Customer Reviews

The Case Against the Global Economy

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A thorough roast of the Corporate State, the Global Economy, GATT, NAFTA, the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, and our own ignorance to the consequences we will suffer at the hands of the New Fascism. This book is another formidable brick in the foundation of an emerging sub-culture that seeks a viable human future. The underlying message throughout these essays is that we either involve ourselves in our communities---strive toward local sustainability, nurture the ecology of our place, reject bureacratic centralization, be it governmental, or corporate---or we allow the environmental destruction, the social disintegration, and the bankrupt moralilty of the profit-driven limitless growth maniacs to reach its inevitable cancer-like conclusion. The authors here share an awareness that we might well be facing the end of democracy, unbearable degradation to the quality of our air, water, food, and lives, and ultimately the collapse of our entire civilization. But all is not Doom & Gloom! We are reminded that corporations only exist because we allow them to, legally and economically, and the politicians they own are, at his point, still elected by us. There is optimism that the rapidly growing numbers of the displaced, disenfranchised, and disenchanted will unify, informed and wisened by their loss, or love, of place, and their common experience outside the confines of ideology and education manipulated by corporate-owned media. We are also reminded that on a global scale, the grotesquely rich & economically powerful, are far in the minority, if we so choose, we the people, the vast majority, can still throw the bums out! This book should be required reading in all schools, but the fact that most educational institutions are increasingly influenced by the same narrow socio-political-economic interests makes this quite unlikely. If you're a homeschooler though, I highly recommend 'The Case Against The Global Economy' as part of your curriculum.

Jim Otterstrom

Jim Otterstrom's review below prompted me to read this book. "We are caught in a terrible dilemma," contributor David Korten writes in this collection of 43 essays. "We have reached a point in history where we must rethink the very nature of and meaning of human progress" (p. 29). Reading the newspaper on any day reveals the ever-increasing problems caused by the expansion of our global economy: worldwide unemployment and poverty; homelessness; global warming; air, soil, and water pollution; violence; political chaos; a global monoculture "which is leveling both cultural and biological diversity" (p. 317); the destruction of natural resources; sprawling superstores that destroy communities; and "a global sense of despair about the future" (p. 94). However, as this long-overdue book makes clear, these are not simply unrelated problems as the media would have us believe.

This book first identifies "the global economy" and examines the effects of globalization, and then offers strategies "required to assist a transition toward a more viable, more satisfying, and incomparably more sustainable world" (p. 392). Co-edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, this collection includes contributions from Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, Wendell Berry, Satish Kumar, and Jeanette Armstrong, among others. It offers compelling evidence that we are living in a "global factory" (p. 302)--a corporate state, "which not only disregards local tastes and cultural differences, but threatens to serve as a form of social control over attitudes, expectations, and behavior of people all over the world" (p. 300), and which defines education as job training, and success as a high-paying job (p. 416).

In his essay, Satish Kumar observes that with economic globalization, people have lost their dignity; they have "become cogs in the machine, standing at the conveyor belt, living in shanty towns, and depending on the mercy of their bosses" (p. 420). He writes, "global economy drives people toward high performance, high achievement, and high ambition for materialistic success. This results in stress, loss of meaning, loss of inner peace, loss of space for personal and family relationships, and loss of spiritual life" (p. 421).

We are pieces of the living, dreaming earth (p. 465), Jeanette Armstrong writes in another favorite essay, sharing the world with "people without hearts," who have "lost the capacity to experience the deep generational bond to other humans and to their surroundings," "blind to self destruction, whose emotion is narrowly focused on their individual sense of well-being without regard to the well-being of others" (p. 467).

Economic globalization may seem overwhelming while reading this book, but there are also strategies here for local production, local consumption, reducing global trade, and ensuring strong environmental standards (p. 91). The solution begins with each of us, individually. Eat vegan. Buy organic. Walk to work. Appreciate what is local. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Value life. You will find words to live by here.

And for those of you who do not understand why hundreds were shot with rubber bullets, pepper sprayed, and arrested for nonviolent protest in the streets of Seattle, November 30 through December 3, 1999, while corporate elites met in secret behind police barricades and a 25-block no-protest zone, consider this book required reading.

G. Merritt

If you've wondered what all those protests were about in Seattle, or anywhere else, it seems, that the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been scheduled to meet -- this is the book to read. It contains 43 articles by such writers as Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, Helena Norberg-Hodge, David C. Korten, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Herman E. Daly.

