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The Sources of Neoliberal Globalisation
Scholte, Jan Aart
Scholte, Jan Aart
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"Several children at our local crèche in the British Midlands sport T-shirts emblazoned with the words Global Generation . At two and three years of age, they have only the most incipient political consciousness, but globality is already being made part of it. Around them relatives, teachers, advertisers, entertainers, journalists and politicians declare that theirs is a global century. But what kind of global world will it be? To date answers to this question have been framed mainly in terms of neoliberalism. In a word, this reigning policy orthodoxy holds that globalisation works best when it is approached with wholesale marketisation through privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation. Thus neo-liberalism takes the maxims of traditional laissez-faire economics and applies them to the currently emergent global order. From a neoliberal perspective, globalisation is an economically driven process that should proceed on first principles of private property and uninhibited market forces. Regulation should have as its primary (if not sole) function to facilitate and protect private ownership and the free operation of supply and demand among producers and consumers. Other economic rules and institutions are political interferences that undermine market efficiency and should therefore be reduced to a minimum. With a combination of privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation, globalisation should bring maximum prosperity, liberty, democracy and peace to the whole of humankind. Neoliberal doctrine has exerted a powerful hold on governing circles during the past quarter-century of accelerated globalisation. Faith in free markets has formed the core of the so-called Washington Consensus on policies for the global economy (Williamson, 1990). The strength of neoliberalism has been such that its champions could seriously invoke the TINA clause of there is no alternative . The early 1990s was even a moment to announce the end of history : no other model but capitalism and liberal democracy seemed possible (Fukuyama, 1992). Indeed, laissez faire has so dominated the politics of globalisation that many commentators have conflated the two notions. Thus policymakers have often used the term globalisation to mean the creation of world-scale liberalised markets. Likewise, many critics have subscribed to a so-called anti-globalisation movement that for the most part has opposed neoliberalism rather than globalisation per se. The critics have had grounds for concern. True, large-scale privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation in the global economy have brought increased prosperity to some countries, sectors and individuals. However, as is elaborated later in this paper, neoliberal economic restructuring has also produced harms. Many have lost jobs, either temporarily or permanently. Many have seen their working conditions deteriorate. Many have suffered from high instability in liberalised global financial markets. In addition, neoliberalism has both implicitly and explicitly prescribed a hands-off approach to ecological degradation, cultural destruction and social inequality, all of which have seen substantial increases in the course of recent globalisation. Even mainstream economic analysis has provided mixed evidence regarding the links between liberalisation and GDP growth, let alone poverty reduction (McCulloch et al., 2001; Rodrik, 2001)."(pg 1)
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2002-11
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With permission of the license/copyright holder