Required reading on globalization and powerlessness.
To my non-Canadian colleagues: Canadian Linda McQuaig is one of the few
writers who has questioned the "globalization agenda."
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How does the unemployment of most of the world's
population fit society's basic business plan?
``Isn't there an economic cost to writing off the
world's workers?''
``That question reflects the thinking of the machine age,''
The new way of thinking requires an acceptance of
powerlessness, resignation to a world without solutions -
a world of inaction and helplessness. That democratic
impulse to assert one's rights must be contained,
thwarted, rendered mute and inoperative.
Saturday March 21, 1998 The Toronto Star
Saturday March 21, 1998 The Toronto Star
Hostages to the money men
Hostages to the money men
A new book asks:
Why do we let ourselves be powerless against global
financial markets?
By Linda McQuaig
Special to The Star
This is the first of two excerpts from
`The Cult of Impotence: Selling the Myth
of Powerlessness in the Global Economy,'
written by Linda McQuaig and published by
Penguin Canada. McQuaig, a former reporter
for The Star and The Globe and Mail, has
now written five books on politics,
economics and Canada's financial
establishment. Her publisher notes that
newspaper magnate Conrad Black has
publicly suggested she should be
horsewhipped.
DR. IAN ANGELL, professor of information
systems at the London School of Economics,
is holding forth on CBC Radio, explaining
how most of the working population will
soon be redundant.
``Isn't there an economic cost to writing
off the world's workers?'' asks
interviewer Ian Brown.
The question suggests that Brown has
bought the basic parameters of the debate:
that we only discuss economic cost. Brown
is asking: How does the unemployment of
most of the world's population fit
society's basic business plan?
No one mentions human cost. But still, the
question doesn't suit Angell. Impatience
is detectable in his voice. ``This
requires a total rethinking of the
institutions of the industrial age. You
must throw them away,'' says Angell,
trying to make things nice and simple for
Brown to grasp. ``All your thinking has to
be different.''
As the interview progresses, Brown becomes
increasingly skeptical of what he's
hearing. His questions reveal that he's
struggling to see how all this
unemployment helps ordinary people.
Answer: it doesn't. But that's not the
issue. The issue is that it's the future.
Globalization, technology, governments can
no longer coddle their people, etc., etc.
An emboldened Brown asks something about
how people are to survive.
Angell is getting a touch irritated with
these repetitive questions about human
needs. Brown just doesn't seem to get it.
The point is that we're in a brand new
age, the information age. Technology and
globalization have made all these
questions about human needs irrelevant.
That's part of yesterday's menu. Today we
simply watch as the technological
juggernaut rolls on, squashing our needs.
''Is this a world you look forward to?''
asks Brown, struggling to make some sense
of it all.
``That's neither here nor there,''
responds Angell.
``Is there some way we can stop this?''
Brown asks anxiously. ``Is there nothing
we can do to avoid this dark future?''
That's when Angell snaps. ``That question
reflects the thinking of the machine
age,'' he says curtly.
Hold it. Let's play that again slowly.
This line is more subversive than it first
appears. It is perhaps as subversive a
thought as it is possible to have. Angell
is saying, it's not just that we can't
change things, but we also can't even
think about the possibility of changing
things; to do so is to engage in old-style
thinking.
So, it's not just that we're powerless to
stop being pushed over the edge of the
cliff in the new global world order. But
to even try to prevent ourselves from
being pushed over the cliff is a sign of
regressive thinking.
The new way of thinking, as outlined by
Angell, requires an acceptance of
powerlessness, resignation to a world
without solutions - a world of inaction
and helplessness. That democratic impulse
to assert one's rights must be contained,
thwarted, rendered mute and inoperative.
Never mind the democratic impulse. It's
actually the human impulse that's at stake
here. The human impulse to act, to build,
to create, to improve, to shape our lives,
to use our brains to do better. It's
called being alive. It's just got to go.
``Imagine.'' The word is half-whispered.
On the screen, we see a native girl of
indeterminate age on a swing. Wistful.
Dreamy. Free as the wind that blows in her
face. She is presumably imagining the
possibilities, imagining a better world.
Could she be thinking of change,
improvement? Could she be thinking the old
way? Perhaps a few weeks in a Dr. Angell
re-education camp is needed.
But wait. This is a TV commercial for a
bank. It's the Bank of Montreal, saying it
is possible. Of course, it's never clear
from the ad exactly what is possible. It
seems to be suggesting that anything is
possible. Surely, that's the reason for
choosing a young native girl for the part.
We'd normally see the face of such a girl
in the media only as part of a story about
glue-sniffing or teen suicide or ``young
runaway turns teen stripper and ends up
murdered in a stairwell.'' But here, in
the airbrushed world of the Bank of
Montreal - or its hipper version, mbanx -
this girl seems to be an inspired person,
someone with limitless possibilities in
front of her.
