Editorial

Citation

Coleman, J. (2001), "Editorial", European Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2001.05413eab.001

Editorial

Edited by John Coleman

Deputy Editor Aidan Rankin

Editorial

This issue enlarges upon some of the arguments debated in issue Number 3, 2001. As in the springtime journal, the theme is "globalisation". Reams of publishing copy and the chants of millions of demonstrators have been conjured up by this new word – and the new world it promises or threatens. There are many definitions of globalisation, depending on one's point of view. We understand it as the process by which the world's economic systems converge, displacing local economies and calling into question local customs and traditions. Globalisation is, in a sense, the second industrial revolution. Like the first, it is impelled by rapid technological change and reinforced by a deterministic, curiously superstitious belief that economic growth is an end in itself. During the first industrial revolution, this notion of "progress" was questioned by the Romantic Movement in literature, the philosophical critique of pure reason and, in politics, by cultural conservatives and ethical socialists alike. Today's growth mania, the questioning comes largely from ecological writers and thinkers, including James Robertson and George Monbiot, whose articles we are proud to include.

The idea of "progress" as ever-increasing economic growth and the attack on cultural traditions is a warped version of the Enlightenment ideals of the eighteenth century philosophes. This "liberal elite", as they might now be called, prided themselves on their ability to defeat "outdated" beliefs and defy crusted conventions. Their spirit is best expressed by Diderot's introduction to the Encyclopédie. "Everything must be examined, everything must be called into question, everything must be shaken up," he proclaimed. This spirit of inquiry, although praiseworthy, is insufficient. There are occasions when the need to question must itself be questioned, when traditional differences, between nations or regions, should be retained because abolishing them would cause only confusion and suffering. Ideologies of progress rarely recognise this and so can be easily simplified or distorted. This is why, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the "enlightened" ideal of progress was used to justify revolutionary terror, war and traumatic social change in Europe.

Today, the ideals of "democracy" and "universal human rights" are used in a similar way to justify a new imperialism. It is assumed that Western-style democracy can be installed in a "developing country" as if it were little more than a computer program, with no reference to that country's history or to the immediate needs of its people. In the process, local and long-established democratic practices are overlooked. The Ghanaian political scientist, George B.N. Ayittey, in his books Africa Betrayed and Indigenous African Institutions, blames Western-trained politicians for civil war and military despotism in sub-Saharan Africa. So mesmerised are these elites by Western progressive thought that they refuse to learn from their fellow-countrymen. They copy Western institutions, but do not study the organic democracy of the village assembly. When Western practices fail to take hold, the elites blame their own people. Similarly, the principle of "universal human rights" is interpreted as a charter for global "political correctness". The result is that many people are deprived of their liberties and that countries lose the ability to govern themselves. Democrasoft, like Microsoft, is the product of globalisation. As the world's cultures are levelled-down and nation states surrender their power, transnational corporations turn into new feudal empires, reducing "democracy" and "rights" to hollow rhetoric.

Economics originally means "the science of household management" or, put another way, "good housekeeping". This implies a human scale and a concern for human and ecological welfare. When economics loses its humanity and becomes a series of abstract dogmas, the result is monstrous dogma. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites, the concept of centralised state planning has largely vanished. Global capitalism, in practice, can be just as centralising, the doctrine of market forces just as absolutist and inflexible as Marxism-Leninism. Before the Berlin Wall fell, a popular graffito adorned Eastern European cities: "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Communism is the opposite – the exploitation of man by man". Those words, shrewd social commentary at the time, have now proved prophetic.

Martin Wolf, whose Orwell Lecture to Birkbeck College we reprint, takes a more sanguine view of globalisation than this magazine's editors. If I interpret his words correctly, he applies to global capitalism Winston Churchill's semi facetious view of democracy – that it is the worst system apart from all the others. Man is imperfect and attempts to make him perfect end in the kind of totalitarianism which Orwell dedicated his life to opposing. Global capitalism is to be welcomed because, as well as generating wealth and creating the best conditions for democracy, it does not try to reshape human nature. From this, he concludes that George Orwell would have approved of globalisation and the modern market economy.

Wolf argues his case very persuasively, with eloquence and a genuine belief in individual freedom. Orwell would have admired all these characteristics and doubtless listened respectfully to Wolf's lecture. That said, he would have probably asked some difficult questions at the end. For the problem with global capitalism that Wolf does not acknowledge is its inflexibility, its failure to compromise and its view of the individual as a mere economic unit. It is likely, I believe, that Orwell would have seen in the inflexibility of globalisation the basis for a new totalitarianism. He certainly would have abhorred political correctness, globalisation's cultural counterpart, as a tyrannical attack on freedom of speech and thought. The idea that the market should be the arbiter of all human affairs is as irrational as the notion that the state could control the entire economy. What is needed is balance, whether between the individual and society, tradition and reform, or the market and the state.

