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TOWARDS A HUMAN-CENTERED DEVELOPMENT APPROACH: Louay M. Safi
Globalization
signifies an advanced stage in human history, and one marked by rapid and profound change
and transformation. While most observers seem to agree that the world is experiencing a
far-reaching transformation on the political, economic, and socio-cultural planes, it is
not all clear where globalization is heading, and what is its ultimate aim. I argue that globalization, while bringing
important improvements to humanity, is at the same time nurturing destructive forces that
threaten the quality of life and the future of humanity. This opening essay aims at
identifying some of these threats, and suggesting few possible avenues for addressing the
challenges of globalization. 1. CAPITALISM: THE ORIGINAL PURPOSE Capitalism rests on two essential and interrelated notions: Private Property and Free Market. Capitalism qua private property, advanced by John Locke, has always been associated with, and defended on the ground of, preserving economic freedom. The latter was perceived to be important because it was the most effective way for preventing the concentration of wealth and power within the ruling elites. That is, capitalism was seen by its original proponents as the most effective strategy for empowering civil society and loosening the grip of power holders over civil society [1]. Capitalism qua free market was later advanced by Adam Smith in order to limit the ability of mercantilists to control the market, and to ensure more efficiency in production and exchange. Capitalism was seen by its early advocates as civil society’s weapon against control and manipulation, and against exploitation by the landed aristocracy of pre-Enlightenment western society. Nowhere is this spirit better epitomized than in the French Revolution’s slogan of “laissez faire, laissez passer”: do not interfere in their affairs; do not interfere in their movement. Sadly, though, those who cried liberty, equality, and fraternity quickly forgot the true meaning of the ethos they espoused in their struggle against the old regime, and gave rise to a new regime that was overtly biased towards the interests of capital. Capitalist excesses in Europe led to great miseries in the nineteenth century, and gave rise to socialism. The latter provided the excluded and the marginalized with a living alternative to organize social and economic life. The pressure kept building, particularly after socialism found home in post-czarist Russia, until unrestrained capitalism, finally, capitulated in early thirties, giving rise to the welfare state in the western world. While the struggle for freedom and equality was progressing in the west, progressive western liberals were engaged in brutal colonial campaigns to subjugate the rest of the world and exploit the natural and human resources of other nations for the glory and benefits of the motherland. Even worse, liberal scholars turned their gaze away from the brutal atrocities of the colonial regimes they were part of. It is instructive to note that the most articulate and relentless defender of liberty in the west, John Stuart Mill, was on the payroll of the East Indies company which led Britain’s colonial drive, and ruthlessly suppressed the aspiration of the people of India and exploited their wealth. Even an anti-systemic thinker like Marx could argue, in an article published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1853, that colonial capitalism had a positive mission outside the west, and hence felt justified in condoning its short-term evils for the long-term good he hoped it would precipitate, namely making the world ripe for a communist transformation.[2] For many
developing countries--the former colonies of democratic Europe--socialism and the
socialist block provided both the vision to combat unbridled capitalism, and the political
support to fight colonial aggression. The socialist challenge was hence a powerful force
for checking the excesses of capitalism, both on the national and international levels.
The rise of the welfare state was in many ways an attempt to deny socialism any fertile
soil for the propagation of its message, and reduce its appeal in the capitalist world. 2. EMBOLDENED LIBERAL ORTHODOXY The weakening of the socialist movement in the eighties, and the demise of the Soviet Union in the early nineties, created a new economic and political dynamism. Not only did the nineties witness the rise of the United States as the undisputed hegemonic power, but also the recovery of the American economic edge, and the rolling back of the economic achievements of Japan, and those of the Newly Industrialized Countries of East and Southeast Asia. With the new reality on the ground, leading neo-liberal scholars were emboldened, seeing in the demise of the socialist project the triumph of classical liberal ideas and pre-socialist economic thought. Fukuyama even went to the extent of seeing in orthodox liberalism the end of history, thereby resuscitating a theme advocated earlier by Hegel around the turn of the nineteenth century.[3] On the
economic plane, orthodoxy has been emboldened in the form of neo-classical liberalism.