Surely, if even someone like this - not an
upwardly mobile white male in a suit, but
a native female in a long skirt and cowboy
boots - can have a dream, the
possibilities out there for regular people
must be truly endless.
And they are - when it comes to banking.
``At mbanx, we don't believe in limits,''
says the breathless prose in a print ad
for mbanx, picking up the theme from the
TV ad. ``Your $13 monthly fee covers all
your everyday banking needs and more.''
No wonder the native girl seems so blissed
out. Imagine the possibilities. Why would
anyone bother to sniff glue or commit
suicide or get killed in a stairwell when
there's a whole new, wide world out there
of . . . debit cards, online shared
networks, activation charges.
``At mbanx, we see technology as something
that links, not isolates. So, even though
you may never see us, we're always here
for you. In some ways, we're closer than
any branch could be. And we guarantee
you'll be satisfied with our service.
Every time you call, you can speak with a
portfolio manager whose job it is to know
you, respect you and make what you want
happen.''
Is this banking or telephone sex? Is there
a difference?
As we delve deeper into the mbanx
philosophy, we see there is nothing here
that Angell would have trouble with. As
long as the native girl confines herself
to imagining the banking possibilities
that lie ahead, she is simply marvelling
at the high-tech corporate world engulfing
her. She is not trying to assert herself
or work toward changing the world.
But what if her mind were to stray from
contemplating the wonders of modern
banking on to, say, contemplating Canada's
unemployment problem? This world is worth
exploring for a minute because, with its
sense of hopelessness, it is the flip side
of the ever-expanding dreamy world of the
mbanx commercial.
Mostly, it's a world full of people
feeling depressed because they can't find
work. Huge numbers of people. Virtually an
army of people.
Lars Osberg, an economist at Dalhousie
University in Halifax, has come up with a
graphic way to illustrate the size of this
army of unemployed Canadians and the
enormous waste of its idleness. Let's
suppose that the army was put to work
building something highly labour-intensive
- something like, say, the great pyramids
of ancient Egypt - using the exact same
primitive technology that was available
back in the 26th century B.C. Osberg
calculates unemployed Canadians could have
built no fewer than seven pyramids since
1990 and be well on their way to
completing their eighth.
Of course, the more significant question
to consider is, what could have been
accomplished had these unemployed
Canadians instead used modern technology
and built something more useful than a
tomb for a dead king? What if they'd built
housing or highways, cleaned up the Great
Lakes or operated day-care centres, or
worked in the Canadian aerospace industry?
Imagine.
We've come to believe certain things are
no longer within our reach, in this age of
the global economy. Is full employment
possible? How about well-funded public
health and education systems, or a clean
environment? Or is only all-night banking
possible?
The dominant school of thought has become
those who argue, essentially, that the
market now determines what is possible.
It's an odd sort of situation we find
ourselves in. The market offers us a giddy
world of choice when it comes to consumer
items: banking, cars, appliances, bathroom
fixtures, beer. Enter into any one of
these consumer worlds, and one is
confronted with a breathless array of
possibilities.
We can choose from literally hundreds of
different car models, with thousands of
options. Do we want a sedan or a
hatchback, leather or plush seats, cruise
control, anti-lock brakes,
air-conditioning, wrap-around stereo,
coffee holders that flip out or pull down?
What about telephone sets? Do we want them
to be cordless or plug-in, to beep with
incoming calls or simply record them on an
answering machine, to look like a fire
engine or like the Star Trek spaceship?
Or dental floss: Do we want it waxed or
unwaxed, mint or plain, thick or fine,
floss or tape?
But when it comes to things that many
people might consider more important -
like whether we will have jobs, or live in
communities where air and water are
unpolluted and no one will be left hungry
or homeless - these things are apparently
beyond our control. If we put in place
policies that create the kind of society
we apparently want, the market will move
money out of the country, we are told.
Thus, there are limits to what we can do.
We have to stay within the dictates of the
market. We have become captives of the
marketplace.
It's interesting to note just how far
we've moved outside the normal range of
historical human experience. In his
overview of world economic history, The
Great Transformation, economic historian
Karl Polanyi noted that the Industrial
Revolution marked the first time in
history that the notion of the private
market was elevated to the central
organizing principle of society.
In earlier times, the market was only one
of the forces around which society
organized itself. Religion, family,
custom, law, tradition had all been
considered more important.
