A new road to serfdom? A look at this weekend's Washington, D.C. protests of the IMF and World Bank A TIMELINE OF PROTEST - ACTIVsTS AND THE WORLD BANK/iMF CLAH SEATTLE, NOV. 1999 - 50,000 PRAGUE, SEPT. 2000 - QUEBEC, APRIL 2001 - TEN-FOOT- WASHINGTON, SEPT. 2001 - THE WASHI GTON, SEPT. 2002 - PROTESTERS GATHER AND BLOCK OFF MASS ARRESTS DON'T HIGH CHAINLINK FENCES ARE PROTEST THAT WASN'T. EXPECTED TO BE THIS WEEKEND UP TO 25,000 THE STREETS IN PROTEST, COINCIDING STOP PROTESTERS FROM ERECTED THROUGHOUT THE CITY THE LARGEST U.S. PROTEST SINCE THE ARE EXPECTED TO PROTEST A WITH A MEETING OF THE WORLD TAKING THE STREETS TO SEPARATE PROTESTERS FROM VIETNAM WAR, THE EVENTS OF SEPT. 11 JOINT MEETING OF THE IMF TRADE ORGANIZATION. TRTRADE DELEGATES. CAUSED THE PROTEST TO BE CANCELLED. AND WORLD BANK. WASHINGTON, APRIL 2000 T ABUENOS AIRES, AN. 2001 - THE FIRST GENOA, ITALY, JULY 2001 - DESPITE JOHANNESBURG, SEPT. 2002 - WORLD LEADERS PRVN HTSATL ANTAWORLD SOCIAL FORUM IS HELD TO A GATHERING OF NEARLY 100,000 TO GATHER FOR THE WORLD SUSTAINABILITY FLUKE, 30,000 MARCH ON THE CONTRAST THE WORLD ECONOMIC PROTEST A G8 MEETING, THE REAL SUMMIT WHILE THOUSANDS PROTEST CLAIMING FLE 30,0 MAUARONTE FORUM. 40,000 GATHER UNDER THE NEWS IS THAT A PROTESTER IS SHOT THAT THE SUMMIT HAD BEEN HIJACKED BY SLOGAN ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE. AND KILLED BY POLICE. CORPORATE INTERESTS. Required Reading for Globalization MANMilton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? ' Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation Daniel Yergin, Commanding Heights Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the OU1V. I T E[ E Olive Tree Naomi Klein, No Logo The globalization debate, a new approach: Anti neo-liberal globalization hits the streets BY IAN ROBINSON The protests at this week's joint meeting of the Inter- national Monetary Fund and World Bank, in Washing- ton, D.C., are the latest manifestation of a transnational social movement that has grown rapidly in the 1990s. Journalists and politicians have recently begun calling it the "anti-globalization movement," but this name is not an apt characterization of the movement's goals. The movement, which includes environmentalists, farmers, human rights activists, religious organizations, trade unionists, women's organizations, students and many others, is itself global in scope. Moreover, most move- ment participants do not want to eliminate the interna- tional flows of goods, services, capital and labor that are usually what is meant by economic globalization. Rather, they reject the "free market" or "neoliberal" vision of how best to regulate these flows which has been ascendant for the last 20 years. It would be more accurate, then, to call this the anti-neoliberal globaliza- tion (ANG) movement. An essential part of the intensifying debate between proponents of neoliberal globalization and their critics in the ANG movement thus concerns the merits of rival claims concerning the best way to regulate national and global market economies. The different positions in these debates derive from a number of sources. One is divergent beliefs about what justice and fairness require. Is it right, for example, that some of us consume a huge- ly disproportionate share of resources, much of it spent on luxury goods, while the most basic human needs of millions of others are not met? What (if anything) do we owe to people who are not of our family, our tribe, our nation? Another source of difference is the different pri- ority assigned to distributive justice as opposed to other values. For example, should we protect core worker rights (e.g., no slavery or forced labor and the right to form democratic unions) even if this has some negative impacts on economic growth rates, or is growth the most important thing? Who is the "we" who should decide this anyway? Divergent beliefs about how economic institutions currently work and how alternatives-to them would work if tried, are another major source of differ- ence. For example, is it true that higher wages - and unions, insofar as they contribute to them - increase unemployment and wage inequality other things being equal? And are other things usually equal? All of these questions have been debated for at least 200 years, since the emergence of industrial capitalism and the construction of national market economies. In some ways, then, there is little new in the clashing eco- nomic world