Social Justice and Globalization

Sam Gindin has a provocative, though lengthy, article in the June, 2002, volume of the Monthly Review. The title of the article is: "Social Justice and Globalization: Are They Compatible?" It starts out thus:

In a speech in 1999, Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford, candidly remarked that “globalization” is another term for U.S. domination.1 Such clarity tends, in itself, to negatively answer the question posed in the title of this talk. How can anyone argue that U.S. domination—or using the less polite term, “U.S. imperialism”—is compatible with social justice?

Similarly, if we agree that a minimum precondition for any notion of social justice is the extension of people’s democratic ability to shape their lives, that too might reinforce skepticism about globalization’s compatibility with social justice. Especially if we see globalization as being largely about establishing global rules that act as a constitution for investor rights, and which are beyond any parliamentary challenges. And if we went further and defined a socially just world as one that supported the full and mutual development of the potential capacities of every individual, I imagine that many—if not most of us—would judge globalization to be inconsistent with that ideal.

And yet things refuse to stay that simple or clear. Even if Kissinger has helped us see the obvious, aren’t many countries, and citizens of those countries, anxious for U.S. investment? Isn’t it true that the Canadian government, far from being forced into the free trade agreement, begged for that integration into the United States? Is China wrong when it argues that access to U.s. markets, technology, and capital will facilitate its development and that such development is a critical base for social justice? Would we disagree with the World Bank when it argues that countries that have either rejected globalization, or are now being ignored by globalization, do not seem better off for that fact?

Part of the confusion lies in ambiguities about what we mean by globalization and how we think about social justice. But it is more than that: it is also that our sense of social justice is affected by what we believe is possible. In the absence of alternatives to the U.S. Empire, and in the absence of the political capacity to put such alternatives on the agenda, our dreams are trimmed to fit the bed of “reality.” Social justice is made compatible with globalization, not by transforming society, but by shrinking our ideals.

This limiting of hope was perhaps the main measure of the world-wide defeat of the last generation. In spite of the inspiration of Seattle and its aftermath, that sense of defeat is still pervasive. Social justice demands reviving the determination to dream. Its not just that dreaming is essential for maintaining any resistance, but because today, if we do not think big—as big as the globalizers themselves think—we will not even win small.

Good stuff. Take 15 minutes and read the whole thing. It's quite worth it.