False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism [Paperback]

John Gray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2000

powerful and prophetic challenge to globalization from a former partisan of the New Right. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as both "a convincing analysis of an international economy" and a "powerful challenge to economic orthodoxy," False Dawn shows that the attempt to impose the Anglo-American-style free market on the world will create a disaster, possibly on the scale of Soviet communism. Even America, the supposed flagship of the new civilization, risks moral and social disintegration as it loses ground to other cultures that have never forgotten that the market works best when it is embedded in society. John Gray, well known in the 1980s as an important conservative political thinker, whose writings were relied upon by Margaret Thatcher and the New Right in Britain, has concluded that the conservative agenda is no longer viable. In his examination of the ripple effects of the economic turmoil in Russia and Asia on our collective future, Gray provides one of the most passionate polemics against the utopia of the free market since Carlyle and Marx.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Back when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of Great Britain, John Gray was an influential conservative thinker, whose writings helped influence the revitalization of the laissez-faire market in that country. Now, as free-market champions seek to make over the (mostly) postcommunist world in their own image, Gray has experienced a moment of apostasy. False Dawn argues that, far from bringing about economic paradise, global capitalism, left unchecked, "could well destroy liberal civilization." Gray is careful to distinguish "global capitalism" from "globalization," which he identifies as a broader tendency encompassing "the increasing interconnection of economic and cultural life in distant parts of the world." That societies around the world are coming into closer contact with each other is inevitable; that they will have to do so in a free market, particularly one largely shaped by Anglo-American economic values, is not. In fact, Gray says, pointing to the recent economic crises in Asia and Russia, such a model will not bring societies together, but may well tear them apart. "A worldwide free market," he warns, "is no more self-regulating than the national free markets of the past.... Unless it is reformed radically, the world economy risks falling apart in a replay, at once tragic and farcical, of the trade wars, competitive devaluations, economic collapses and political upheavals of the 1930s." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

"In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy." So begins The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, the latest salvo from David C. Korten (When Corporations Rule the World). In four sections of three or four chapters each, Korten lays out how it happened and what we can do about it, using model communities that have already begun to "treat money as a facilitator, not the purpose, of our economic lives." 25,000 first printing. (Berrett-Koehler and Kumarian, co-publishers, $27.95 300p ISBN 1-57675-051-5; Mar.) Can the Net really foster, as in Bill Gates's phrase, "friction-free capitalism"? How about "robust direct democracy"? In Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Marketing System, Dan Schiller, professor of communications at UC-San Diego, turns a skeptic's eye to the screen. After reviewing how Internet technology differs from previous forms of telecommunication (and how a "Neoliberal" agenda drove its development), Schiller examines its ever-closer ties with commerce and prognostications for educational revolution. His conclusion: "Digital capitalism has strengthened, rather than banished, the ago-old scourges of the market system: inequality and domination." (MIT, $29.95 320p ISBN 0-262-19417-1; Apr.) Oxford professor of politics John Gray has been an acknowledged influence on Margaret Thatcher, and his writings were appropriated by Britain's New Right. It was thus astonishing to U.K. readers that, in False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Gray does an about-face and argues against a market untethered to cultural foundations within particular societies. Updated with a chapter on the controversy it sparked on its U.K. release, the American version further stresses the all-too-apparent instability of global markets. (New Press, $25 272p ISBN 1-56584-521-8; Apr.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (April 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565845927
• ISBN-13: 978-1565845923
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #91,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Development & Growth
  • #73 in Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Free Enterprise

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Case Against Globalization in the Post-Cold War World August 11, 2000

By Steven S. Berizzi

Format:Paperback

John Gray, professor of European thought at the London School of
Economics, describes and analyzes the contemporary trend toward a
global free market in this an exceptionally provocative book. Unlike
Thomas L. Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree and A Future
Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization by John
Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge (both of which I reviewed here in
July), this book is highly critical of the unrestricted expansion of
the international economy and integration of its markets. Indeed,
Gray begins by warning: "The Utopia of the global free market has
not incurred a human cost in the way that communism did. Yet over
time it may come to rival it in the suffering that it inflicts."
That is a very harsh indictment!

