Walden 1 Bello Revisiting & Reclaiming Deglobalization ANNEX Deglobalization Applied: A Post-Neoliberal Paradigm for Myanmar Walden Bello Revisiting & Reclaiming Deglobalization Author : Walden Bello Published on: April 2019 Published by : Focus on the Global South 4th Floor Wisit Prachuabmoh Building Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road Bangkok 10330, THAILAND Tel: +66 2 218 7363 Fax: +66 2 255 9976 www.focusweb.org General inquiries: [email protected] 3 Revisiting he paradigm of deglobalization was advanced & Reclaiming by Focus on the Global South in 2000, at a time Twhen corporate-driven globalization appeared to be irresistible. It has had an interesting history Deglobalization since then. Deglobalization first attracted attention and provoked discussion in progressive circles. It was only after the 2008 financial implosion that it attracted attention from the mainstream, with the Nearly 20 years after “deglobalization” was in- Economist writing that with the “integration of the troduced as an alternative paradigm by Focus world economy in retreat on almost every front,” on the Global South, one of its main authors the economic melt-down “has popularized a new looks back at its strengths and weaknesses and term: deglobalization. Some critics of capitalism seem happy about it—like Walden Bello, a Philippine how its interaction with other alternative frame- economist, who can perhaps claim to have coined works can be a mutually enriching exercise. the word with his book, ‘Deglobalization, Ideas for a New World Economy.’ Britain’s prime minister, Gor- don Brown, is among those who fear the results will be bad.” 1 As a program for organizing the economy, deglobal- ization was, interestingly, first proposed in France. It inspired the platform of Arnaud Montebourg, a Socialist running for the presidency of France in 2012. One account noted that “the utopia of démon- dialisation is all the more appealing as Montebourg points out that it’s not a rich-man’s dream of keeping the poor at bay, crediting Walden Bello, the Prince- ton-educated Filipino writer, politician and a man of the South for the concept.” 2 The same account pointed out, however, that de- globalization had also been embraced by the right in France. Marine Le Pen, the controversial head of the National Front, “carries the idea further, as she advocates an exit by France from the euro and erec- tion of barriers at France’s borders. Her plan, a one- country-versus-all approach, makes no economic sense, but carries strong nationalistic and emotional appeal.”3 Fortunately, no one on the European right says they got the idea from me and Focus. But un- Walden Bello is co-chair of the Board of Focus on fortunately, it is the case that today, deglobalization the Global South. He is the author of 23 books, the and the critique of globalization more generally are latest of which are Counterrevolution: The Global Rise identified with the right. of the Far Right (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishers, 2019) and Paper Dragons: Why Financial Crises Hap- pen and Why China will be Next (London: Zed, 2019). Revisiting 4 & Reclaiming Deglobalization Arnaud Montebourg (left) and Marine Le Pen (right) This situation makes it more imperative to clarify How the Right Hijacked Deglobalization what deglobalization is all about and why it is some- thing that should be associated with liberation, not But before we embark on this broader task, it is im- xenophobia. Yet clarification is needed, not only to portant to answer the puzzle: How was the critique detach deglobalization from its embrace by the right of globalization hijacked by the right? but also to assess its relevance as a liberating par- adigm for today’s world. In other words, the world In a speech in honor of Nelson Mandela in Johannes- has moved forward—or backward, as the case may burg on July 17, 2018, former US President Barack be—since the 2000’s, when we first articulated de- Obama noted that “challenges to globalization first globalization. Aside from the 2008 financial crisis, came from the left but then came more forcefully other developments have come to the fore, such as from the right, as you started seeing populist move- the acceleration of climate change, automation, and ments… [that] tapped the unease that was felt by inequality. In the light of these changes, it is worth- many people who lived outside of the urban cores; while to revisit deglobalization to see if it still pro- fears that economic security was slipping away, that vides a way to cope with these developments and to their social status and privileges were eroding, that compare it to other alternative paradigms that have their cultural identities were being threatened by drawn attention more recently. outsiders, somebody that didn’t look like them or sound like them or pray as they did.”4 Walden 5 Bello Obama’s words underlined an intriguing develop- fact that since the 1990’s the center left in the US and ment: that the right ate the left’s lunch. The left’s cri- Europe had bought into and aggressively promoted tique of