Jakob von Uexkull
May 1999
WE CAN'T GO ON LIKE THIS!
An Illegitimate Global Order
"Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."
- US President Grover Cleveland, 1888.
Markets have always existed in human societies
- and served us well. The social market economies of post-war Europe helped create
societies of unprecedented stability and prosperity. Market players accepted their
roles as servants of the public good. They did not usurp the powers of other forces
in society and turn market economies into market societies. They have sometimes tried
- but been put back in their place by the people, by governments and judges. Until
today.
The world order of global market rule now being constructed is undermining our highest
values, annihilating the substance of our societies and poisoning the natural wealth
on which the future of life depends. It is the global climax of the modern assault
on the commons by private greed. The very selective "war on costs" has
become a war on community and collective values and thus on civilisation itself.
"Globalization" is not the distillation of common global interests but
the world-wide enforcement of the interests of a small minority in a few countries.
It is no unstoppable natural force. Such forces do not require long and complex treaties.
On the contrary, "It hasn't been easy to create an economic system able to produce
358 (dollar) billionaires while keeping another 1.3 billion people living in absolute
deprivation. It took long and dedicated efforts by legions of economists, lawyers
and politicians on the payrolls of monied interests to design and implement such
a system ... It will take a similarly committed effort on the part of civil society
to design and put in place an economic system supportive of economic justice and
environmental sustainability."
An economic system which allows a small minority unprecedented wealth while 12 million
children die every year from preventable diseases is an outrage. Its crimes will
be our responsibility in the eyes of coming generations. If we do not want our grandchildren
to see us as criminal monsters, we must act now. Our failure to do so is indefensible
when one considers how little we risk - compared with those who fought the other
criminal ideologies of this century!
Do we want to live in a world where only the laws that protect profits are globalized?
Do we want a global order where everything is measured by narrow tests of profitability,
where the very survival of our children is subjected to a perverted cost-benefit-analysis
- asking how much we are prepared to pay to preserve our right not to be poisoned
and polluted? (Attempting to calculate whether we can "afford" to prevent
global warming, prominent economists now value lives in poor countries at a fraction
of those in rich countries, because the poor cannot pay as much to protect themselves
from the consequences.)
The results of this economics of genocide are already with us as weather changes
like El Nino destroy water and sanitation systems and allow diseases to spread to
areas never affected before - while aid from the rich to the poor continues to fall...
Government officials now believe "that government's role should be to create
environments in which business can flourish rather than to try to tell business what
it should do". By abandoning their responsibility to govern in the interests
of all, governments are losing their legitimacy. Market rule means a return to the
time when only the propertied classes had a vote.
More is in store. The Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), temporarily stalled
with the help of several RLA recipients, plans to give large corporations the right
to block or be compensated for any law, regulation, protest, boycott etc. which diminishes
their (present or future) profits.
The WTO and NAFTA already go over the heads of democratically elected governments
to decide what health or environmental rules are acceptable. The MAI would remove
any social and environmental constraints on "commercial considerations".
It would no longer be possible to decide if a marginal increase in goods is worth
the wider costs to society.
A Failed Model
Market rule is presented as a magic path to help everyone realize their aspirations
for a better life. But the costs are huge and for most people the magic path heads
only to a mirage of prosperity. After one decade of Thatcherism, the British people
thought - by large majorities - that they had in that time become more aggressive,
more selfish, less happy, less tolerant and less honest; the streets had become more
dangerous, hooliganism and pollution had increased. In the USA, despite the enormous
increases in consumption in recent decades, regular surveys show that no more Americans
are "very happy" in the 1990's than in the 1950's. Other studies have
found that, once basic needs have been satisfied (above an annual income of about
USD 10 000) there is no correlation between increased income and increased happiness.
But one carries on consuming because there seems to be no alternative, in an obsessive
but futile attempt to fill the vacuum created by the loss of meaning and spiritual
direction.
Having been assured that only the material is real, the only path to self-realization
appears to be the accumulation of yet more goods. But the uneven growth of wealth
creates many more frustrated losers than winners. Rich California now has 200 000
men in prison while the very poor Indian state of Kerala - with a similar population
- has 5 000.