The book's premise is that the emergent global economy is destroying diversity, both biological and cultural. Even nation-states are becoming increasingly irrelevant and meaningless under globalism -- much less regional and local jurisdictions. The bright and hopeful message, in the otherwise bleak landscape painted by the book, is the fact that people inherently seem to need small-scale forms of community -- we appear to be genetically programmed for it -- and if globalism won't provide for this need, we will reinvent structures that do. The book details, for example, a number of efforts underway around the world to recreate local currencies. Highly recommended.

I'm just finishing the first year of a 2-year International MBA program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and have found this book to help restore some balance to my studies. It definitely was NOT recommended to me by my faculty, but caught my eye when I came upon it because I remembered meeting Mr. Mander when I studied with his son at UC Santa Cruz (Kresge) in the mid-1980's. There is so much hype, especially in the business world, that the global economy is not only inevitable, but good. And if you don't examine it very much, the assumptions seem solid. Well let me just say that reading this book helped me radically rethink my plans once I finish my MBA. I don't plan to promote global corporate integration, and I will do my best to influence international business to take the long-term consequences of their actions into account. I'm glad I'm studying the international business canon, though, because then I hope I'll be able to communicate some of the concepts presented in this book and actually get those with their hands on the pursestrings to listen.

Try to get this into the classroom--we need more business and economics students reading this book!

In a book one can best describe as both painstaking and muckraking, author and scholar Jerry Mander focus his considerable critical acumen by editing a series of essays on the much vaunted and constantly ballyhooed phenomenon of economic globalization. From the outset, Mander admits that the processes feeding into this process are so wide-spread, pandemic, and attractive to a variety of international corporate forces that any prospect for reversing the trend will be problematic indeed. Yet, given the potential for catastrophic consequences stemming from the movement toward the expanding influence of such global corporate enterprises, the author advises us that we would do well to try.

Mander was among the first critics to point out how fundamentally undemocratic the rise of the corporate entities were in terms of how they came to increasingly exert powerful influences regarding the disposition of resources, political orientations, and the public welfare. Indeed, given the fact that economic globalization may well represent the most fundamental and the most radical reorientation of the sum total of international social, economic, and political arrangements in several hundred years, it is without a doubt critical that the average citizen learn more about the nature of economic globalization, how it is being implemented, and what this phenomenon means for each of us as individuals, as consumers, and, most importantly, as citizens.

Thus, he and co-editor Edward Goldsmith have organized a series of 43 different essays from contributors as far ranging as Jeremy Rifkin to William Greider, from Ralph Nader to Wendell Berry, and from Jeanette Armstrong to Kirkpatrick Sale (the noted Neo-Luddite advocate), each discussing topics ranging from the nature of corporations accomplishing such change to the impact of the change for individuals in a number of important and interesting ways. Thus we have Wendell berry focusing on how corporate activities tend to attack and destroy rural opposition to facilitate the plunder of the natural resources, or William Greider discussing how a corporate giant like General Electric uses its political influence to fix the game in its favor, and this is often against the greater influence of the public at large in terms of jobs, the local economy, and the environment.

This is an important book, one that arms the reader with an array of facts regarding what the so-called "New World Order" really means in terms of its potential impact on each us in every aspect of our lives, as individuals, as members of the local community, as consumers of necessary (and other) products, and as citizens of a nation and of the world at large. The scope of the change to come is immense, and it is obviously in the interest of each of us to better understand exactly what is at stake in terms of our lives, our freedoms as citizens, and our survival in a world increasingly endangered by reckless corporate activities that are destroying the biosphere. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!

Quo Vadis? Where are we going? What is our destination? At the close of this millennium a spectrum of voices have gathered together, in this treatise The Case Against the Global Economy, to toil with such questions. This tome tackles the ever growing phenomenon of economic globalization -- questioning its motives, cost, and viability against its effect on life, liberty, and the environment. Editors Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith have compiled some 43 essays from such diverse thinkers and activists as: Jeremy Rifkin, Ralph Nader, Richard Barnet, Kirkpatrick Sale, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Herman Daly and Wendell Berry, just to name a few. From their own unique perspective, each author decries the rush to economic globalization and, in concert, call for its reversal. Thus, we find the goals of compilation as stated by editor Jerry Mander: to halt economic globalization and, then, reverse its affects.

