HLST 4110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Thomas Friedman, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization
24 Apr 2021
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FLIPPED #1: GLOBALIZATION
February 1, 2021
12:55 AM
CHAPTER 2: GLOBALIZATION
2.3: A "Flat" World?
• The videos feature Thomas Friedman, a well-known op-ed writer in the New
York Times, a leading newspaper that represents the views of the liberal
Western establishment - what we have labeled the “dominant narrative” - on
globalization. Both the New York Times and Thomas Friedman carry a lot of
weight on world public opinion and global politics.
o Back in 2005, Friedman wrote “The world is flat: A brief history
of the 21st century”, a book that quickly became an
international bestseller. The thesis was that changes in the
global economy driven by technology and reaching and
connecting every corner of the planet were levelling the playing
field worldwide, thus Friedman’s “flat world”. Friedman and
others called this allegedly impersonal process “globalization”.
• Now, in some sense, "globalization", defined as changes in the global
economy driven by technology and reaching and connecting every corner of
the planet, is not new. Many argue that it was launched by European
imperialism - the so-called “discovery of the Americas,” back in 1492 - when
European conquistadors and settlers used increasingly sophisticated ships to
“interconnect” with Amerindians, as they sailed to the Americas, uninvited,
relying on also increasingly sophisticated weaponry to occupy indigenous
land, slaughter or enslave local populations, and plunder indigenous wealth.
• However, globalization hit the headlines close to two decades ago, after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, more precisely in 1999, with major protests in
the city of Seattle, in the USA.
2.4: Birth of a Global Social Movement
• So what happened then that globalization became popular? Well in 1999,
around 40,000 people convened in Seattle, Washington, USA – many young,
social activists and university students like you - to protest against a meeting
of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
• The WTO is one of the key organizations, together with the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), involved in promoting a set
of policies and practices affecting the global economy to facilitate
“globalization”. These organizations were conceived and implemented
around WWII (more on this point later). Seattle demonstrators were
protesting against these policies and practices, thus were labelled “anti-
globalization” protesters and critics.
2.6: Dominant Narrative
Let me share how I interpret Friedman’s version of the dominant narrative on globalization
(there are others that we will examine shortly) include the following:
• The world is becoming a village, distances are shrinking thanks to new
technologies of communication and transportation, and countries are
becoming closer to one another thanks to the elimination of trade barriers,
and even the shrinking of time.
• The process is so exciting! Look: in the past you needed to wait for your bank
to open to take cash; now you go to an ATM, 24/7, and there is your cash!
Indeed, you might not even need cash – just a debit card that will instantly
put your money in the hands of a vendor. Even better, you can spend money
before you have any - with your credit card!
• Importantly, while in the past changes were driven by countries, and later
companies, currently they are driven by “globalizing” individuals.
Governments (i.e. the state) can’t do anything to stop this process anyway, so
what is left to them is to get over it, pull back from traditional roles – say,
funding social programs, education, public health, and so on – to allow room
for the "entrepreneurial" spirit unleashed by globalization.
Of course, Friedman acknowledges that not everything is perfect - there are winners but
also losers. As he states it however, if you are ready to embrace these opportunities, as the
fellow in Peru who made lots of money marketing through the Internet fake indigenous
Peruvian art made in China, rather than rely "government handouts and protectionism”, the
sky is the limit! And overall, globalization is very good for human welfare, including health.
Notably, even many who critique globalization, often share with Friedman key assumptions:
• That given globalization, states have lost all power vis-à-vis transnational
corporations, and even a “transnational capitalist class”, both of which
operate free from state constraints.
• That given the current state of technology, the process is, well...inevitable
("either you do it or it will be done to you"!).
2.8: Dominant Narrative Summary
• Driven by impersonal forces - generally beyond human control, such as
technological developments which hand-in-hand with transnational
corporations impose themselves on world governments and deprive them from
their ability to implement policies that favour ordinary people, such as fund
public health care or free post-secondary education.
• Leveling the playing field – you will succeed in this globalized word if you’re
smart and take advantage of the changes, and fail if you are dumb and lazy (or
at best out of luck).
• Inevitable - as Friedman puts it, it will be done by you or to you – your choice.
2.9: Counter Narrative
However, other experts (for instance, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Vicente
Navarro - you will soon read/watch their work) argue that globalization is none of
that.
Of course, they agree that modern technologies are incredible – superfast computers,
social media networks, traveling half a world away from you in a few hours, and so
forth - how could anybody deny that? After all, aren’t you completing this university
module using sophisticated technology?
However, these experts argue that technologies do not cause the policies and practices
labelled “globalization”, any more than wars are caused by the impersonal development
of weapons. Indeed, one could argue that it is human decisions to wage war that drive the
development of war technologies, in turn supported by policies, institutions, and laws that
make them possible.
To paraphrase these authors, globalization is not the “natural”, worldwide
transformation of human relations in response to impersonal technological forces but a
transformation of these relationships of a very specific kind, driven by specific policies
promoted by capitalist states. They call this transformation “neoliberal globalization” -
we return to neoliberalism shortly.
Capitalist states operate through institutions - a legal-criminal justice system, a
financial system, even an educational system - that socializes members of a society to
accept certain norms and values, such as that of capitalist private property, as an
overriding, natural value. Mind you, capitalist property is not any kind of private
ownership – say, owning your underwear, your house or the product of your own
labour - but property derived from the legally protected ability to purchase and thus
own the labour of others with a view to extracting profit.
Key social actors within capitalist states include government officials who, knowingly
or not, promote this version of globalization as the only possible, or even imaginable,
one. Therefore, when ordinary people challenge the basic tenets of this version of
globalization, the state actively constrains and even represses them - through the
criminal/justice system, the police, or the military.
The repression of Seattle protesters in 1999 is one of the many examples that we
discuss in this module.
The narrative that proposes that globalization results from an active, capitalist state-
driven process, challenges the narrative that this process is natural,
impersonal and inevitable, so we will call it the counter-narrative on globalization.
Policies that uphold and endorse key assumptions of the dominant narrative are
“austerity” or “neoliberal” policies.
So what are exactly these “austerity” policies?
2.10: Counter Narrative
• Cuts to public services like health services, public education, etc., alongside
subsidies to the private sector (e.g. bank bailouts), on the grounds that public
services or too expensive - never mind then the major subsidies to the private
sector such as the bank bailout of 2008 cost taxpayers fortunes!
• Privatization of national industries (e.g. electricity), alongside active promotion
of private industries (e.g. US healthcare), on the grounds that national
industries are inefficient even as few industries are as inefficient as commercial
healthcare, if one measures efficiency as provision of healthcare services rather
than cutting costs so that the health industry can increase its profits!
• Freedom for capital to settle anywhere in the world alongside active restriction
of the movement of workers, on the grounds that this approach fosters
development even as it leaves millions of countries worldwide underdeveloped,
i.e., poor!
• Refusal to restrict certain areas of the economy such as the financial sector,
alongside active restrictions on others, such as restricting physicians from the