Measures to "structurally adjust" economies in the global South to further
"wealth creation" have eliminated communal land holdings (Latin America),
scrapped laws limiting the amount of land one person can own (India), weakened the
legal protection for labour unions (Argentina, India, Turkey) etc. Investments in
health and education have fallen drastically, as have average wages and living standards.
But the number of billionaires and the share of the economy under foreign control
have both increased sharply. In some countries "austerity" caused the social
fabric to collapse completely (Somalia, Yugoslavia). Overall, "the major losers
in our globalizing world have been the least developed and marginalized countries."
The claim that, overall, there are still more winners than losers is contradicted
by the evidence in the field of collapsing social services and massive declines in
the real incomes of the majority. When health clinics are closed and health professionals
responsible for compiling mortality data are laid off, there may of course be a decline
in recorded mortality....
By insisting that the poor repay "loans" they have never seen - with compound
interest - the ruling economic ideology will soon have claimed as many innocent lives
as Stalin's and Mao's "reforms". Yet almost all "adjusting" countries
are deeper in debt than when they entered these programmes. Indeed, between 1980
and 1995 the foreign debt burden of countries subjected to World Bank / IMF Structural
Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) increased almost twice as fast as that of other debtor
countries.
In mid-1997 the IMF praised Thailand for its "sound", S. Korea for its
"enviable" and Indonesia for its "prudent" macroeconomic policies.
Six months later the IMF chief economist blamed the crisis there on policy weaknesses,
inadequate or excessive regulations, trade restrictions, faulty monetary policies
etc...
It is amazing that these institutions are still taken seriously! As Susan George
has said, a builder or technician with such a record would have been tried for gross
negligence.
The US government did not demand the immediate closure of insolvent financial institutions
during its banking crisis in 1980 or stock market collapse in 1987. On the contrary,
these institutions were taken over by the state and sold over a long period. The
very different policies enforced in SE Asia show that the IMF and World Bank are
the prolonged arm of US corporate capital, using every opportunity to eliminate commercial
and ideological competitors.
Fraudulent Promises
Even when the stock market is booming we are told that there is no longer enough
money to provide for a good educational system, health care, protection for the environment,
adequate pensions etc. There is only money left to make money: Companies operating
in the real, productive economy are forced to compete for investment funds against
the more lucrative games of the world of pure finance. That places intense pressure
on them to increase their profits beyond what might be considered reasonable and
responsible.
The present economic order increasingly resembles legal theft, by which a clever
few expropriate rights to the real wealth of society while contributing more to its
depletion than to its creation. "De-regulation" is really a re-regulation
to allow them to escape their social responsibilities.
The aim is not to create a "level playing-field" but, on the contrary,
one tilted in favour of a privileged minority. Globalism has little to do with "free"
markets ("laissez-faire") and much to do with the protection of corporate
monopolies. It does not -- despite constant assertions to the contrary -- aim to
roll back the state but to put it at the service of large corporations, who need
state power to enforce contracts and debt payments.
Our consumer society demands greedy, competitive, insecure, flexible human beings,
freed from any inner ties, so that they can recognise whatever chances the market
offers. But the same society expects secure, stable families, refusing to see the
connection between the social evils and economic goods.
This refusal to recognise the rapidly rising costs of consumerism paralyses the public
debate. "The highly praised information era can block our view of reality and
become void of information if it only describes one standard, one message and one
goal, for instance that of Western desire and the Western economy. I fear that the
guardians of this world view are forming a new, autistic caste...".
While claiming to serve the consumer, our corporate rulers increasingly outlaw critical
information. Attempts to purchase air time to argue for less consumption are refused...
In the USA and the EU it is now legal to "recycle" toxic and low-level
radioactive waste into fertiliser and consumer products. No labelling is required.
Despite corporate "greenwash", "the reality is that legally binding,
democratically accountable regulations, targets, codes and standards, wherever they
are proposed, are fought tooth and nail by business lobbies, and existing laws are
threatened with roll-back."
