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Globalization?By Héctor Mondragón (The author is a member of Teusaquillo Mennonite Church in Bogota, Colombia and is currently economic adviser to the National Council of the Agricultural Sector in Colombia.) In order to take stock of what is meant by the process of "globalization" one first needs to consider the huge ideological weight of its basic concepts, especially three: globalization itself, free trade and the diminishing economic role of the State.
The chasm exists between countries as well as within them: in 1973, the wealthiest 10% of Canada’s population had an income 21 times larger than the poorest 10%. But in 1996, they earned 314 times more. 2 Among industrialized nations, the United States has the widest gap in income. In 1996, 49% of the national income was in the hands of 20% of the population. 3 By the end of the [nineteen] eighties, Chile already had the worst income distribution rate, which, despite high levels of economic growth and sharp increase in its volume of business, has not improved in the current decade. The poorest 40% of the population only earned 13.4% of the national income in 1997, a percentage that has not changed since 1990. 4 Cyclical crises and the necessity of warIf the ideological foundations for globalization are shown to have failed in the complete lack of equity in international and national relations, projections for the future are worse. The idea of continuous economic growth is also not realistic. On December 19, 2001, Argentina exploded. For a decade it had been hailed as an example of a country that had succeeded in its application of neoliberal reforms and the stabilizing of its currency in relation to the dollar, the so-called "convertibility." But during 2001 the illusion of a healthy economy fell apart. In order to pay its foreign debt, Argentina had already privatized its profitable state-owned businesses of petroleum, power plants and telecommunications. In the current crisis, it is no longer possible to privatize anything. The "golden goose" has already been privatized. In December it was necessary to empty the banks in order to pay, and the scarcity of money set off the sacking of supermarkets and finally the popular uprisings that caused the fall of the government and also the suspension of the payments on the foreign debt. What went wrong in Argentina? The illusion that the empire of money can produce well-being for everyone or the majority of the population. "Globalization economists" make assurances that the economy only functions on the basis of profit, and they mock "utopian theories." The Pharisees also loved money and mocked Jesus. 5 But in reality the crisis is the result of that same greed for wealth, and even the economists of the system can’t escape it if they don’t take certain measures that contradict their own logic, such as the reduction of interest rates, without which the economy cannot move forward. No serious reference to or analysis of economic crises can forget this fundamental fact: crises are a cyclical part of the system. There is a crisis approximately every 8½ years (in the United States, the last cycle lasted 10 years). This is what economic investigation and statistics tell us. Since 1997 we have seen crises fall on many countries, one after the other. First the famous "Asian Tigers": Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, which had also been held up as models for the "South." Later Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe, Ecuador and all of Latin America. Finally in 2001, the crisis hit the United States, and 2,600,000 workers have been laid off (1 ½ million before September 11). The latest episode of this crisis has been the breakdown of the other model of globalization: Enron, directly connected to 14 high-level White House staff people, and the behavior of which had already shaken Argentina, India and Colombia, and which had looted the state of California, where the voraciousness of its companies unloosed a grave [electric] power crisis. The cause of these cyclical crises, in which one crash leads to another, is the decrease in the rate of earnings or profits from investment, which increases during economic booms, but later decreases and causes a chain reaction, decreasing production and employment in a vicious cycle. The crisis lasts until it has destroyed as much capital as is necessary in order for earnings to begin to increase once again. This destruction can be purely economic, when businesses go bankrupt or when the strongest [businesses] take over the smaller, devalued ones, leaving ever fewer oligopolies to monopolize the market and increase their profits, restimulating the economy. One asset that is destroyed by [economic] crises is the human being. Taking advantage of unemployment, labor is obtained for less than its true value. Taking advantage of the fact that laborers have no work, workers are severely exploited and the most terrible working conditions are imposed. 6 The decrease in salary is such that although in the end jobs are created, salaries are not sufficient and more and more members of the family have to find work, and unemployment keeps growing as salaries are reduced even further. Eighty percent of workers in the world lack a social safety net. In Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, China or the Island of Saipan, corporations like Wal-Mart, Nike or Levi’s get rich by paying miserable salaries. The exploitation of children has multiplied (in Colombia, 2½ million). The most terrible part about the destruction of capital/assets that drives these cyclical crises is the physical destruction of capital/assets through war, which capitalist logic requires and has required many times as a mechanism for economic growth. The "secret" of the "Japanese miracle" after WWII was two atomic bombs. The latest economic peak for the United States and Europe was achieved through the bombing of Iraq and Yugoslavia. The destruction of Kosovo and its rebuilding were big business. The "Vietnamization" of Colombia could be as well. The bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq is also. If globalization isn’t a new process, neither are world wars, but undoubtedly the intensification of the internationalization of this historic system of economic inequity is triggering the current tendency toward wars all over the world (32 currently). Capitalism doesn’t function based on love but profit and if profits are down, it doesn ’t matter that people may need more products, it doesn’t matter that people may be dying of hunger, there is recession. And if profits are up, it doesn’t matter that it may be at the cost of exploitation, plundering, ruin or war. The logic of capitalism is that of money, not of God. This is a point of departure for defining the attitude of Christians. Churches cannot accommodate themselves to this system, 7 but rather have the obligation to denounce it. 8 The current crisis occurred during a period when the system was especially insolent. The system claims there is no alternative to itself, that outside it, there is no salvation. It has "power over every race, tongue and nation." 