Now, if Ian Angell and his ilk are to be
believed, we've come to the point where
not only has the market become the
dominant force in our society, but also
its dominance is above reproach, above
question. To suggest that we have a choice
about what role the market will play in
our lives is to fail to see that we've
evolved to a supposedly higher plane - a
plane where we now no longer have any
choice about the market's power over our
lives in areas that really matter, a plane
where we are essentially impotent.
Thank God we've at least got all-night
banking.
Are we really powerless in the global
marketplace? Have governments truly lost
their sovereignty in the face of globally
wandering capital and wickedly clever
currency traders? Are we in a brand-new,
globalized world, where financial markets
have the power to dominate in a way never
seen before?
In fact, the globalization of
international finance is not a new
phenomenon. It is, rather, a throwback to
an earlier time. While capital is more
mobile now than it was two or three
decades ago, it was just as mobile before
World War I.
Even the conservative British magazine The
Economist acknowledges: ``In relation to
the size of economies, net capital flows
across borders then were much bigger than
they are now. The international bond
market, too, was just as active at the
start of this century as it is now. . . .
Today's free-flowing capital fits with the
long-term pattern.''
Let's follow a little further what The
Economist has to say on this, because it
is very revealing: ``The anomaly is not,
as many believe, the current power of
global finance, but the period from 1930
to 1970 when, to various degrees, capital
controls and tight regulation insulated
domestic financial markets and gave
governments more control over their
domestic economies.''
Indeed, it was in response to the
devastating Depression that governments
around the world began to assert their
power to bring footloose capital under
some degree of democratic control.
Immediately after World War II, they
established a new international financial
system that gave governments, for the
first time, considerable power over
financial markets.
With governments, rather than markets,
flexing their muscles, the result was an
agenda more geared to popular wishes, such
as full employment and social programs.
That early postwar period was, in many
ways, the Golden Age. But now it is gone;
full employment seems out of the question,
no matter how much the public may like it,
and social programs just keep shrinking,
no matter how much the public seems to
want them. The question is why. What has
happened? Can this change really be
attributed to the ``globalization of
financial markets'' when, as it turns out,
financial markets were just as global at
the turn of the century?
Of course, the technology is dramatically
different now - although perhaps not as
different as we sometimes assume. At the
turn of the century, there were no
computers, but international transactions
could be made almost instantaneously after
the completion of the first transatlantic
cable in the 1860s.
Computer technology has now made it
possible to move money even more quickly.
But does it follow that this faster
movement makes it impossible to control
money?
On the contrary, there's a flip side to
this computer wizardry that is almost
always omitted from discussions about the
new techno-world of global finance. The
very technology that makes it possible to
move money more quickly than ever before
also makes it possible to trace that
movement more easily than ever before. If
the movement of money can be traced, it
can be regulated and brought under
control.
In other words, there is no reason - from
a technological point of view - that
international capital markets can't be
regulated, as they were in the first few
decades after World War II. If anything,
it would probably be easier to regulate
them now, because computers have made
comprehensive tracking possible.
The real problem is not the technology,
but rather the unwillingness of
governments to apply the technology to the
task.
One striking thing about impotence is how
unfashionable it is, except when applied
to democracy. One of the most prominent
themes running through the popular
business literature of the last decade -
in books, magazines and seminars - is the
theme of empowerment, the notion that
anything is possible, with the right
attitudes and efforts.
In the business world, impotence is
nowhere to be found. Imagine a business
leader standing up in front of the
company's shareholders and telling them it
just isn't possible to increase market
share.
Or imagine Bank of Canada governor Gordon
Thiessen explaining in a speech to the
National Club that, although he would like
to control inflation, he really can't,
owing to globalization and technology.
Such a governor would not likely still be
governor by the end of the day.
Yet, somehow, this enormous sense of
empowerment, this belief in the endless
possibilities of human initiative and
creativity, disappears when we enter the
domain of democracy. Somehow, the notion
that we can collectively achieve great
things - indeed, that we can achieve even
basic things that were regularly achieved
centuries ago, like providing work,
shelter and food for everyone in the
community - these things are now
considered beyond our reach.
So, while a culture of machismo guarantees
the delivery of the market agenda - in
which Thiessen must prove his unshakeable
resolve to control inflation
and Finance
Minister Paul Martin vows to meet his
deficit targets ``come hell or high
water'' - all that testosterone disappears
when it comes to fighting unemployment or
delivering social programs.
Governments, in other words, are
practising a form of selective impotence.
-------------------
Tomorrow, in the Context section, excerpt
2: Making sure the rich stay rich.
Contents copyright =A9 1996-1998,
The Toronto Star.
******************************************************************
The cabinet minister lies in his bath. With one hand he tries
To force the wooden brush below the glassy surface.
This childish play hides a serious core.
-Bertolt Brecht
******************************************************************
Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Acting Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
voice: (416) 978-7567
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