysts point to the late nineteenth century as the real origin of intense globalisation when millions migrated and trade greatly expanded. Still other sociologists would situate the current economic reality as the “fourth wave” of a long historical process of western domination, the first being slavery, the second, colonialism, and just preceding the era of globalisation, neo-colonialism. Stripped of the seductive imagess of the cyber world, one may argue that globalisation is simply a new word or euphemism for imperialism or as some would have it, modern imperialism in the post-industrial or high technology era. Although not exactly new, this “fourth wave” is considered a phenomenon of the 1990s (the conditions of which had been created in the middle of the 20th century following the First World War) and is vastly different from its predecessors in that it involved economic domination and exploitation on a truly global scale. That is, never before has the reach of global capital been as pervasive, total and all-embracing, encompassing parts of the world that had not been accessible before - the most remote, hitherto uncharted mountains and hinterlands, the previously untapped markets. Never before has the process of market integration moved at such a rapid and spectacular rate.

Major world-shaking changes specially in the 1980s and 1990s have made this historical development possible: the gigantic advances in transportation and communication technology, including the Internet revolution; the collapse of the socialist bloc which integrated into the global market previously de-linked socialist economies, releasing a huge chunk of the world market from political barriers to the expansion of global capital; and the debt crisis of the 1980s which was conveniently used as justification for World Bank and International Monetary Fund prescriptions and structural adjustment programs, all designed to open local economies to international capital and push forward the globalisation agenda.

Let us first have a quick review of what we are exactly talking about. It is true that globalisation is a highly complex phenomenon, a concept with multiple layers and dimensions and hence does not lend itself to simple or facile definitions. It is also true that globalisation is a contentious concept that has meant several things to different people. In fact as the editors of the book “The Globalisation Reader” have put it, globalisation has become an all-purpose catchword in public and scholarly discourse with different parties using the term in highly disparate ways and with the term thus running the risk of being a global cliché. Yet the concept still captures powerfully dramatic changes sweeping the world today, including the growing inter-twining of local and global events, economies and politics.

Be that as it may, globalisation is nowadays increasingly associated with an economic process of rapid market integration (i.e. of trade, finance and investments) driven by the so called free market based on the ideology of neo-liberalism and promoted or enforced by powerful political forces and governments including international financial institutions (IFIs) like the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank and GATT (General Agreement on Trade & Tariffs)/WTO (World Trade Organisation). It is a project that is protected and defended by the military might of the dominant countries led by the world’s lone superpower, the USA. Needless to say the local elites in the dominated countries have been by and large complicit, serving in fact as appendages and subalterns of the global powers. But also important is the dimension of culture, underscoring the process of homogenisation or, more bluntly, westernisation and culture imperialism that has invariably accompanied the process of market integration and which has sparked violent reactions and wars of resistance from communities, religions and cultures imperilled by the onslaught of western cultural hegemony.

What is clear in this definition is that the economic process at work in globalisation is linked with political power and largely determined by the agenda of those in power. According to Prof. William Tabbs in his speech in an international ecumenical conference in Manila in 2002, globalisation is driven by “the reformative agendas of the most internationalised actors of capital and of the most powerful governments.” John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president is even more direct. Globalisation, he says, has been shaped “by powerful governments, envisioned by conservative ideologues, and enforced by corporate muscle”. Tabbs adds that it is also enforced by “not so smart bombs and the full force of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency”. Understood in this broader context and using the analytical tool of political economy, globalisation today may be equated with empire or empire building. Now that sounds like a mouthful, but that will need to be the subject of another talk. 

Many would thus be more comfortable qualifying the subject by attaching appellatives to the word globalisation such as economic globalisation, corporate globalisation and neo-liberal globalisation. More recently the term “militarised globalisation” has become increasingly current in the wake of the Bush war on terror and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. While we need to consider all aspects of globalisation - economic, political, ideological, cultural and military---and to examine how they are linked, my assignment is to focus on the economic dimension of globalisation. I need to make it clear however that while the economic base is arguably central to the understanding of globalisation, the latter cannot be fully comprehended when divorced from the political and ideological apparatuses at work both at the global and local levels.