9 Because of mass media everyone accepts this domination. 10 And no one can do business outside its rules11; everyone is under the thumb of the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, FTAA, neoliberalism, freedom for corporate investors, IMF Structural Adjustment Plans, the prohibition against helping the weak, labor reforms that leave workers without rights. The supremacy of money brings ruination to nature. 12 Neoliberalism has declared the marketplace to be the science of good and evil. It is the worship of the market, idolatry. But when and where the international henchmen of the system said "peace and security," the crisis hit. 13 The theorists of neoliberal economics have wanted to convince the world that the quest for individual wealth leads to collective well-being, but when market forces and money have been released, the opposite has happened; the numbers of poor people are growing, and they are also getting poorer while a small percentage of the world’s population gets richer. At the Third Conference on Less-Developed Countries, Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, decried the fact that while in 1980 there were 25 poor countries in the world, in 2001 they had increased to 49. The current trajectory of the global economy is leading to growing inequality in every country and between more developed and less developed countries, marginalizing many of the latter in the distribution of the benefits of the globalization of trade. 14 So states a working document of the International Labor Organization (OIT) from November 6, 2000. The report, which focuses on the effects of the policies of the liberalization of trade on employment, states that economic theories that consider liberalization to be beneficial, in absolute terms, for developing countries, "rarely correspond with the real world." The opening of markets can impose "heavy structural adjustment costs" in the form, for example, of high unemployment, something which has been clearly established in studies on Brazil and Mexico, on which this document is based. Furthermore, according to the OIT15, many developing nations are not capable of stimulating the infrastructure and job training necessary for the economic changes that are being imposed. In this context, "it is critical to make every effort to minimize social costs through measures such as first doing an analysis of the social impact, particularly the impact that price changes will have on the poor, the possible destruction of markets important to poor producers and changes in the demand for labor," the organization asserts. In Colombia, the decade of the ’90s was marked, as it was in many other countries, by the renewal of international terms of economic globalization. Beautiful promises were made, but the results were pitiable. In this country, poverty grew: while in 1995, poverty affected 60% of the population, in 1999 it had risen to 64% and to 67% in 2001. 16 In 1995 the monthly income per capita was $91; in 2001 barely $86. Unemployment rose to 16.4% and "underemployment" to 35%. Industrial production fell in those three years by 7.5%. Agriculture takes up 2,400,000 fewer acres than 10 years ago, while "free trade" has increased food imports by a factor of 5. The coffee harvest fell 50% after the breakdown of the Worldwide Pact that regulated its trade and the plummeting of the international price for coffee that followed. The large landowners who in 1984 controlled 32% of the property, in 1997 controlled 45%, a process that has taken place simultaneously with war and the violent displacement of two million peasants. "Woe to those who add one farm to another, accumulating until they leave no room on the earth for anyone but themselves!" 17 The foreign debt has become one-fourth of the Gross National Product, 38 billion, 865 million US dollars during 2002, 125% more than 9 years ago, and still, the congress just authorized going into debt by 12 billion dollars more, one part of which they have already put into bonds for public debt, and the other part of which will be contracted (2 billion) with the IMF. The service for this foreign debt is already eating up half of the national income. Other unpayable debts are those that have been contracted by home buyers, parents of children attending private schools, and peasants through loans from banks. Is there hope?Globalization is a phenomenon that goes beyond the economy, and it is growing, thanks to new technologies of communication, data transmission, and the emergence of various worldwide networks and global problems. Since the 19th century, alongside the internationalization of the economy, an international labor and union movement emerged. Today, thanks to "globalization" there is an explosion of international social movements: environmental, indigenous, peasant-based, feminist, pacifistÿ They are global struggles, not because they are focused on problems common to the whole world, but because every issue particular to [one location] these days can be converted into a worldwide problem. The global character of core issues that affect all peoples is evident when one compares complaints and grievances from people in diverse and far-flung regions of the world. Contemporary social movements, and especially the huge movement against the globalization of multinational corporations and against neoliberalism, are having an absolute and growing effect on the life of society and institutions, expressing themselves in many different ways and for different reasons, but with the power to meet, to form an alliance and to cause noticeable and significant changes. Although new technology and mass media are a threat to sovereignty of territories and individual minds, today it is possible, thanks to them, to respond in a new way, efficiently, to the powers that be. Huge demonstrations, forums and international struggles are happening one after the other. The resistance to various social ills has become global: against war, total exploitation of workers, continual usurping and colonization of land and territory; plundering and destruction of natural resources, contamination and degradation of the means of life and culture, caused by the destruction of ecosystems. There is resistance to global threats on behalf of the survival and well-being of all peoples. The debate about whether another kind of world is possible has also been "globalized." A variety of proposals are under