What do the contributors mean by economic globalization? Well, a simple definition of economic gobalization -- for our purpose globalization -- is hard to craft. As with most phenomenon, globalization does not fit neatly into a generic category. Globalization is a tendency, in the sense that it appears under such shibboleths as "market democracy," "free and open trade," "NAFTA," and "GATT." On the surface, to the average person, such slogans seem trite and abstract. According to Mander, however, economic globalization, "involves arguably the most fundamental redesign of the planet's political and economic arrangements since at least the Industrial Revolution." (3) It is this redesign forged through "free trade" accords, IMF "structural adjustment programs," and global "deregulation" that has contributed to "the spreading disintegration of the social order and the increase of poverty, landlessness, homelessness, violence, alienation, and extreme anxiety about the future." (4) Such grand assertions are developed and defended in each of the four sections that make up the book: "The ! Multiple Impacts of Globalization," Panaceas That Failed," "Engines of Globalization" and "Steps Toward Relocalization."

Helena Norberg-Hodge in "Pressure to Modernize and Globalize" depicts the insinuation of modernism and consumerism into a land and people of Ladakh (Kashmir), who have for thousands of years not only survived but prospered without them. Ladakh is a high altitude desert in the Tibetan plateau in northern most India. She chronicles the transformation of Ladakh and its inhabitants as a result of tourism, media images, and western-style education. A poignant illustration of this transformation comes in the embodiment of a young Ladakhi named Tseweng. When she first met Tsewang the concept of poverty, the feeling of material envy, or inferiority seemed alien to the young man. However, on the heels of western tourism and commercialism, -- both consequences of globalization efforts -- Norberg-Hodge noticed a drastic change in Tsewang. He began to see what other's possessed and suddenly felt a need to possess them too. Where before he could not conceive of the dichotomy of rich and poor, now, in the presence of western tourist, he began to understand himself and his people as poor.

In the last section of the book, Wendell Berry provides a typically insightful essay on the importance of conserving one's local community. His exposition provides a ray of hope for all the Tsewang's of the world, who are overrun by the attractive appeal of globalization. As Berry illustrates, we have a two-party system: "One is the party of the global economy; the other I would call simply the party of local community. The global party is large, though not populous, immensely powerful and wealthy, self-aware, purposeful, and tightly organized. The community party is only now coming aware of itself; it is widely scattered, highly diverse, small though potentially numerous, weak though latently powerful, and poor but by no means without resources." Berry continues his argument by posing two v! ery important questions regarding the global economy: (1) How can any nation or region justify the destruction of a local productive capacity for the sake of foreign trade? (2) How can people who have demonstrated their inability to run national economies without inflation, usury, unemployment, and ecological devastation now claim that they can do a better job in running a global economy? (411) Both questions have yet to be addressed never mind answered, according to Berry.

In between the Norberg-Hodge and Berry pieces, lay a wealth of challenges, criticisms, and retorts against the effects of globalization. Ralph Nader and Lori Wallach in "GATT, NAFTA, and the Subversion of the Democratic Process", illustrate the effects of such agreements in usurping the democratic process by labeling local regulations protecting health, safety, and resources as barriers to trade and, thus null and void. " Its a very neat arrangement, European corporations target U.S. laws they do not like. U.S. corporation target European laws they do not like...the process can go on until all laws protecting people and their environment have either been replaced or reversed by weaker laws."(99) Richard Grossman and Frank Adams' essay "Exercising Power Over Corporations Through State Charters" calls for making corporations responsible to the public benefit of the states where they are incorporated, not just to the stockholders. To support this assertion, the author's refer to the Pennsylvania Legislature of 1934, " A corporation in law is just what the incorporating act makes it. It is the creature of the law and may be molded to any shape or for any purpose that the Legislature may deem most conducive to the general good." (379)

Jeremy Rifkin, in his "New Technology and the End of Jobs", continues the message he began in The End of Work - Technological advancements eliminate jobs. He posits that "in all three key employment sectors -- agriculture, manufacturing, and services -- machines are quickly replacing human la! bor and promise an economy of near-automated production by the mid decades of the twenty-first century." (109) In his essay "Sustainable Growth? No Thank You." Herman Daly, former World Bank economist, debunks the belief in the sustainability of present global economic growth. He opines that economists should be very interested in impossibility theorems, especially the one he demonstrates in this essay: " Namely, that it is impossible for the world economy to grow its way out of poverty and environmental degradation. In other words, sustainable growth is impossible." (192) He continues with a series of very important question concerning the earth's destination: "If the economy cannot grow forever, then by how much can it grow? Can it grow by enough to give everyone in the world a standard of per capita resource use equal to that of the average American."(193) He concludes that -- never mind the global economy -- the earth could hardly support such a feat.