neoliberalism and globalization took off in the free trade, neoliberal agenda. Thus, in the US, the mid-1980’s in the context of two struggles. In the it was under the leadership of Democratic Clinton South, it unfolded as part and parcel of the opposi- administration that NAFTA and the WTO came into tion to “structural adjustment” in developing coun- being and the New Deal-era Glass Steagall Act sep- tries imposed by the International Monetary Fund arating commercial from investment banking was and the World Bank, the key aims of which were ac- repealed. Later, in the wake of the 2008 financial cri- celerated liberalization of trade, deregulation, and sis, Obama’s Democratic presidency prioritized sav- privatization on the grounds that the aggressive re- ing the banks instead of bringing relief to millions lease of market forces would make these economies of bankrupt homeowners, then, in what must rank more efficient. In the North, it was triggered by two as a historic misjudgment, promoted the Trans-Pa- developments. One was the drive of transnational cific Partnership that, to the working class, meant corporations to relocate their facilities to Mexico a continuation of the export of their jobs to China. and East Asia to take advantage of cheap labor, a Obama’s advocacy of the TPP and poor record in trend that accelerated with China’s integration into bringing back jobs was likely to be one of the central the global capitalist economy in the 1980’s. it was factors that led significant numbers of traditionally also a response to the determined efforts of Ronald Democratic working class voters in the Mid-West to Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to drastically emas- spurn Hillary Clinton, thus providing Trump the edge culate labor and deregulate and denationalize the in the key states that determined the outcome of the US and British economies in the early 1980’s. 2016 elections.5 The establishment of the North American Free In the United Kingdom, New Labor pushed the “Third Trade Area (NAFTA) in 1994 and the World Trade Or- Way,” a key element of which was support for thor- ganization (WTO) in 1995 added fuel to the spread of oughgoing financial liberalization and state support what came to be known as the anti-globalization or for the drive to make London supplant New York as alter-globalization movement, which helped derail the global financial center. In Germany, the Social the Third Ministerial of the WTO in December 1999 Democrats (SPD) under Gerard Schroeder did what in Seattle. Seattle was an exclusively left-wing affair, the center-right Christian Democrats could never as were the protests against the Group of Eight that have accomplished: push neoliberal “reforms”— culminated in a massive 200,000-person rally in Ge- the so-called Hartz reforms—that loosened wage, noa in July 2001. While the September 11 events tenure, and social security protections for work- dented the momentum of the anti-globalization ers. French socialist figures, for their part, became movement, the World Social Forum, which enjoyed the most enthusiastic proponents of the euro, the the support of the Workers’ Party in Brazil that came adoption of which required countries to maintain to power in 2002, provided a North-South avenue tight non-expansionary fiscal policies that militated for the elaboration of anti-globalization strategies. against social spending.6 With the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, the anti-globalization movement reemerged Having embraced the neoliberal agenda, the estab- in force in the North in what came to be known as lished workers’ parties became defenders of the the Occupy Movement, the key political products of pro-globalization agenda, leading not only to fail- which were the coming to power of Syriza in Greece ure to expand their mass base but also to part of and the rise of Podemos as a political force in Spain. that base leaving their ranks, like the leaders and The left’s ability to ride on the anti-globalization rank-and-file that left the SPD in the mid-2000’s and agenda, however, was severely compromised by the helped form Die Linke (the Left). Revisiting 6 & Reclaiming Deglobalization US President Clinton with Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford at the NAFTA Kickoff. Photo by Ralph Alswang [Public Domain] A not unimportant role in promoting globalization posed the Trans-Pacific Partnership that they almost was played by influential liberal non-governmen- unanimously endorsed. Seeking to make inroads tal organizations, who bought into the neoliberal into the working class, right wing parties in Europe trade paradigm of the World Trade Organization gradually abandoned the anti-tax, anti-big-govern- but sought to tweak it with “reformist” measures like ment, and free-market concerns of their original pe- improved market access for developing countries’ tit bourgeois base and opportunistically embraced exports into developed country markets or making an anti-neoliberal and anti-globalization agenda and developing country manufactures “compliant” with the welfare state.