Globalisation has all the appeal of an express train with no driver in the cab, argues Larry Elliot
In many ways, DH Lawrence was the prototype green. The constant theme of his novels was the way in which the hard, mechanistic world of the industrial West was sucking the life out of mankind.
This scene from Women In Love is typical. Ursula and Gudrun are two sisters who become attracted to two men, Birkin and Gerald. Birkin is a thinly disguised Lawrence, while Gerald is an industrial magnate set on introducing new methods of working to the family business to boost productivity and growth.
One day the women spot Gerald swimming. Ursula says: Hell have to die soon, when hes made every possible improvement and there will be nothing more to improve. Hes got go, anyhow.
Certainly, hes got go, says Gudrun. In fact, Ive never seen a man that showed signs of so much. The unfortunate thing is, where does his go go to, what becomes of it?
Ultimately, Gerald, the symbol of the machine age, dies in the cold emptiness of the high Alps. The metaphor is not that subtle, nor did Lawrence mean it to be. Eighty years on, however, it is still relevant. Observing the start of the annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Hong Kong last weekend, Lawrence would no doubt have said of globalisation: Where does all the go go to, what becomes of it?
One obvious riposte is that industrialisation and globalisation have not only survived but expanded their reach because they have delivered the goods. We in the West are all more prosperous than when Lawrence was alive. And would we really want to go back to the standards of nutrition, medical care, dentistry that our grandparents had to endure?
The answer, almost certainly, is no. We like our TVs, cars, video players, CDs and foreign holidays, and would be reluctant to give them up. Any critique of modern industrialism has to acknowledge that Western capitalism, based on technological advance and a relentless dynamism, has something going for it. More going for it than a Soviet-style planned economy.
This is what the IMF, the World Bank and the Group of Seven have been saying. Everywhere, the Western variant of capitalism, in which money chases itself around the globe, is victorious. And yet, as Charles Handy says in his latest book, The Hungry Spirit: There is an uneasy feeling in the Western world that all is not what we say it is. We have become the prisoners of the money myth.
He cites various measures to show that the raison dtre for globalisation that it can deliver the goods is flawed. Forty- two percent of American workers feel used up by the end of the day, 69% would like a more relaxed life, parents spend 40% less time with their children than 30 years ago and, while per capita consumption in the United States has risen by 45% in the past 20 years, the quality of life has fallen by 51%.
Handy concludes that the limits to growth could be psychological and philosophical rather than economic and environmental. In truth, all four factors may be relevant. The plain fact is that globalisation offers a false prospectus.
The World Banks report on China last week extolled the economic transformation that country has witnessed since free-market reforms began in the late 1970s. China has the potential to become the second-richest country in the world by 2020.
Yet here is a fact worth bearing in mind. There are only about two million cars in the country, one for every 700 people. The United States has 1,7-people per car. What will that mean for car consumption, for pollution, for the depletion of fossil fuels?
Why should China, however, deny its people creature comforts when the US continues to guzzle gas and refuses to set meaningful targets for reducing emissions of carbon gases?
Gandhi had some wise words to say on this subject. The Earth, he said provides enough for every mans need, but not for every mans greed. The problem is that the entire basis for globalisation is greed. The free-market response assumes that everything can be resolved by the price mechanism. Once it becomes profitable to curb pollution, pollution will be curbed. Unfortunately, nobody knows when these signals will be given, nor whether there will be anybody left alive at that point to pick them up.
The reality is, as the American William Greider writes in his new book, One World, Ready or Not, globalisation is a machine with skilful hands on board but nobody at the wheel. In fact, this machine has no wheel nor any internal governor to control the speed and direction. It is sustained by its own forward motion, guided mainly by its own appetites. And it is accelerating.
Politicians are aware of this. Many find it disturbing. But the general feeling is one of resignation; nothing can be done to stop this leviathan, and even if it could the voters would not wear it.
This is a counsel of despair. Globalisation does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place within nation states, and if nation states chose to do so they could take action to control it. There is no reason why curbs should not be placed on international capital if there were the will to do so.
There was a sharp intake of breath from the IMF and World Bank last week when the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, called for foreign exchange speculation to be outlawed, but a further systemic crisis could prompt calls for action just as the Great Depression triggered curbs on capital in the 1930s.
Robert Rubin, the US Treasury Secretary, said the turbulence in Southeast Asia should not reverse the trend towards financial globalisation, which is just the sort of thing you would expect from a former Wall Street financier. But, while unfettered global capital has undoubtedly enriched a global lite, it has done so at the expense of wild and unnecessary currency fluctuations that have reduced growth rates, pushed up unemployment and been a fundamental cause of growing inequality.
Politically, voters seem to be ready to embrace a different agenda. A British opinion poll last year found that, while the environment did not have the same salience with UK voters as unemployment, 10-million put it among their top two or three issues.
Moreover, three out of four people across the country and eight in 10 of (then) opposition MPs agreed with the statement:British companies do not pay enough attention to their treatment of the environment.
This is heartening stuff for those who would like to see the formation of a global red-green alliance dedicated to a new international framework for controlling capital, a tax system that ensures that the full environmental cost of transporting goods and people across the world is reflected in prices, and a more equitable distribution of the worlds riches. It is telling that the most radical policies since the British election have come from John Prescotts environment and transport super-ministry.
Attitudes change slowly, but voters are starting to ask the questions that Lawrence and Gandhi have been asking for the whole of the century.
BLURB: Globalisation is a machine with skilful hands on board but nobody at the wheel