Afterthoughts : Sociologists, activists, and the post-globalist society
June 04, 2005
Updated 00:41am (Mla time)
Walden Bello
INQ7.net
(Excerpts from acceptance speech for Honorary Doctorate in Sociology, Panteion University of Social and Political Science, Athens, May 23, 2005.)
Sociologists and activists
ON THINKING of what to say on this occasion, the first thing that came to mind is to express my gratitude to my mentors in sociology. Sociology is often derided for being a soft science. It is often negatively compared to economics, which, with its penchant for mathematization and rigorous theoretical formulation, is said to be the social science closest to physics. Yet when trying to understand how the world really works, how the world got to be what it is, and where the world is going, it is not Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, Milton Friedman, or Paul Samuelson that people have recourse to. They go to thinkers like Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Michel Foucault.
Sociologists have too much respect for reality to simply abstract a few variables and subject these rigorously to mathematical formulae. Sociologists know the limitations of one methodology, which is why they try to approach reality in a variety of ways, combining at times the methods of survey research with intensive participant observation and comparative historical methodology. Sociologists, or at least some of us, believe that our findings will always be hopelessly inexact because social reality cannot be isolated from the values and perspectives of the observer. A tragic sense of limits, of finitude, of indeterminacy is the lot of the sociologist, who will never have the certainty of the physicist and the biotechnologist. Thus we probably are less prone to what you Greeks call "hubris" than many of our academic colleagues.
The other thing that came to mind is to “thank” the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the Philippines with an iron hand from 1972 to 1986. Why? Because he forced me to become a political activist. I got my PhD in sociology in 1975, but pursuing an academic career was out of the question. In those dark days, an era very similar to the Papadopoulus era in Greece, one either became a supporter of the dictatorship or joined the resistance. There could be no middle ground when your friends and colleagues and relatives were being detained, tortured, or professionally blacklisted. During those 14 years, I was in exile from my country, in exile from the academe, and, like many others, doing only one thing for 24 hours a day: organizing to overthrow the dictatorship. Why? Because, as one friend put it, “it was the only decent thing to do.” I only returned to academic life after 14 years, and by then both I and the world were no longer the same.
The crisis of globalization
I joined the University of the Philippines as a professor of sociology in the early 1990’s. While I was away, I had been forced by the imperative of opposing the dictatorship to try to understand the dynamics and structures of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the US government in order to fight them better as they were the biggest allies of the Marcos government. I had also been forced to be an expert in the economic development of the so-called “tiger economies” of South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, in order to oppose more effectively the model of authoritarian development or “modernization from above” based on the experiences of these countries that Marcos and his technocrats had tried to impose on our country -- a model that they said necessitated the restriction of political rights for the sake of stable economic growth.
By the early 1990s, however, Marcos was gone, and the doctrine of modernization from above was discredited. There was, however, a new mantra, and that was “globalization.” Globalization was the wave of the present, and it was said that it was only those who caught this wave that would enter a state of economic nirvana. And how would one catch this wave? By adopting IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs that imposed radical trade liberalization, deregulation, and privatization.
The Philippines was then, along with some 100 developing and transitional economies, in the midst of a structural adjustment program. There was only one problem: instead of delivering prosperity, structural adjustment seemed to be consolidating economic stagnation, increasing poverty, and widening inequality. We were, however, from the 1980s onward, told to wait and wait patiently, like good Christians, for the bright future would reward the tribulations of the present.
In 1995 the World Trade Organization was founded, and, as a former director general of the organization expressed it, it was the “jewel in the crown” of the multilateral system. Henceforth, the WTO would be the engine of global trade liberalization, and along, with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it would form the trinity of institutions that would form the framework of global economic governance in the period of globalization.
A number of us in civil society were very wary of the free market model that was embraced by many economists and technocrats in countries throughout the world, for the fervor with which it was promoted reminded us of the same doctrinal certainty with the leaders of the former Soviet bloc propagated centralized socialism as the model that would bring about the age of plenty after capitalism. Yet our voices were dismissed as the complaints of people who were chronic critics of everything.
Then came the Asian financial crisis of 1997, a crisis triggered by the radical liberalization of capital flows that has been pushed by the IMF and the US Department of Treasury as part of the globalization strategy. In the summer of 1997, $100 billion worth of speculative capital invested by northern funds in South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand left these countries in panic, without any capital controls to serve as a barrier to their exit because the IMF had said capital controls were bad. That outflow brought down the tiger economies, and with the exception of China, which maintained capital controls, the years of glory of the East Asian economies were over.
In the aftermath of the crisis of credibility of the IMF owing to its notorious role in the Asian financial crisis, people throughout the Third World looked afresh at the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that were in place in their countries and the truth came home: that these programs were not creating prosperity, eliminating poverty, and reducing inequality but bringing about the exact opposite. What studies by various agencies such as the United Nations Development Program and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development had been saying since the mid-1980s -- that structural adjustment was not working -- now became real. It took a historical cataclysm to convert statistics into social facts.
Then came Seattle in December 1999. The collapse of the Third Ministerial of the WTO was brought about by two things mainly: the revolt at the Seattle Convention Center by the developing countries that had taken four years to realize that the WTO Agreement was an anti-development document that was geared to promoting the interests of the big trading powers; and the mobilization of thousands of civil society activists who believed that free trade, the panacea of neoliberal ideology, should be subordinated to social rights, human rights, and environmental rights. As in the case of structural adjustment programs, Seattle again proved that truth only emerges in action, as the product of social intervention.