It is for this kind of balance that John Bunzl is searching. He understands that globalisation cannot be tackled by a series of piecemeal, uncoordinated local responses. If a human scale is to be restored to politics and economics, if we are to protect local environments, local businesses and craftsmanship, local politics and culture, then a global strategy must be devised. This might seem paradoxical, until we consider that global free trade is not "free" at all, but protectionism on behalf of the multinationals. As Bunzl writes:

To seek to equate a spoon produced under responsible environmental and labour conditions in one factory with one produced under sweat-shop conditions in another, and to call such trade "free"…points up the hollow neo-liberal assertion that "free" trade is necessarily fair.

Globalisation is not a "level playing field". It creates immense global imbalances of wealth and power. Yet the answer is not for countries, wealthy or poor, to introduce protectionism. Poor countries lack the economic clout to do so, whilst protectionism by wealthy nations will exacerbate existing iniquities instead of bringing them to an end. Nation states and their governments must recover the confidence to outface the corporations. To do so, however, they must act together. Bunzl therefore believes that the purpose of global governance should be the revival of nation states and the protection of local economies.

The Yorkshire Dales is a local economy that is now in dire need of protection. For this beautiful and proudly independent part of England is ravaged with Foot and Mouth. Sue Woodcock, a friend and neighbour of mine in Settle, is a former policewoman from Hampshire who, several years ago, sought a new life in the Dales. She is now part of the redoubtable team who make Settle Station the friendliest and most efficient in the country, winning continuous awards. Sue is also a shepherd who runs a cottage industry making wool socks and sweaters. Like many farmers and small business people in the area, she has been living in a climate of fear since the outbreak started early this year. Her article contains many wise words but no instant "solution". Being at the front line of the crisis, she realises that there are no easy answers. She believes that Foot and Mouth should be seen as a "national" issue as much as a "local" one and is worried by the growing divide between town and country in British society.

We return to the global theme with James Robertson. He has taken upon himself the mammoth task of reforming the Brussels Leviathan. Or, perhaps more accurately, he is not setting out new policy objectives for the European Union as it is, but imagining what a European union might be like. This exercise is practical, rather than utopian, because the current centralised blueprint for "ever-closer union" is failing. The contradictions at the heart of the EU project are heightened by "enlargement", the process by which Eastern European countries are invited to join as long as they fulfil certain strict economic criteria. The ideology underlying these criteria is free-market fundamentalism, which in practice goes very well with political centralisation.

The European Union, at least in its present incarnation, ideally suits the transnational corporations. They prefer to have only one set of bureaucrats to contend with and not to be inconvenienced by such trivial institutions as national legislatures. This is why "big business" overwhelmingly favours the single currency and moves towards European statehood, whilst small and medium-sized businesses, which create most of the real wealth, oppose such developments. If an EU super-state emerges, as some "Eurosceptic" pessimists predict, it will have an economic policy driven by market dogma and a social policy based on political correctness and bogus "collective rights". However, I do not believe that such a "Europe" will develop, although we might come perilously close to it. Experiments of this kind invariably fail and one of the advantages of modern communications is that they collapse more quickly these days, because their failures are rapidly exposed. This is why Robertson's proposals for a more equitable, sustainable form of European co-operation merit serious consideration. In particular, he is anxious to eliminate fiscal policies that promote bureaucratic proliferation and tempt citizens to buck the system. In EU countries – and the Western world in general – existing taxes are not sustainable, Robertson argues. They cause resentment and promote discord between governments and governed. They do not even make demographic sense, for as Robertson points out:

In ageing societies, the declining proportion of working-age people will oppose being taxed on the fruits of their work, in order to support the growing proportion of "economically inactive" people.

Robertson calls for a shift of emphasis from taxation of personal income and individual endeavour towards taxation of "common resources", including land sites, unextracted energy, "space (e.g. for use by air and surface transport)", "water (e.g. for extraction)" and "biodiversity and genetic resources". Rightly, he insists that "ecotaxes" must not be regressive, pointing out that value-added tax on household energy hits poorer households harder than richer ones, and that "congestion charges" in cities hurt the small trader "rather more than users of chauffeur-driven limousines". Environmentalists would do well to take account of such worries when they communicate with a wider public.

George Monbiot is one of Britain's leading campaigners for local economics and against globalisation. He is horrified by the way in which supermarket chains have been able to colonise many districts of Britain, driving out local competition, closing small business and so altering the entire culture of the areas they penetrate. Far from increasing consumer choice, they create a dull uniformity. As an example, Monbiot asks us to compare the range of cheeses in the United States with those of France, where local production for local need is still an underlying principle. Supermarkets prove that global capitalism and state socialism have much in common. Both create monopolies and cause ecological devastation. Monbiot calls for the regulation of supermarkets – in the interests of economic diversity. To free-market fundamentalists, his message is clear:

The absence of regulation, far from encouraging competition, instead hands power to the most ruthless externaliser.

The contributors to this issue approach globalisation – and the problems it raises – from a range of political viewpoints and personal perspectives. All of them, however, share a commitment to individual freedom and genuine tolerance, as opposed to politically correct group rights. All of them reject bureaucratic, "one-size-fits-all" approaches to economic or social problems. All of them oppose totalitarian ideologies, both old and new. There is hope yet for European politics.