Even international NGOs are now dominated by trade and industry groups. An extensive
survey of 22 industrial and developing countries found that on average the number
of people employed by trade and industry non-profits outnumbers those employed by
environmental groups by four to one! (Worldwatch, March/April 1999).
An Impossible Future
Sunny days are no longer a cause for joy but for worry, as the ozone hole spreads.
Tens of thousands of untested chemical combinations are entering our air, water,
soil and food - and are already present in our sperm and ova. Multiple chemical sensitivity
threatens our immune, nervous and reproductive systems.
The Club of Rome Report ("Limits To Growth" 1972) was largely right, sometimes
even too conservative: soil erosion, for example, has been much more rapid than predicted.
"If soil, water and energy continue to be used as they are now, the living basis
for future development will not be there". We will face "supply catastrophes
and violent distribution conflicts."
The known global resources of 9 important minerals from cadmium to zinc will last
between 19 and 51 years at constant extraction rates. But resource use has not yet
been de-coupled from economic growth in the North - and even the "Tigers"
of the South would require another 50 to 100 years of high growth to reach Northern
levels. At such rates, most resources, including oil, would be exhausted much earlier
- and most countries rendered uninhabitable through environmental degradation.
The loss of environmental stability would soon bring about a collapse of our societies.
While the consequences of even the severest economic crisis can - judging by many
precedents - be overcome in a generation or less, the effects of an ecological collapse
may well last forever.
Those who deny that the planet's resources are being exhausted, are (to paraphrase
the title of the Ehrlich's latest book) betraying science and reason. Grain production,
for example, has failed to keep up with population growth since 1985. The rate of
new oil discoveries has fallen below the rate of consumption since the 1980s. "Globalization"
is a futile attempt by the rich to escape limits by growing into the economic and
environmental space of other countries (Herman Daly). One study calculates that the
human, social and natural capital costs of US economic "growth" exceed
the profits extracted five-fold.
It is cruel to promote global policies which are clearly unsustainable when projected
even a few decades into the future. Presenting the USA as a possible future model
to the global poor is absurd nonsense.
Quite apart from any over-riding natural limits an economic system based on the need
for ever-growing debt to fund ever- growing consumption is bound to collapse. In
this theatre of the absurd, we are informed that, among the weaknesses in the Western
economies "the most alarming is household debt... But the greater danger ...
is that the debt might stop rising."
Nothing more clearly reveals the bankruptcy of this ideology than the Western attacks
on the Japanese for not spending and consuming more.
Japan is the second richest nation on Earth with huge assets at home and abroad.
Its people are among the world's most affluent and have sensibly decided that they
have enough. Faced with a rapidly aging population, an undeveloped social security
net, a deteriorating environment and a huge budget deficit they understandably prefer
to save.
Yet, we are warned, their refusal to continue wasting and polluting will cause a
global economic collapse, as will their reluctance to create more losers and "snuff
out the hopes of the kindly old ladies who run rice shops and futon stores."
For the Japanese adherence to traditional concepts of honour, to fairness, equality
and civility is, "sapping strength from the United States and other countries"
-- because Japan won't buy more of their products. While traffic increases threaten
to suffocate us, economists complain that new car sales in Japan have fallen.
What For?
In the industrialized countries jobs are now dictated by the demands of computers
instead of the old assembly lines. "More than 80 percent of Americans say their
lives are more stressful now than they were five years ago, pressures at work are
cited as the primary reason. More and more of us need to be medicated just to get
through the workday. More than 45 million American adults are taking prescription
psychotropic medications. The largest increase is not in the use of the much publicized
antidepressant Prozac, but rather in a variety of drugs used to treat anxiety and
stress disorders." (Utne Reader, Jan/Feb 1999)
A 1984 Swedish study found that the costs of treating the victims and dropouts of
the "rat race" of increased productivity rose at an unsustainable rate.
Many of those uprooted by the post-war Swedish economic expansion could not take
the strain. Their children could cope even less and became the new and growing hard
core of convicts, drug addicts, alcoholics, depressives and prematurely retired.
