Book Review The Collapse of Globalism
John Ralston Saul's Critique Predicts the Failure of Deregulation
John Ralston Saul follows an international reputation as a foremost critic and essayist on the effects of globalism and governmental elite, or technocratic, societies. Granted his Ph.D. from the University of London in 1972, he has also received numerous honorary degrees from a number of universities, including the University of Ottawa and Herzen State in St. Petersburg, Russia. His works, including the collection of political essays Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West and his bestselling fiction work The Birds of Prey, are printed in over a dozen languages.
Globalism and Nationalism
The Collapse of Globalism: and the Reinvention of the World began as an article in Harper’s which reasoned that the failure of the economic policy known as globalism has lead to a rise in nationalism, both positively and negatively, in many disparate countries. This idea was expanded in the present book, which explains the formation of the globalist perspective, including the reliance of national debt on many foreign countries, and its non-uniqueness in a technocratic or managerial-based government, such as the United States and many western European countries–a rule that extends the rights of an oligarchy to the present age of sophisticated and complex machinery. As well as failing to recognize the alternate cultural values of the other global players, these neo-liberal developments in commercial and world trade, according to Saul, consistently alter and manipulate world economic practices, specifically to less than affluent countries.
Keynes, Deregulation, and the World Economic Forum at Davos
Saul outlines the process of thinking from the idea of John Maynard Keynes in the early twentieth century and to the restructuring of Europe after World War II, which by structural implications found in the deregulation of major corporations was carried to much further practice by the initial meeting of Davos, or the World Economic Forum, in the early 1970’s. This group of economists and professionals set in motion the enlivened privatization and deregulation industry known as globalism into a system of economic trade alliances between major member countries. The effects are still seen, most notably in the pseudo-charitable relations of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to impacted third-world countries, and these presumably one-sided practices form the crux of Saul’s argument in disfavor of globalism. However, his worldview is conceptually pragmatic, if not moralistic, as he views the role of humanity through an “economic prism." He writes in chapter 8 that "the purpose of Davos was and is to advance the policies of those who own it. They themselves would explain that that is to advance a deregulated, business-led global system.... Davos is merely a global expression of the normalization of unethical behaviour.”
Neo-Liberalism and Negative Nationalism
The process of deregulation, Saul argues, has weakened every country that continues to practice it. An intense nationalism has now developed in the countries that have since abandoned the theory. Saul gives a promising example of New Zealand in the late 1990’s, where shifting and allied activism pushed for renewal to neo-liberal agendas, beginning with the election of Prime Minister Helen Clark. Saul also cites Seattle protests of the World Trade Organization meetings in 1999 as a beginning grassroots force shaping the outcome of renewed public policy. Chapter 25 reflects on the altering rise of “negative nationalism” which in his description is akin to jingoism, a stubborn and egotistical pride which has at its roots a derivative psychological sense of fear in its actions. He then calls the United States a “confused empire,” and gives examples of this type of negative nationalism found in the US, China, North Korea, France and Russia.
Nationalism in China and Venezuela
China, however, is described as the puppeteer of political maneuverists, along with India, carefully edging away from the discrete and harmful effects of globalism on their own country. Saul also speaks of Venezuela, which, as this book was written in 2005, he only sees the ember of what is now a very active and militant social movement gaining many adherents and vocal opponents in the Latin American world. These countries are soundly registering the benefits of globalism, in his view, but are willfully manipulating its dependency on other host countries such as the United States by resorting to nationalism. Hugo Chávez, now under the belt of his own ALBA economic initiative, is the most outspoken of all world leaders professing this type of nationalism.
The Future of World Economic Policy
Despite these denunciations, his critique is not entirely comminative. John Ralston Saul sees deregulation as an understandable alternative to outside market manipulation, as well as an economically viable theory, but he is less kind to the role of globalism, specifically which he sees as an oligarchic giant that squeezes out less competent or wealthy countries from having an equal role on the world stage, or patterns them for a paternalistic economic relationship. In many facets, Saul is hopeful for the future of world policy, as he sees the subsequent rise of consumer-activist groups, grassroots social movements and NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) as a start to filling the vacuum that the world players of globalism have created, but he warns of impending economic catastrophe before the trend is firmly reversed.
Saul at the Parkland Institute, 2006
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The Collapse of Globalism (Penguin)
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