Free trade policies and anti-welfare measures are considered by the leading institutions
of globalization--the World Bank, IMF, and WTO--as the panacea for effecting economic development.[4] 3. MISTAKING TRIUMPH FOR SUCCESS How should we understand the failure of socialism? Should the failure of socialism be interpreted as the vindication of economic liberalism and laissez faire capitalism? Is economic liberalism the best and most effective approach for stimulating development? The failure of socialism was the failure of a sociopolitical model of society that sought to cancel morality and moral responsibility of the individual. It was the failure of a materialist conception of history, and the historical determinism it espoused. The triumph of liberalism, on the other hand, was the triumph of freedom and political accountability over complacency and the pre-discursive submission to party elites and power brokers; it was the triumph of open and critical debate over timidity and intimidation; and it was the triumph of flexibility and the ability of society to reapply the same principles differently in different situations over rigidity and limitation. It is,
therefore, very disturbing to find many people in so many important positions see in the
failure of socialist experiment the success of its capitalist precursor, and to believe
that classical liberalism, or its contemporary version, is the solution for the political
and economic ills of the world. Rather than help extending political freedom and economic
opportunities, economic liberalism, and the policies associated with it, has widened the
gap between the wealthy and the poor. In Europe, unemployment is at a record high. A
recent study, released in January 2000 by the Center for Budget and Policy Priority and
the Economic Policy Institute, under the titled Pulling Apart: A State-by-State
Analysis of Income Trends, shows that the economic gap between the upper-middle and
lower income groups has substantially increased in the United States over the last three decades.[5] A more severe income gap is increasing
between developing and developed countries.[6] This has happened in
spite of the substantial resources devoted to, and the development programs designed for
assisting developing countries. Indeed there is enough evidence to suggest that foreign
aid programs, and the systematic interference of advanced countries in the internal
affairs of developing countries, are, at least partially, responsible for the worsening of
economic conditions of the latter. 4. CAPITAL-CENTERED GLOBALIZATION For decades, multinational corporations have been the driving force in the globalization efforts. For multinationals, globalization signifies moneymaking and is, hence, closely connected with their bottom line: profit maximization. And while it would have been easier to argue that self interest and utility maximization are beneficial to society under conditions of perfect competition, conditions always presupposed by neo-liberal economists, the same is not true when financial and technological powers are disparately in favor of one competitor. In the global economy of today, it is extremely difficult, even impossible, for virtually all developing countries to compete with multinationals, let alone their individual companies. Because multinationals are interested mainly in profit making, their vision of globalization is one in which labor is cheep, culture is based on unbridled consumption, and laws are designed to give companies more freedom to move capital in and out of a specific economy, but impose no obligations towards national economies. In short, multinationals are aiming at the greatest freedom with the least social responsibility. Further, in
their drive to improve sale and make advertisement more efficient, multinationals are
destroying the moral fabric of society, particularly because they are deemed detrimental
to profit making. Indeed, multinationals are working hard to eliminate all cultural
preferences that stand in the way of marketing and money making. The desire to make quick
profit at high social and environmental cost is endangering the future of the most
essential elements of human life: the environment and moral culture.[7] 5. GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: The liberal tradition emerged as a sociopolitical movement that aspired to found a political order in which the values of freedom, equality, and cooperation are supreme. Enlightenment thinkers, from Locke to Mill and from Rousseau to Hegel, through the framers of the American Constitution, insisted that the political order they desired was one that would protect individual freedom and guard society against concentration of power and resources in few hands The founders of the American Union, in their deliberation for establishing a government that would ensure individual freedom while guarding society against the collusion of private interests, recognized the need for institutionalizing the principles of distribution of power among separate political bodies. The fallibility of human nature, and the propensity toward power aggrandizement, James Madison particularly stressed in the Federalist No. 51, could only be controlled if the government was structured in such a way that the ambition of some is counteracted by the ambition of others. The ability of western democracies in general, and American democracy in particular, to maintain a substantial degree of checks and balances in politics set the conditions for social and economic development, and gave various social groups the political and legal means to fight for social justice. The spirit of nationalism, and the absence of an international law globally recognized, and of international institutions for its implementation, confined, however, the notions of equality and freedom, and the rule of law, within the boundaries of the nation-state. And given the fact that liberal democratic institutions grew within the national confines, the political and economic theories, which helped liberate social groups in western societies, are incapable of addressing social imbalances on the global plane without undergoing major revisions and modifications. The rise of a
technologically advanced global communication systems, and the integration of national
economies into the global economy, have created peculiar economic and political
conditions. An increasing proportion of the world population are experiencing accelerated