The costs of economic growth outpaced the gains. Already in 1974 81 % of Swedes believed
that their standard of living was high enough and in 1977 a majority thought it was
too high. But no-one dared or knew how to stop the "growth" machine...
Today, large majorities in France, Japan and Germany expect that their children will
be worse off than they are. Even 38 % in the usually optimistic US agrees.
The gap between our inner truths and the values of our society is widening. "It
is difficult to speak of or to practise love, friendship, generosity, understanding
or solidarity within a system whose rules, goals and information streams are geared
for lesser human qualities" (Abraham Maslow).
The mechanistic belief systems of "modern" science have atrophied the spiritual
dimensions of our consciousness. We are expected to believe that all life has come
into existence by random interactions of inert matter and "selfish genes"
with no intrinsic purpose or meaning. But such beliefs are "materialistic disorders"
(Theodore Roszak) caused by a lack of experience of nature and a lack of self-knowledge.
They attempt to justify market rule as "natural" by reducing the irreducible
complexity of life to a molecular cost-benefit competition, thereby causing enormous
social harm.
We value many things necessary for a decent life ñ such as sociability, compassion,
truth, justice, dignity, participation, environmental quality, culture, stable communities,
generosity and good work ñ above "efficiency" and a greater choice of goods.
The ruling ideology treats the raising of pigs (or growing of tobacco) as "productive"
- but not the raising of our children. Many educational systems have stopped educating.
Moral studies which used to be taught even in poor countries a generation ago, are
replaced by training in "employability" for increasingly non-existent jobs.
The end of dependent employment has become a feared misery instead of a liberation
- as if there is not enough to do in the world!
So What Can Be Done?
The challenges facing us are unprecedented - but so are the opportunities. We need
to wake up to the reality that we are facing the most world-changing event in the
history of our species.
The vast gap between present policies and what urgently needs to (and can!) be done
threatens us all. Technologies of mass murder, widespread misery and the ideology
of consumerism cannot co-exist on a finite planet. A global cultural mind-shift is
both imperative and possible.
We have unprecedented knowledge and resources for change. We have an unprecedented
number of ethical fellow-humans with a world-centric perspective, who have expanded
their sense of responsibility and compassion and are ready for a global cultural
mindshift. We have widespread agreement on the values which must guide this change.
In "Shared Values for a Troubled World", the President of the Institute
for Global Ethics, Rushworth Kidder, describes the common global values he found
in interviews with people of different cultures, faiths, political views and social
backgrounds in 16 countries. These values were truth (honesty, integrity), love (caring,
compassion), freedom, fairness, community, tolerance, responsibility and respect
for life.
The right to be different can never imply a difference of rights: nobody has more
or less rights than anyone else. But rights confer responsibilities on each one of
us to ensure that everyone actually possesses the rights they have a right to: The
failure to help a person in danger is a crime in many countries.
The cornerstones of the new order already exist. Many of the building blocks have
been formed. Lacking so far is the will to put them together. This requires a convincing
map, a design of such elegance that it captivates the imagination and inspires action,
simultaneously appealing to those excluded and worried about their next meal - and
to those in a position to penetrate, uproot and redirect the present power structures.
In a finite world we cannot wait until overall growth "trickles down" to
the poor. An annual 3 % global rise in p.c. income would, after 10 years, have raised
Ethiopia's p.c. income by less than USD 50, that in the USA by over USD 7 000.
The people of the poor Indian state of Kerala did not wait for the trickle-down.
They organised to create themselves the basic welfare gains which other poor peoples
still dream about: a literacy rate of 100 %, infant mortality and birth rates closer
to those of the industrialised countries than to the rest of the South, an improved
environment, women's rights etc.
But instead of being emulated and built on this model is now threatened by those
who want no challenges or alternatives to the ruling order.
Such threats are not new. Sulak Sivaraksa reports that a USAID mission in the 1950's
concluded that if Thailand was going to develop a consumer society it must stop the
Buddhist teaching of "contentment"... (i.e. of Asian values!).