One of the great intellectual
debates of the coming decades may revolve around this question: Does
the global economy meet human needs? According to Gray, the answer is
"No." For instance, he writes: "In the United States
free markets have contributed to social breakdown on a scale unknown
to any other developed country. Families are weaker in America than
in any other country. At the same time, social order has been propped
up by a policy of mass incarceration." Gray acknowledges that,
"[t]he world-historical movement we call globalization has
momentum that is inexorable," but inexorability is not
desirability. Globalization may not be desirable because, according
to Gray: "The late-twentieth-century free market experiment is an
attempt to legitimate through democratic institutions severe limits on
the scope and content of democratic control over economic life."
Gray then asserts: "The free market is not...a gift of social
evolution. It is the end-product of social engineering and unyielding
political will." If Gray is correct, what is globalization's
political objective? I do not believe he ever makes that
clear. According to Gray: "Free marketeers tell us that the
unprecedented productivity of a rational economic system will remove
the causes of social conflict and war." But Gray counters:
"Throughout nearly all of human history, wars have arisen from
territorial and dynastic conflicts, from religious and ethnic
enmities, and from the divergent economic interests pursued by
sovereign states." Contrary to many predictions following the
collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Gray: "The threat to
peace has not disappeared with the end of the Cold War. The nature of
war has merely mutated. One consequence of an anarchic global economy
has proved to be a world awash with weapons." Gray asserts that
there is a risk "that sovereign states will be drawn into a
struggle for control of the earth's dwindling natural resources. In
the coming century ideological rivalries between states may well be
succeeded by Malthusian wars of scarcity." Gray is especially
concerned about the expansion of the global free market and threats to
the environment. In both Russia and China, according to Gray,
"partly as an inheritance of central economic planning and partly
as a consequence of market reforms, environmental degradation is
cataclysmic." Furthermore, Gray asserts: "If advanced
societies are able to protect their environments...it will be partly
because they are able to export pollution by moving production to
Third World countries where environmental standards are looser."
Some of the most interesting and provocative passages in this book
concern Russia and China. One chapter is entitled title:
"Anarcho-capitalism in post-communist Russia." In it, Gray
writes: "The anarchic capitalism which replaced Soviet central
planning is surely a developmental phase, not an endpoint in Russian
economic development." According to Gray: "In less than a
decade Russia has moved from a functioning totalitarian regime to near
anarchy....The species of capitalism that is emerging in Russia today
is deeply marked by its Soviet antecedents. The criminalized markets
that flourished in the recesses and interstices of the Soviet state
thrive now in its ruins." Gray also is concerned about
globalization's impact on international political stability.
According to Gray: "In a world in which market forces are subject
to no overall constraint or regulation, peace is continually at risk.
Slash-and-burn capitalism...kindles conflict over natural resources.
The practical consequence of policies promoting minimal government
intervention in the economy is that, in expanding regions of the
world, sovereign states are locked in competition not only for markets
but for survival. The global market as it is presently organized does
not allow the world's peoples to coexist harmoniously." Gray
frequently compares the first two decades of the 20th century, in
which fierce competition for markets and colonies led to two world
wars, to our own time. Although I find this comparison somewhat
extreme, it is a chilling thought. Some readers will find this book
unfair in its extended attack on American economic, political, and
cultural values. Gray asserts that the "global free market is an
American project," and he predicts that is "destined to
fail. In this, as in much else, it resembles that other twentieth
century experiment in utopian social engineering, Marxian
socialism.... Each was ready to exact a large price in suffering from
humanity in order to impose its single vision on the world. Each has
run aground on vital human needs." Gray quotes Lee Kuan Yew,
formerly Prime Minister of Singapore and now that country's Senior
Minister: "Americans believe their ideas are universal - the
supremacy of the individual and free, unfettered expression. But they
are not - never were." Without agreeing with Gray, I believe his
larger point is that the people of the U.S. may be too optimistic
about the long-term, far-reaching effects of globalization, and this
point should be well taken.

In summary, Gray's critique of
globalization asserts that the global free market contributes to
international economic inequality; that increased international
economic competition is likely to result in serious environmental
degradation; and that international tensions, especially those arising
from divergent economic interests, could result in war. If Gray is
correct, the next two decades could be very unpleasant. Readers may
not agree with Gray, but all of us should give careful thought to the
concerns which he articulates here.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Raises some interesting questions. August 11, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

The book isn't entirely convincing, having been written by a political scientist rather than an economist it has been criticised as being polemical.

But having said that the author does raise some interesting points. The book is a real eye-opener, especially to those Americans who think that nations all want to be more like the USA. Read it.

From the book:

"The perception that countries which subscribe to none of the tenets of `the American creed' are surpassing the United States is too painful to enter into public consciousness. To accept that countries can achieve modernity without revering the folkways of individualism, bowing to the cult of human rights or sharing the Enlightenment superstition of progress towards a world civilisation, is to admit that America's civil religion has been falsified.

For most Americans such a perception is intolerable. Instead, evidence of the superior economic growth, savings rates, educational standards and family stability of other countries that have repudiated the American model will be repressed, denied and resisted indefatigably. To admit this evidence would be to confront the social costs of the American free market. The free market works to weaken social cohesion. Its productivity is prodigious; but so are its human costs. At present the costs of the free market are taboo subjects in American discourse; they are voiced only by a handful of sceptical liberals. If the fact that free markets and social stability are at odds could be admitted, the conflict between them would not thereby disappear, but it could perhaps be moderated."

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Provocative View of Global Capitalism. June 8, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

John Gray argues convincingly in this book that a single global market is largely a political project, while economic globalization is the result of the spread of new technologies throughout the world and it can go on without a free market. An unexpected consequence of globalization is that it accentuates uneven economic development within countries and between countries. This causes high structural unemployment, the fall of real wages for certain working groups and the need of two-income families. The author concludes that global capitalism is inherently unstable because a world-wide free market can not be self-regulated. Without radical reform it will fall apart as trade wars, competitive currency devaluations, economic collapses and political upheavals are bound to happen. This is an excallent analysis of the current state of global capitalism as we approach a new millennium.