divorce between their societies and the economic and political institutions that control
their lives. While western society still has better control than developing countries,
current trends suggest that this may not be the case for long. The ever increasing power
of transnational corporations through mergers and financial consolidation, and their
ability to relocate their resources from one territory to another, have given them an
exceptional power to influence the policies of developing and developed governments alike. 6. THE NEED FOR NEW THINKING: Contrary to the claims and optimism of the leading institutions of globalization, the World Bank, IMF, and WTO, current developmental strategies are failing developing countries, bringing about devastating consequences. The failure of developmental strategies advocated by socialists and neo-liberals alike results from both overemphasizing structures and procedures without regard as to how these relate to the values and attitudes of the people involved, and from a fragmented policy approach, whereby economic aspects of development are separated from the social, political, or technological ones. The clear outcome of this approach is that the most essential development of any society, human development, is neglected. Perhaps nowhere is this imbalanced and distorted approach to development clearer than in the macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment programs championed by the IMF and World Bank. The programs are advertised as an effective strategy for bringing economic stability to developing countries and enhancing the possibilities of development. Yet structural adjustment programs concentrate on controlling current account deficit, mainly by reducing government spending. Too often this means higher unemployment rates, reduced governmental subsidies for essential commodities, and less money for health and education. Structural adjustment programs have exerted tremendous pressure on low-income people, the majority in developing countries, and channeled public money away from education and health, the vital and essential components of human development. There is an urgent need for all those concerned about the current direction of globalization to reflect deeply, and provide new solutions to old problems: money-power collusion and excessive inequality. There is a need for fresh and new thinking inspired by the old principles that guided reformists and reform movements throughout history. The eternal principles of right and justice must be brought to bear on our new and evolving reality. Classical liberal theories, and their neo-liberal extensions, are evidently incapable anymore of addressing today's world problems and crises. While these theories provide a reach reservoir for any future thought, the socio-political problems they address belong to different times. Classical liberal theories were developed to address the conditions of the more-or-less homogenous societies of the European nation-states, conditions drastically different from those of the global society of today. Two aspects of the new thinking and theorizing, I submit, are of particular import: (1) The structure of global governance must undertake profound reform in order to overcome the dichotomy between the universal claims of the liberal political and economic discourse, and the exploitative structure of the global order. While liberal democracies, under the leadership of the United States, are preaching at the world the values of democracy and human rights, they are lending support to military regimes of the Middle East and the oligarchies of Latin America. Meanwhile, the structure of global governance, and the relationship of the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations, resembles that of the Politburo and the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union. (2) The universal principles of freedom, equality, and justice must be anchored in the religious and transcendental traditions that gave birth to those principles in the first place. Enlightenment scholars, in their efforts to deny the church any direct influence over public life, managed to root the notions of freedom, equality, and justice on a purely rational ground. Little did they realize that by doing so they were undermining the very moral basis on which these notions sprang. Today with the rise of post-modern thought, not only morality has been endangered, but the very notion of rationality that constitutes the foundation of human civilization as well. The only way for reaffirming the values of freedom, equality, and justice in the world is by reasserting their transcendental roots. This would practically mean that the importance of religion and religious teachings have to be recognized and reaffirm, without, however, bringing policy under the direct control of any religiously proclaimed authority. That is, for the purpose of public policy and enactment, religiously inspired values must be mediated through rational arguments. Such an approach is not only necessary to reclaiming the moral essence of political and economic actions, but is also essential for finding common grounds for uniting a global society divided among different religious and cultural traditions. Dr. Louay M. Safi is the Director of the Center for Balanced Development, and The Balance's Editor. Editorial published in The Balance, 2000 issue. [Go Top] |
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Notes 1. Milton Friedman, for one, adopted an essentially Lockean position in which private property and freedom are interlocked. See his work Capitalism and Freedom, 1982, University of Chicago. return 2. Karl Marx, "On Imperialism in India," in The Marx-Engles Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 659. return 3. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992); and G. W. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dove Books, 1956), pp. 103-4. return 4. For a discussion of IMF-World Bank-WTO stance on development approach, see CBD's report entitled Where is Globalization Heading? Examining IMF-World Bank-WTO Shared Optimism, Global Trends, January 2000; see also WTO's Rhetoric and Reality, Global Outlook, December 1999. return 5. Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends, a study by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priority, January 2000. return 6. See CBD's report entitled Global Economy and Economic Disparity, Global Trends, November 1999. return 7. David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1996). return |