Throughout the book, a message rings loud and clear: " the movement toward economic globalization is no expression of democracy, nor is it the kind of `evolutionary' process that its advocates claim...it is simply a scheme people thought up...to favor the institutions they promote.

I first read this book in 1997 not too long after it was first published and again just recently, it is more relevant now because things described are coming down in the world. Some essays cover such topics as trade, the third world, explanations of GATT & NAFTA, mass layoffs in labor, the food supply & genetically modified organisms. Other writers question whether or not the idea of "globalization" is even sustainable, one starts to wonder exactly who is behind "globalization" and benefits from it 'cause the majority sure doesn't. There is a whole section of this book devoted to corporations and they way they function. Wal-Mart & General Electric get whole essays all their own, and richly deserved.

Usually books this accurate about the state of the world are just too depressing because the problems seem so entrenched and we're helpless to do anything about them. Not so here, the last section of the book focuses on community & localization and is uplifting.

I wish more people would read this book.

I dont know where to begin in describing how terrifying this book is even from its first pages, and maybe even particularly in its first pages. The introduction paints a grim portrait of the future unless all people take responsibility to demand that their economic systems take a turn toward the local, not the global. We have all been told that globalisation is inevitable and above all beneficial and profitable to all of us. This books makes the case, with a series of well-documented and well-organized essays by scholars, intellectuals and individuals at the forefront of the anti-globalisation movement, that nothing could be further from the truth. Globalisation benefits corporations, not people. Most people believe that globalisation has nothing to do with them, and if it does, it only means that goods for those in the western world will probably become cheaper or jobs in the west will be lost to cheaper labour and production costs overseas. But in everyday American life, the problems inherent in all of this are not investigated or talked about at all. If you do ask questions about these problems, you are relegated to the dustbin of far-left environmentalists or far-right protectionists. Mander writes in his concise introduction, Economic globalisation involves arguably the most fundamental redesign of the planets political and economic arrangements since at least the Industrial Revolution. Yet the profound implications of these fundamental changes have barely been exposed to serious public scrutiny or debate. He continues, We are now being asked to believe that the development processes that have further impoverished people and devastated the planet will lead to diametrically different and highly beneficial outcomes, if only they can be accelerated and applied everywhere, freely, without restrictions Mander makes this point and questions HOW? How can this possibly benefit people when what is clearly happening is corporate colonialism? Mander argues that the measures taken by a globalised economy will be tantamount to the global homogenisation of culture, lifestyle, level of technological immersion. In other words, every place will be the same as every other place and there will be no reason to leave your home. Maybe for some people this will be an ideal world to live in. Who knows? Economists have created measures of economic well being that do not reflect anything about the way and quality of life. There will always be winners and losers in the competitive and capitalistic society, and on a globalised level we can only see, in the short term, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In the long term we will see, as Mander illustrates in his introduction and the following essays demonstrate with more evidence, that growth and prosperity can only be temporary and unsustainable because resources, both renewable and non-renewable, will be used so quickly and haphazardly that growth and progress cannot be sustained. Co-editor Goldsmith writes even for the biggest winners, it will be like winning at poker on the Titanic.

If you have wondered why people all over the world have taken to the streets to protest the World Bank, IMF, the WTO, and other agents of global capital get this book! This book is wonderfully written, with in-depth yet easy to understand essays written by people all around the world who have realized that globalization is not benefitting anyone but the rich! This book will open your eyes and provoke you to act. I recommed it whole heartedly. If you care about the environment, human rights, workers' rights, biodiversity, democracy and freedom READ THIS BOOK! You aren't going to get the truth from the corporate media.

The media assure you that this ever-accelerating trend towards globalization will lead to a new era of prosperity for everyone, a rising tide that will lift all boats. But somehow that doesn't ease the pit in your stomach when you read about factories moving south, economic meltdown in Asia, Russia and Mexico, massive plundering of the environment, and the increase of poverty.

The (corporate-owned) newspapers, TV and polititians all speak with one voice about the wonders of free trade. If you want to hear what other voices have to say, read this book.

The authors explain what GATT and NAFTA are really about, how they undermine democracy, and how they invalidate many national and state laws protecting workers or the environment. The book discusses the impact of globalization, from many different perspectives, and reveals how the economic theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo have been misapplied by modern economists to reach conclusions not supported by the theories and to justify policies that Smith strongly disapproved of.

The doctrine of free trade is so taken for granted these days that few people stop to think about it. Whether you consider yourself for or against free trade, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Unless you hear both sides of an argument, how can you decide who's right?