Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Issue No. 40                       November 18 - 24,  2001                          Quezon City, Philippines







Join the Bulatlat.com mailing list!

Powered by groups.yahoo.com

Commentary:
Globalization’s Masquerade

As the globalization paradigm takes a beating across the globe, its defenders – international financiers and free traders, TNCs as well as the United Nations – have adopted the devices of “globalization with a human face,” “corporate social responsibility,” “social equity” and “safety nets,” among others. But such contraptions are only meant to soften or entrap the growing movement of resistance to globalization – and these are also reflected, albeit in a clumsy way, in President Arroyo’s policies. Author Paul L. Quintos is with the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER, Inc.)

BY PAUL L. QUINTOS
Bulatlat.com

Every major confab of the global economic elite since Seattle 1999 has been met with massive street demonstrations involving tens of thousands from a diverse range of organizations and nations.  In the industrialized countries of the North as well as in the underdeveloped South, there is an upsurge in industrial action by workers and other mass protests by social movements in opposition to neo-liberal policies and their iniquitous consequences.  Labor journalist Kim Moody wrote in 1997 that there were at least two dozen political general strikes in Europe, Latin America, Asia and North America between 1994 and 1997 – more than at any time in the 20th century.  In May and June of last year alone, there were six general strikes against globalization and neo-liberalism (cited in Brecher et al, 2000).  

In the face of this backlash, the agents of monopoly capitalism in governments, multilateral agencies as well as in “civil society” are now keen on giving imperialist globalization a facelift to restore its lost momentum and sidetrack the anti-globalization mass movements. As Werner Blenk, director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the Philippines, rationalizes, “There is growing recognition that unless questions of fairness and equality are more energetically addressed by the international community, the process of international integration may be rejected by increasing numbers of countries and people.” (Blenk 2000)

Even the World Bank (WB) appears willing to accommodate cosmetic changes.  In its most recent World Development Report (WDR 2000/2001), the WB revisits the problem of poverty in the light of over two decades of neo-liberal restructuring of the global economy.  Compared to previous WB policy documents on poverty, the latest WDR places greater importance on “governance” and “institutions” (i.e. non-market mechanisms), on “asset distribution” (i.e. equity) and on the “participation” of “civil society” in addressing the problem of poverty although it still falls far short of acknowledging the patent failure of neo-liberalism in eradicating poverty and easing inequality.  In fact, it reasserts the primacy of the capitalist market: all other mechanisms are merely instrumental to “making markets work for the poor.” 

Presently, as a way of reinvigorating the “liberalization” of trade and investments, the WB and the European Union (EU) have been pushing for a “development round” in the World Trade Organization (WTO).  They are using the manifest failures of neo-liberalism – the grossly unequal distribution of gains and pains arising from trade liberalization – as the very excuse for launching a new round.  Third world governments are being lured into a fresh round of commitments by promises that the negotiations would focus on third world development concerns.  

‘Value-based platform’

At the same time, Guy Verhofstadt, president of the European Union (EU), has called for “ethical globalization” to address the “valid concerns” raised by anti-globalization activists.  This is the same thinking behind the Global Compact initiated by United Nations (UN) in 1999 and launched in July 2000.  The UN Global Compact purports to provide “a value-based platform” or norms for globalization’s major players.  Multinational corporations (MNCs) who sign up to the compact are expected to abide by nine principles, drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO’s Fundamental Principles on Rights at Work and the Rio Principles on Environment and Development. 

To further this, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has encouraged all UN agencies to form “partnerships” with the private sector in order to foster “corporate social responsibility.”  Among the venerable corporate giants invited by the UN as “partners” in the Global Compact are Nike, Royal Dutch Shell, Bayer and Rio Tinto – all well-known for their appalling labor, human rights and environmental records.  These companies and over 50 other TNC “partners” are allowed limited use of the UN logo to seal their status as “good corporate citizens of the world” even as the UN admits (or claims) that it lacks the capacity to monitor their compliance with the Compact’s principles (TRAC 2000).

Indeed, this comes at the end of three decades wherein the global corporate elite, with the aid of the US government, has consistently and steadfastly undermined the UN’s ability to monitor, regulate or in any way circumscribe the power and influence of TNCs.  They managed to do this, in part, through the threat and actual withholding of the US government’s dues to the UN.  This has led to the virtual demise of the UN Center on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) which was originally set up in the 1970s to monitor and curb the power of TNCs in domestic political affairs.  In the 1990s, the UNCTC was downsized, absorbed as a division of the UNCTAD and re-oriented towards promoting TNC interests by matching countries with foreign investments (ibid., Singh 2001). 

Consistent with the UN’s commitment to promoting “globalization with a human face,” the ILO has adopted the slogan “decent work for all.”  In particular, the ILO’s 1998 Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work seeks to promote core labor standards as universally-recognized human rights.  As far as toothless agreements go, the ILO is often credited for having the best system of supervision and monitoring of international conventions within the UN system, and has been cited as a model for the international implementation of human rights instruments.  The ILO addresses governments through periodic reports, dutiful recommendations and polite if persistent diplomatic pressure.  But in reality, its reports and recommendations often go unheeded and it does not utilize any other form of pressure that can be applied on recalcitrant governments.