construction, but with intense communication among people from all over who want to cooperate in creating alternatives to the unjust system of our history. In-depth research on non-commercialized economies, fair trade, different forms of property and exchange, an alternative legal system, cultural diversity and different forms of power, authority, government and leadership, is being carried out. This dynamic would have been impossible without the advances of science and communication. There is, then, a situation of extreme contradiction between the zeal of the "globalizers" to dominate the world and the broad possibilities that are opening up for the creation of a new world. This contradictory situation should not seem strange to us as Christians. Let’s not forget that it was the dependence of Judea on the international power of Rome, an order by the Roman emperor, that took Mary to Bethlehem to register for the census, at the moment of childbirth (the year – 6). The census was an event necessary for the exercise of the international political and economic power of Rome. Luke is concerned about the "globalizing" aspirations of the census, which were supposed to be carried out in "all the inhabited land." 18 This incident could look like a simple coincidence that also allowed the prophecy about the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem to come to pass. 19 But, on the one hand, Luke parallels the narrative of Jesus’ birth with the birth of John the Baptist, the last national prophet of the Old Testament20; and on the other hand, another international political event happens almost two years after the imperial census: the arrival of the magi in Jerusalem. 21 These foreign, wise men (Persians, from outside of and serving as a counter to the Roman Empire), challenged Herod by saying that they were looking for a King of the Jews different from King Herod. In this incident, Herod is the local power that allies himself with the "globalizing" empire, and confronts the Kingdom of God, wanting to eliminate it in the crib. Herod "ordered that all children under two years old in and around Bethlehem be killed." 22 Historians cast doubt on the idea that this event really happened, because they haven’t found any document that testifies to such a massacre, apart from the Gospel, despite the fact that documents do reveal that Herod had killed his father-in-law, his wife and his three oldest children, for fear of a conspiracy. There is no doubt that the massacre of children in Bethlehem did happen if one keeps in mind that in the past, as today, the official comuniqués have always hidden crimes of power, to the extent that they can, from the world if they were perpetrated on the humble (poor people/the low-born), against the Kingdom of God. The historians of the first century didn’t attach importance to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ either; far from it. Josephus barely makes brief mention of Jesus, and it might not even been original with him, but rather an addition made later by a copyist. Suetonius only mentions the expulsion from Rome of the followers of "some man named Crestos" (around the year 49). The Gospels were written precisely so that those facts covered up by the media of the empire would be known. News of the massacre in Bethlehem was told and written in documents circulating outside official control, just as many emails today tell us what happened and what is really happening in Venezuela, Colombia or Chiapas, or in our own community. How often is there news that is neither broadcast on TV nor published in newspapers, but is only circulated by email or by word of mouth? But these bits of news are just as true as those we find in the Gospels that are not found in the historians’ texts or documents of that time. The Scripture spread these words throughout all countries, and this is the other globalization, that of the resistance that we demonstrate today through a multitude of networks and movements. We cannot know the truth from official media sources. Power doesn’t just use those, but tries to control the alternative communication of those who were searching for a different King: Jesus. As a matter of fact, Herod took advantage of the information that the magi gave him, in a macabre way, to affect, with his death order, the babies "of the age attested to by the magi." He spoke with the magi with the sole intention of using them for his project of domination and death. Although the magi took full advantage of the reading of the Bible in Jerusalem to find out where they ought to go, Herod used not only the magi but also that same Bible, to give his order to kill the babies. Jesus, as an adult, always refused to speak with the son of Herod, 23 calling him a "fox," astute as his father, as the Psalm says24: "I will check my tongue (restrain my speech/put a bit on my mouth) when the ungodly are before me." This is not a matter of avoiding conversation, but of not putting wood on the bonfire of worldly power, not allowing one’s self to be caught by one’s own verbiage (as happened to the magi) nor falling into its trap (as the magi saved themselves from falling in). It was necessary for both Joseph and the magi to receive signs in dreams so that the child Jesus would not be killed by Herod. Revelation25 says that "the dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. The woman gave birth to a son, the one who is to govern the nations with an iron scepter, and her son was snatched away to God, to his throne." With the census26 that caused Jesus to be born in a manger in a city whose houses were full,27 and later with the tricks and massacres of Herod, the power of the empire worked on behalf of the "dragon," but the child survived. This is the drama that is seen in the very birth and first two years of Jesus’ life: the power of evil doesn’t want to lose its dominion over "all the nations," over "all the inhabited earth;" it doesn’t want to recognize that another world is possible. It is necessary to understand, then, that the "global" model of established power is in total opposition to the will of God. Deception – like that of Herod – is the condition that is essential to maintaining the power of the empire and preventing the will of God from happening on earth. 28 Because of that, Revelation29 says "he performs great signs," "he leads astray the inhabitants of the earth" and "gives breath to the image of the Beast, in such a way that it is even able to speak." During the last few years the great deception has been to make assurances that "globalization" produces prosperity, that it is the "goal of history," the only path it is possible to take, beyond which "no one can buy or sell." 30 But we know that this is going to change. 31 Endnotes
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