Global Social Policy 2004 4(3)

David Macarov, What the Market Does to People: Privatization, Globalization
and Poverty. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, Inc. and London: Zed Books, 2003.
183 pp. (including index). ISBN: 0–932863–38–8 (hbk), ISBN: 1–84277–431-X;
US$16.95 (pbk).

While economic globalization and even privatization, as ideas and
phenomena,
have been the focus of extensive attention by politicians, activists,
mainstream media, and academics in recent decades, these actors have
largely
disregarded poverty. In this book, Macarov sets out to redress this
imbalance
by linking poverty directly to the logic and outcomes of market-driven
globalization and one of its corollaries, the privatization of public
service jobs,
services, programs and rights.

The author is a veteran social observer, university teacher, critical
thinker,
and author of quite a few books on poverty, work incentives and worker
productivity, and the design, structure and function of social welfare.
This
wealth and breadth of experience and research, joined by a strong ethical
commitment to a more humane, just and caring world, unmistakably informs
the analysis throughout. The reader is engaging with a writer who has
thought long and hard on matters of poverty, inequality, welfare state
interventions, and the impacts of market capitalism, and knows well the
debates and discourses. Macarov effectively identifies and interrogates a
rich
array of program examples, statistics, policy lessons, public myths and
ideological
stances throughout the text. At different times, the writing is colourful,
stark, humorous, blunt, comparative, national (often based on American
experiences), historical, topical, metaphorical, and empirical. At all
times, it is
accessible. Included are incisive critiques of the privatization of
education, the
limited efficacy of training programs and earnings supplements, and the
dangerous mystique of official poverty lines.

With globalization over the last decade or more has come the
‘corporatization’
of financial capital and investments from the North to the South,
for the most part displacing the role of states and state development
agencies
as the primary source of funds to developing countries. This trend of
dominance by transnational corporations is a clear and present illustration
of the tension or contradiction between economic globalization and civic
democratization. The question then arises: how to respond to this and other
trends of market globalism that are producing greater inequities, divisions
and impoverishment? Macarov’s framing of the question this way reflects his
four decades and more of involvement in social welfare. We can broaden the
question to ask, how to spread democracy, the expansion of citizenship and
human rights, including self-determination for indigenous peoples,
sustainable
development and environmental protection.

By the author’s own admission, the book ends rather pessimistically. He
paints a rather bleak and gloomy picture of the prospects for poor people
in
societies worldwide. Market globalization and human poverty – inextricably
linked together as structures, processes and ideologies – both have rich
futures. Macarov is no wild-eyed optimist about the probable impact of
protest movements, civil society organizations or supra-governmental bodies
on turning the tide against market forces, poverty, and inequality.
Likewise,
he is unconvinced of the effectiveness of public programs to alleviate and
reduce substantially poverty over a sustained period of time in either
industrialized
countries or developing countries.

Macarov does leave us with the elements of a possible line of theoretical
inquiry and political discussion, when he writes that: ‘efforts to combat
globalization should probably be centered on discovering which aspects of
globalization are natural to the development of communications, technology,
international institutions and the spread of commerce, and which seek to
exploit and entrench unequal relations, and attempt to address the negative
or
preventable aspects of the latter’ (p. 155). Unfortunately, he does not
take up
this observation in his concluding chapter and explore it any further. In
any
event, the reference to the ‘natural aspects’ of globalization is
problematic.
Adherents to market-based globalization present it to the public as a
natural,
external and inevitable trend to which we must adapt or risk economic
decline
(Rice and Prince, 2000: 133). However, the reality is that specific
interests of
corporate actors and their allies, both domestically and internationally,
champion and pursue economic globalization; and, conversely, trade policies
and decisions, and the sovereignty of states, remain hotly contested and
questioned by significant portions of publics in various countries.

No doubt, some readers will feel the author undeservedly downplays the
existing practices and the emerging possibilities of global civil society;
a
relatively autonomous and expanding political space of organizations and
networks for strategic and specific citizen action and resistance; ‘a place
where
the raw savagery of global capitalism can be openly criticized and
examined,
and . . . where transformative ideas can be nourished and developed’ (Hall,
2000: 30). Promising examples of global protest movements and global civil
society networks include campaigns to ban landmines, the campaign against
the multilateral agreement on investment, the adoption of the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the internationalization
of progressive ideas on indigenous rights, and the human rights of women
and
racial and faith minorities.

Still other reform ideas and potentialities include legally binding codes
of
conduct on corporations to enhance accountable and transparent governance,
environmental stewardship, and social responsibility; entrenching the
rights
of workers in trade agreements; and establishing bilateral and multilateral
social charters among nations to protect and promote health and social
services and income support measures.

The political necessity and moral imperative to explore such reform
proposals are all the more pressing given Macarov’s profound conclusion,
and hence challenge to us, that market-driven globalization almost always
worsens the status of poor people and, that rather than this being an
unfortunate and unintended outcome, is a calculated and recognized
consequence.
All in all this is a grim, demanding, informative, distressing, and
controversial book. It is not a fanciful or speculative appraisal, rather a
sobering assessment, by a seasoned scholar, of the connection between the
global economy and basic human security and dignity, and the myths and
power relations that perpetuate exploitation and pauperism. This is why
people should read it.

references
Hall, B.L. (2000) ‘Global Civil Society: Theorizing a Changing World’,
Convergence
33(1–2): 10–31.
Rice, J.J. and Prince, M.J. (2000) Changing Politics of Canadian Social
Policy. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.

Michael J. Prince
University of Victoria, Canada