We need to steer our economies away from the fixation on the global level towards
a local and regional preference wherever practical. The development of local and
regional currencies, exchange trading systems and micro finance are crucial. Socially
and environmentally responsible producers need to be protected. To favour local firms
who pay their taxes, contribute to their communities, compete fairly and respect
the eco-system is not isolationist. It creates a sector which cannot be blackmailed
or disrupted by sudden hysteria on the global financial markets. It makes possible
the growth of diverse skills and good sustainable jobs for local and regional markets,
at a fraction of the cost of a job in the global sector. Such jobs do not need to
be "competetive", as long as they yield a positive return when externalities
are accounted for. On the local level it is easier to enjoy the positive and easier
and thus less costly to deal with negative externalties (Johan Galtung). Communities
must have the right to delink selectively from the global economy. We must re-design
the global monetary, economic and political framework so that it facilitates and
supports bottom-up, trickle-up development.
The people's economy must be liberalised. Regulation and license requirements need
to be simplified and self-help institutions promoted. Lending restrictions to co-operatives
must be ended. Access to raw materials must not be restricted to contractors. The
self-employed must be represented in organisations setting certification standards.
To live with dignity, the poor must be freed from the debt collectors of the rich.
At the very least, the debt service ratio (as % of exports) should be capped at 3.5
%, as the Allies agreed for post-war Germany. It is now 19 % for all developing countries
and 174 % for Zambia! (UNDP HDR 1998).
Northern politicians and bankers calling themselves Christian should remember that
the Bible gives clear instructions on how to deal with vulnerable people in debt:
"When your brother cannot support himself... you shall not charge him interest
on a loan." A full debt write-off is ordered every seven years.
The promised Northern payments to the South under Agenda 21 have not materialised.
If North-South relations were put on the same footing as relations between Northern
countries, the North would owe the South between USD 50 billion and USD 500 billion
p.a. in compensation for unjust terms of trade, transfer pricing and other losses.
Unless the North agrees to a debt moratorium and fulfils its Agenda 21 obligations
the South should actively pursue these claims.
The challenges facing us require reformed and new global institutions which can facilitate
rational decisions in today´s world, including globally elected People´s
Council with the mandate to codify and implement the sustainable development agenda.
This would be a body with carefully delineated tasks to ensure our common future,
protect our global commons and the fair sharing of scarce resources. It would agree
the overall limits within which the single-vision institutions now ruling us (IMF,
World Bank, WTO) must operate.
A democratic global body would have the legitimacy to raise fees on uses (and abuses)
of the global commons to fund specific projects like the transition to a solar-power-based
global economy (as proposed by EUROSOLAR), and develop a global basic income scheme
("earth bonus"). An income of USD 2000 p.a. in the South can provide 80
% of the basic welfare of an income 10 times higher in the North. This body should
have the power to ban or re-direct the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies
paid every year to fossil fuel and nuclear projects, including World Bank loans -
which still dwarf loans to CO2-reducing projects!
For the whole period of the Cold War, up to less than 10 years ago, a willingness
to press the nuclear button and, in effect, sacrifice the human race, in case of
a Soviet conventional attack across a NATO border, was the basis of Western defence
policy, accepted as rational and sane by large parts of the political spectrum and
media.
Today many wonder how they could ever have believed anything so preposterous and
taken such monstrous risks. But these "weapons" are still there, in more
than sufficient numbers to destroy human life on earth. Now is the time to rid the
world of this madness.
Nuclear power leaves a deadly legacy for thousands of future generations. An accident
could make large areas of our planet uninhabitable. Another incalculable danger is
the possibility of using a civil nuclear programme to construct weapons of genocide.
The motivation to change is not strengthened by limiting ourselves to small steps
but by the "active demand for large changes... combined with the claim to offer
the overall alternative and not just another piece... It is easier to mobilize for
larger alternatives than for small ones. It is a common mistake to believe that small
political steps are generally easier than large ones."
A programme of transition to a positive future must also include the following mutually
re-enforcing reforms:
- an educational system fostering "whole" global citizens, with a special
emphasis on empowerment skills and the values of sufficiency, reclaiming our minds,
hearts and sensitivities eroded by exposure to the continual triviality and banalisation
of consumerism. Overconsumption is (like overeating) a symptom of stress and insecurity
- and needs to be treated as such.