One easily comprehensible and concise explanation of economic globalisation may be found in a booklet on “Women and Economic Globalisation” produced by the World Council of Churches, to wit:  “This phenomenon is characterised by the rapid integration of trade, finance and investment and the internationalisation of production, resulting in the restructuring of national and global economies. To illustrate from statistics cited by the World Bank in 2002: “global trade in goods today constitutes 40% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) from 32% in 1990, while international financial flows have expanded exponentially more than 180% from 1990 and currently amount to 29.1% of global trade.”

To understand this better we need to look at the ideological underpinning of economic globalisation, recognising that it is not simply a value-neutral, technology driven, historical process nor is it simply propelled by blind market forces or Adam Smith’s so called “invisible hand”. The is in fact essentially a neo-liberal political and ideological construct in which the market becomes all powerful while social control or government role is substantially diminished. The unfettered market allocates resources efficiently. The unfettered market allocates resources efficiently, leading to heightened competition, increased efficiency and greater productivity or faster economic growth. All these find expression in the policy prescriptions assiduously promoted by the World Trade Organisation, IMF and World Bank through multilateral trading rules and conditions for loan disbursements or debt restructuring. Liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation have become the manta of the current global regime. Liberalisation refers to the removal of tariffs and non-tariff barriers to the free flow of goods, services and capital. Deregulation involves the withdrawal of the state form controlling economic transactions, i.e. protecting local industries. While privatisation means the transfer of ownership and management of public companies, mainly those providing basic services, to private hands.

Why then the project of globalisation and the neo-liberal development agenda? The dominant economic paradigm, capitalism, has been beset by the recurrent crisis of overproduction, devaluation of floating capital and hence economic stagnation. Economists thus speak of the periodic cycles of boom and bust, of economic expansion, recession and recovery. According to Amin, “the crisis expresses itself in the fact that the profits derived from the production do not find sufficient outlets in the form of lucrative investments capable of further developing productive capacity”.  To overcome or more accurately to manage this crisis, which in reality is inherent in capitalism itself, the trans-national corporations and the corporate elite who benefit form the dominant economic paradigm have pushed aggressively for neo-liberal policies, i.e., the opening of markets or external outlets for surplus products and floating capital, requiring the diminution of the role of the nation-state in the peripheral or semi-peripheral countries. Alongside all these is the increasingly powerful role of the Bretton Woods institutions - the IMF and World Bank, which have been assigned the job of managing the crisis at the global level. Amin underlines that while this strategy is perfectly rational form the point of view of crisis management, it will not resolve the crisis.

So what is the real economic picture? Who benefit from the prevailing global regime? What is the actual record of globalisation? What is clear is that the dichotomy between the North and the South is becoming more severe and the gap between the rich and poor within both North and South countries has considerably widened. I will let the following statistics for themselves.

“…the creditor banks and countries extract from the indebted countries an annual US$52 billion in debt servicing alone. Yet through the present rules governing world markets the poor countries lose at least US$500 billon to the rich countries annually—ten times as much as they receive in aid.” Moreover the same report shows that the richest 20% of the world population receives 82.7% of the world income, while the world’s poorest 20% of the world population receives only 1.4%.” (1992 UNDP Human Development Report)

“…the global trend in recent decades has been for elite of about 1 billion to move rapidly ahead of the remaining 5 billion, with the ratio of inequality between the richest and the poorest fifths of the global population nearly doubling. Elite communities are concentrated in the North Atlantic community and some West Pacific states, with significant elites in may poor countries, and marginalized minorities in some rich countries” (Paul Roger).

“They are part of the billion people, one sixth of the world’s population which does not have access to clean water. Two and half billon people lack access to even a simple latrine. One third of global diseases are caused by eating tainted food, drinking unclean water and breathing polluted air”. (William Tabb)

Similar observations are offered by the World Council of Churches (WCC) study on Women and Economic Globalisation. According to the study, global socio- economic progress has actually diminished in the last 20 years of heightened economic globalisation. “The period 1980-2000, as compared to 1960-1980 which is a period associated with protective economic policy, GDP growth and human development achievements (e.g. life expectancy) have slowed down and have even deteriorated for many countries, especially for the poorest countries. It would appear thus that economic globalisation is failing even on its own terms and criteria.”

It also points to the worsening inequality both between and within countries, citing a pioneering study by the World Bank economist (Milanovic 2002a), which uses global household survey data, indicating a clear upward movement in global inequality, “Accordingly, the global Gini coefficient, popular measure of inequality, is estimated at 66% of the world’s population has zero income while the remaining 33% enjoy all the world’s income…”