The terror of anti-globalism

by keesjemaduraatje
No matter how we call the current economic system: imperialism, capitalism or globalism, there will be always a large group of protesters pointing out the failures, disadvantages and shortcomings.

Anti-Globalism = Nihilism

What the anti-globalists don't consider, is that the capitalist structure is able to integrate the succesfull parts of other systems, and to react on critical voices from inside. Of course this is only possible when the democratic values are accepted. A good example of the superpowers dealing with criticism from inside is the G8 agenda: hunger, depths and security. The question arises, why so many people are going to demonstrate, when the G8 is discussing hunger, depths and security.

The ideology behind anti-globalism.

1) profit means exploitation
there are some ever returning key-point statements in the stories on anti-globalism websites. For instance the thought that companies only invest in countries and regions when they expect to make profit. Then the next thought is that profit is always bad and means exploitation.

When we regars this issue from a purely economical point of view (not environmental), this is not true. Countries and regions that are left alone by capitalist countries are always poorer.

2) capitalism means war
At the moment there is always some capitalist superpower involved in important wars such as: Irak,
Bosnië, Afganistan etc. So in this sense we can admit that capitalist states are in fact involved in war. The anti-capitalis, anti-globalist movement is very eager to state that the US is only attacking Irak because of the oil. The US and Europe need oil and therefore Irak is attacked, is a logical but , to my opinion, wrong thought. When we need oli we also could buy it. And when nobody would want to deliver, we can buy the whole governement. There have not been any tries to buy the whole Saddam government. There is a good reason for George W. Bush not to try this: Saddam tried to assasinate his father in 1993. What about the other wars? Are there any war where no capitalist country was involved? Of course there are: Irak-Iran, Soviet-Union against Afganistan, Soudan. The western media did not publish so much about these wars because they did not know enough. Also their own countries where not involved. And a more important reason: the distinction between good and bad was very hard to make.

3) There is poverty and hunger and we are to blame
This is a modern variation of the old Christian saying "he died to make our live possible". Also marxist thinkers have developed similar theories like the "Client - Metropole" theories. These authors pose that the poverty in the third world is caused by oppression and exploitation from the central rich powers in the world. This is in fact a new internationalized version of the Marxist "surplus" theory. Some examples where this is not the case, just too prove that a simple scheme of "we bad, they poor" is not appropriate to explain poverty in the world: After the nationalizations in Zimbabwe, the country did not develop and people are hungry. The civil war in Angola caused the poverty in that country. The hunger in Sudan is caused by arab rebels stealing the resources from the native people. Those kind of causes don't fit in the theories of anti-globalists.