For example, as far back as the 1980s, the ILO’s Committee of Experts had already “noted with regret” the Philippine government’s “very broad and non-limitative” (i.e. arbitrary) application of assumption of jurisdiction over labor disputes in the name of national interest, practically restricting or negating the effective exercise of trade union rights (KMU 1983).  Despite these findings, these same provisions are still in force in the Philippine Labor Code today (Article 263) not to mention various other restrictive though “unwritten laws and regulations” enforced by capitalist-employers, local governments and export zone authorities. 

Thus “civil society” groups calling for a labor clause to be inserted in trade agreements and administered by either the WTO or the ILO merely serve to deflect and blunt people’s fundamental opposition to imperialist globalization.  The question of choosing between which institution – the WTO or the ILO—should have jurisdiction over monitoring and “enforcement” of labor standards is moot and academic.  It is like choosing between your opponent’s manager or someone who sits outside the ring to serve as the referee in a brawl against Goliath.

Anti-poverty or anti-poor ideology?

In the Philippines, this attempt to mask the fundamental anti-people character of imperialist globalization has found expression in the current administration’s pro-poor posturing.  In her first State of the Nation Address (SONA) to Congress last July 24, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo outlined the four components of her “anti-poverty ideology” – couched in the moralistic language of “ethical globalization.”

“The first is an economic philosophy of free enterprise appropriate for the 21st century… Not a pitiless free-for-all but free enterprise with a social conscience…,” Macapagal-Arroyo said.  “The second component is a modernized agricultural sector founded on social equity… The third component is a social bias toward the disadvantaged to balance our guiding economic development plan… And the fourth component is to raise the moral standards of government and society... Pagnenegosyo, pagpapaunlad ng agrikultura, kalinga sa nagigipit na sektor, at moralidad sa gobyerno at lipunan – ito ang mga sandata natin sa digmaan-bayan laban sa kahirapan (Business, agricultural modernization, care for the poor and morality in government and society – these are our instruments in the people’s war on poverty). “

Yet behind the veil of these comforting words are essentially the same socio-economic policies pursued by Arroyo’s predecessors including the ousted Estrada.  To combat poverty, the country needs to promote “full, decent and productive employment.”  To generate such jobs, the Arroyo government maintains that the country must foster “free enterprise.”  Thus, once again, the government’s poverty-alleviation and development strategy is reducible to “restoring business confidence” and courting foreign investors.  

The administration has openly opposed the clamor of workers for a substantial wage hike for fear of whittling down capitalist profitability and chasing away foreign investors.  It promotes insecure forms of employment in the name of “labor flexibilization” and “global competitiveness.”  It is boosting the export of Filipino workers to be milked for various fees and dollar remittances—sending over 2,000 workers a day overseas—and calls this “respect for labor mobility.”  It strives for “industrial peace” (for capitalists!) by turning a blind eye to employer violations of the minimum wage law, the social security act and labor standards, but is quick to intervene when workers exercise their right to strike. 

WB model of social equity

“Social equity” in this semi-feudal country is being pursued not through land redistribution but through the World Bank’s model of “market-assisted land reform” which subsumes the imperative of social justice under the profit-seeking of big landlords, compradors and agribusiness. The government’s agricultural modernization program encourages land-use and crop conversion towards export agriculture at the expense of smallholder farmers and food security.

Under the present administration, the power sector has been privatized ostensibly to lower power rates (for business) as well as to raise revenues for the bankrupt government. The government is also passing on the burden of infrastructure development to the private sector through build-operate-transfer (BOT) schemes. Priority is accorded to improving the physical and electronic connectivity between local and international business, connecting local agricultural producers and enclave manufacturers to export markets, and developing tourist destinations and commercial centers for foreigners and local elite.

The government’s real social bias is further exposed in its budgetary priorities.  The government intends to spend less in real per capita terms on health, education, housing and community development in the coming year but more on defense, internal security and debt payments.  Nearly half of the government’s budget is automatically appropriated to servicing its debt to foreign creditors per IMF-WB conditionality. 

It is evident that Macapagal-Arroyo, like her predecessors, defends the interests of transnational capital, the local trading and financial elite, and big landlords, while striving to mollify workers, peasants, and other impoverished sectors with token “safety nets” and promises of  “good governance.”

The government’s devotion to imperialist globalization blinds it to the underlying causes of poverty in the country – the unjust social structure of Philippine society made even more iniquitous by such neo-liberal policies as trade and investment liberalization, privatization and deregulation of public assets and services, foisted upon us by US-dominated “multilateral” institutions and TNCs. 

The yawning gap between the Macapagal-Arroyo government’s anti-poverty rhetoric and anti-poor policies exposes the sham that is globalization’s masquerade. Bulatlat.com


We want to know what you think of this article.