- the right of all to have free access to the findings of science and other human
knowledge (with rare exceptions).
- the establishment of mandatory courses in ethical and ecological economics in all
institutions teaching economics.
- a global health for all policy, which, while recognizing the many achievements
of modern medicine, ends the discrimination against other schools of healing.
- a tax system which promotes good work and internalizes environmental costs (eco-taxes
and land site value tax reform) to ensure that the saving and frugal use of scarce
resources always "pays".
- protecting the right of people to build, manage and sustain their own habitats,
including the right of communities to veto large "development" projects
in their area (as in the US state of Vermont).
- the right of all countries to choose the foreign investments best suited to their
needs, in accordance with the UN Charter on Economic Rights and Responsibilities
(1974).
- the environmental disaster causing most victims today is the scarcity of clean
water in many poor communities. If we can build information superhighways, we can
build water pipes. To solve this challenge within a few years will take no more than
the will and resources put into the Gulf War.
- an agriculture freed of poisons. There are now highly productive organic growing
systems proving that we need neither poisons nor genetics to feed the world. A million
wetland rice farmers in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines,
Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam are now using alternatives to pesticides whilst still
increasing their yields. In southern Brazil, some 223 000 farmers, using green manures
and cover crops of legumes and livestock integration, have doubled yields of maize
and wheat to 4-5 tonnes/ha. More than 300 000 farmers in southern and western India
farming in dryland conditions, and now using a range of water and soil management
technologies, have tripled sorghum and millet yields to some 2-2.5 tonnes/hectare.
(EarthScan 1998)
- the right of the landless to farm unused and underutilized land.
- a moratorium on genetic engineering, which is based on an outdated mechanistic
understanding of nature, at least until it is safe enough to be able to obtain full
insurance cover against all associated risks. (In Germany 81 % oppose genetically
engineered food - but 92 % believe it is unstoppable!)
- a rapid phase-out of the production of chemicals not proven safe and bio-degradable,
with funds for a transition raised by pollution fees. Technologies based on intelligent
design and clean production must be legally mandated.
- a global programme of environmental restoration and preservation with the help
of an international "Green Youth Corps" as an alternative to military service.
- the adequate representation of workers, consumers and other parts of Civil Society
- and not just the business sector - on bodies creating the economic global "playing
field" (e.g. WTO panels).
- an international programme to protect and reward whistle-blowers who reveal criminal
secrets.
- a UN Rapid Reaction Force mandated to protect victims of aggression, freeing (especially
smaller) countries from the need to maintain armed forces.
- a strengthened international criminal court with the power to apprehend political
murderers and torturers worldwide.
All sectors of society need to be motivated and mobilized for this process. Business
can play a crucial role. Every business requires a stable environment with foreseeable
risks and opportunities to achieve a return on its investments. This is now threatened
by ecological degradation and casino-capitalism.
No responsible business can survive when forced to compete against those who externalize
their costs onto society and the future. Business leaders therefore need to support
legally binding framework conditions and withdraw from organisations which sabotage
this goal.
Incorporation is a privilege conferred by society, which should be revoked if the
corporation's overall contribution to the public good is negative. Corporate political
contributions are a form of corruption, divorcing the political process from its
popular base.
The financial sector must be regulated so that it again fulfills its legitimate function
of serving the productive economy. We must reduce its speed (e.g. by the 'Tobin Tax')
in order to increase its substance and relationship to the real world. Ideological
pressure on governments to finance education, health etc. by commercial borrowing
at market rates (instead of interest-free government credit) enriches banks and holders
of capital at the expense of those working. This must be reversed. Speculative finance
belongs in the catergory of immoral business transactions, debts from which should
not be legally recoverable.
Let the proponents of the global rule of money fight for their values in the national
and international arena. But let us no longer leave the field to them! We need political
movements promoting the growth of truth and development of honesty, the growth of
love and development of compassion, the development of fairness and growth of participation!
"There are seasons in human affairs, of inward and outward revelation ... when
new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for.
There are periods when ... to dare, is the highest wisdom".