views that drive the globalization debate. Still, at least three aspects of the debate are truly novel. First, earlier debates focused mainly on the organization of national political economies, while this one focuses primarily at least as much on how we should organize the global market economy. Second, each side of the globalization debate is comprised of international coali- tions, whereas (at least in the rich capitalist, countries) national coalitions were the principal parties to the earli- er debates. Finally, the globalization debate is informed by one question that was largely ignored in the past: How much economic growth is possible without destabi- lizing the global ecosystem via global warming, rainfor- est and biodiversity destruction and related environmen- tal dynamics? Both camps in the globalization debate are internally diverse. Still, I would venture the following generaliza- tions. Most members of the ANG movement put a higher premium on social justice than the neoliberals, who tend to privilege the values of efficiency and increased mate- rial wealth and sometimes (e.g., von Hayek) deny that social justice is a coherent concept. Most in the ANG movement doubt that the trade-offs between social jus- tice and genuine economic development are necessarily as severe as many neoliberals assert, though they would say that the neoliberal model is characterized by severe trade-offs of this sort. Finally, the ANG movement takes ecological constraints on economic growth more seri- ously than the neoliberals. The higher priority assigned to justice concerns, combined with the greater weight assigned to ecological constraints, results in an ANG movement that is much more strongly committed to policies that reduce economic inequality, particularly between rich to poor nations. These differences are fundamentally political rather than technical or scientific. That is, at its heart, this is not a debate about how to minimize price distortions or maximize economic growth, but about what kinds of individual and social goals are most valuable. There is no right answer to these questions. Even second-order questions about how best to realize, any given set of basic social priorities - in principle amenable to social scientific analysis - are in practice very difficult to resolve definitively. Political differences of these fundamental sorts are resolved by some combination of persuasion, exchange (material compensation in return for acquiescence) and coercion. In the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the neoliberal vision was promoted in all three ways. Main- stream economics in the U.S. and beyond shifted toward neoliberal prescriptions providing them with some sci- entific legitimacy; new trade agreements (NAFTA, WTO) promised increased and more secure access to the lucrative U.S. market in return for new international investor rights and new restrictions on government eco- nomic regulation; and the threat of capital flight, com- bined with the consequences of defaulting on foreign debt payments, provided the gun to the head that induced many governments to sign "structural adjust- ment agreements" embodying a neoliberal agenda with the IMF and the World Bank. With the growing breadth, depth and mobilization capacity of the ANG movement - and mounting evi- dence that neoliberal reforms have increased economic instability, reduced economic growth rates and exacer- bated economic inequalities - the tide may now be turning. If that is indeed happening, we will enter a new phase in the globalization debate, in which some mem- bers of the neoliberal coalition seek compromise with their critics and are criticized by the hard-liners for so doing. At the same time, differences within the ANG movement that were submerged while the movement was focused on its critique of neoliberalism will become more visible as members debate the minimum condi- tions of acceptable compromise. a Robinson is a lecturer in the Residential College and the Sociology Department. I. I i A A Z A R DL Cordially invites Michigan University Juniors and Seniors to a presentation and reception On Tuesday, September 24th, 2002 Michigan Roam 4:30 PM Career Analyst Interviews: Wednesday, October 23rd, 2002 Summer Analyst Interviews: Thursday, January 23rd, 2003 Seniors interested in interviewing for Analyst positions in our Investment Banking Group should submit resumes and cover letters through MTRAK by October 2nd