Coping With Antiglobalization: A Trilogy of Discontents
Article Summary and Author Biography
Globalization is doomed to controversy thanks to a trio of misapprehensions. But the opposition stems more from nostalgia and sterile theory than from economic reality.
Jagdish N. Bhagwati is University Professor of Economics at Columbia University and Andre Meyer Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Globalization -- a focal point of hostile passions and sometimes violent protests -- has become a phenomenon doomed to unending controversy. Advocates cite its virtues and its inevitability. Opponents proclaim its supposed vices and vincibility. Central to many of the protests against it is a trilogy of discontents about the idea of capitalism, the process of globalization, and the behavior of corporations. And all three of these discontents have become interlinked in the minds of many protesters. Globalization's enemies see it as the worldwide extension of capitalism, with multinational corporations as its far-ranging B-52s.
As the twentieth century ended, capitalism seemed to have vanquished its rivals: fascism, communism, and socialism. The disappearance of alternative models of development provoked anguished reactions from the old anticapitalists
of the postwar era, who ranged from socialists to revolutionaries and remained captive to a nostalgia for their vanished dreams.
But globalization has also fallen afoul of a younger group of critics. And the nostalgia of the fading generation cannot compete with the passions of these younger dissidents, who were so evident on the streets at recent world economic gatherings in Seattle, Washington, Prague, Quebec City, and Genoa, and who have made themselves heard on college campuses in movements such as the antisweatshop coalition.
Far too many of the young see capitalism as a system that cannot meaningfully address questions of social justice. Many of these youthful skeptics seem unaware that socialist planning in countries such as India, which replaced markets system-wide with quantitative allocations, worsened rather than improved unequal access. Such socialism produced queues that the well connected and the well endowed could jump, whereas markets allow a larger number of people to access their targets. Capitalism is a system that, paradoxically, can destroy privilege and open up economic opportunity to many -- but this fact is lost on most of the system's vocal critics.
THE PERILS OF EDUCATION
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