Prior to Seattle, the claim that globalization was positive had the force of truth. After Seattle, the opposite claim had the force of truth: that globalization was creating tremendous problems for vast numbers of the world’s people had the force of truth. After Seattle, the critique of globalization was no longer one carried just by crazy people like me; it had become respectable owing to prominent people like Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz, and George Soros joining the ranks of the critics.
Of course, today, globalization continues to have its proponents, and even its establishment critics like Sachs and Soros say there is no alternative to it, except, of course, that the multilateral agencies and the state must actively put in place measures or safety nets that will enable the poor to compete more effectively in the market or to ensure that the losers in the process have a “soft landing.” But even on the right, it is losing adherents. George Bush’s economics, for instance, is not the free-trade economics of Bill Clinton. George Bush’s economics is the promotion of US corporate interests even at the expense of violating the rules of free trade. It is protectionism for the United States, and free trade for the rest of the world. Indeed, the unabashed double standards practiced by the United States today is one of the main reasons why neoliberal economics and the globalization paradigm are in crisis.
Alternative or alternatives?
Nevertheless, in many countries, neoliberal economics and policies continue to reign despite the crisis of the model for want of an alternative paradigm that generates policies that can be viably implemented. This continuing hold of neoliberalism is similar to the scene in the old cowboy movies where the dead hand of the engineer shot by the outlaws continues to grip the throttle, leading to greater and greater speed as the train rounds the bend and threatens to jump the tracks.
So what or where is this much-needed alternative to globalization?
People often say that we critics of corporate-driven globalization are good at criticizing but are lacking in alternatives. I respectfully disagree.
Let me outline very briefly the outlines of an alternative to the current neoliberal model that, though in crisis, continues to reign in international and national economic policies.
An alternative strategy or strategies must address the international and national levels.
At the international level, the way forward in my view lies in disempowering, if not dismantling, the key institutions of the current multilateral system -- the WTO, IMF, and World Bank. At the same time, we must find ways to strengthen what are today relatively weak institutions such as the International Labor Organization, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, multilateral environmental organizations, as well as regional economic associations.
The aim must be to create a pluralistic system of global economic governance, marked by checks and balances among institutions of roughly equal power. Such a system of checks and balances will create the developmental space so badly needed by the developing countries trying and which is now so sorely lacking owing to the hegemonic reach of multilateral institutions promoting one model for everyone.
At the national level, the principles around which an economy must be constructed have been articulated for some time now in many quarters. Trade must be subordinated to development. The operations of the market must be subordinated to the overriding values of justice, equality, solidarity, and community. Profit-making must be subordinated to the common good. Decision-making on strategic economic issues must be democratic. Civil society must be given an institutionalized role to serve as a check to both the market and the state. Production and consumption must be ecologically sustainable. A production complex composed of a variety of economic actors including private enterprises, cooperatives, and state enterprises must be configured, but it should be one that excludes transnational corporations. And production must be guided by the principle of subsidiarity, that is, whatever can be produced at the local level at reasonable cost should be produced there and not transferred elsewhere for reasons of profitability.
These principles of alternative economics have been generated over the last three decades in debates and books. The problem is that our critics have been looking for a simple model similar to either the free market or central planning -- a model that they would have “objective laws” that can be measured and operate irrespective of the will and desire of human beings. What they are seeking in other words is our own brand of alienated economics or what one great thinker called the economics of “commodity fetishism.”
Let us be clear: What we are talking about is people taking control of economics, of the market. Further, we are saying that there is no one model for all. We are not talking about the alternatives but about alternatives: each society must be able to take the principles of alternative economics and put them together in unique ways that respond to their values, priorities, and rhythms as societies. Diversity will be a central characteristic of the international economy of the future, which is why we need at the international level a system of global governance that will allow that rich diversity to flourish by allowing the world’s many societies the developmental space to create the economic configurations that respond to their needs.
Between the international and local level lies the institutions at the regional level, which assume particular importance in the post-globalist era. In the 21st century, it is going to be very hard for the smaller economies to survive alone in world economy dominated by supereconomies like the US, European Union, and China. Smaller economies will have no choice but to band together whether the criterion is geographic proximity or level of development, that on the basis of being members of the South. The principles of association, however, should not be those of free trade and narrow efficiency but of genuine, comprehensive economic cooperation for sustainable development, where participation in the regional formation would result in the development of all rather than in the advance of the few at the expense of the many.
I take no credit for these ideas. I am simply bringing together and imposing a degree of coherence on ideas and proposals that have been circulating for some time, but which we now need to put into practice owing to the intensifying misery, social conflict, and ecological catastrophe that have been provoked by the failure of corporate-driven globalization. Whether you call this system socialism, economic democracy, sustainable development, people’s economics, or the mixed economy, the important thing is we are talking about a system that serves the needs of people and the biosphere rather than a system that makes people and the biosphere into commodities to serve the insatiable needs of capital.
Let me end by saying that we are past the era of doctrinaire solutions, of one-shoe-fits all models, of fundamentalist certainty. We must temper our ideals with pragmatism, we must respect the diversity of reality, we must learn to live with the possibility of failure even as we venture to create new economic and social arrangements.
Lastly, activists must approach social reality in the way sociologists study it: that is, engage reality intensely, as if there will be no tomorrow, while maintaining what the philosopher Richard Rorty calls a sense of “ironic detachment” -- that is, not to take ourselves or our proposals too seriously owing to the certainty that ours is not the last word on things and that what we propose with conviction today will certainly be surpassed tomorrow.
The author is professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.
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