Mr. Friedman’s Message to the Anti-Globalization Movement:
In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Mr. Friedman devoted two chapters to the anti-globalization movement. In The World Is Flat we only got five pages. But he is trying to tell us something directly, so here it is:
“Let’s pause for a minute here and trace how the anti-globalization movement lost touch with the true aspirations of the world’s poor. The anti-globalization movement emerged at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999 and then spread around the world in subsequent years, usually gathering to attack meetings of the World Bank, the IMF, and the G-8 industrialized nations. From its origins, the movement that emerged in Settle was a primarily Western-driven phenomenon, which was why you saw so few people of color in the crowds. It was driven by five disparate forces. One was upper-middle-class American liberal guilt at the incredible wealth and power that America had amassed in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dot-com boom. At the peak of the stock market boom, lots of pampered American college kids, wearing their branded clothing, began to get interested in sweatshops as a way of expiating their guilt. The second force driving it was a rear-guard push by the Old Left—Socialists, Anarchists, and Trotskyites—in alliance with protectionist trade unions. Their strategy was to piggyback on rising concerns about globalization to bring back some form of socialism, even though these ideas had been rejected as bankrupt by the very people in the former Soviet Empire and China who had lived under them longest. (Now you know why there was no antiglobalization movement to speak of in Russia, China, or Eastern Europe.) These Old Left forces wanted to spark a debate about whether we globalize. They claimed to speak in the name of the Third World poor, but the bankrupt economic policies they advocated made them, in my view, the Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor. The third force was a more amorphous group. It was made up of many people who gave passive support to the antiglobalization movement from many countries, because they saw in it some kind of protest against the speed at which the old world was disappearing and becoming flat.
“The fourth force driving the movement, which was particularly strong in Europe and the Islamic world, was anti-Americanism. The disparity between American economic and political power and everybody else’s had grown so wide after the fall of the Soviet Empire that America began to—or was perceived to—touch people’s lives around the planet, directly or indirectly, more than their own governments did. As people around the world began to intuit this, a movement emerged, which Seattle both reflected and helped to catalyze, whereby people said, in effect, “If America is now touching my life, then I want to have a vote in America’s power.” At the time of Seattle, the “touching” that people were most concerned with was from American economic and cultural power, and therefore the demand for a vote tended to focus around economic rule-making institutions like the World Trade Organization. America in the 1990s, under President Clinton, was perceived as a big dumb dragon, pushing people around in the economic and cultural spheres, knowingly and unknowingly. We were Puff the Magic Dragon, and people wanted a vote in what we were puffing.
“Then came 9/11. And America transformed itself from Puff the Magic Dragon, touching people around the world economically and culturally, into Godzilla with an arrow in his shoulder, spitting fire and tossing his tail wildly, touching people’s lives in military and security terms, not just economic and cultural ones. As that happened, people in the world began to say, “Now we really want a vote in how America wields its power”—and in many ways the whole Iraq war debate was a surrogate debate about that.
“Finally, the fifth force in this movement was a coalition of very serious, well-meaning, and constructive groups—from environmentalists to trade activists to NGOs concerned with governance—who became part of the populist antiglobalization movement in the 1990s in the hopes that they could catalyze a debate about how we globalize. I had a lot of respect and sympathy for this latter group. But in the end they got drowned out by the whether-we-globalize crowd, which began to turn the movement more violent at the July 2001 Genoa G-8 summit, when an antiglobalization protestor was killed while attacking an Italian police jeep with a fire extinguisher.
“[A combination of factors, including] the violence at Genoa, 9/11, and tighter security measures fractured the antiglobalization movement. The more serious how-we-globalize groups did not want to be in the same trench with Anarchists out to provoke a public clash with police, and after 9/11, many American labor groups did not want to be associated with a movement that appeared to be taken over by anti-American elements. This became even more pronounced when in late September 2001, three weeks after 9/11, antiglobalization leaders attempted a rerun of Genoa in the streets of Washington, to protest the IMF and World Bank meetings there. After 9/11 though, the IMF and World Bank cancelled their meetings, and many American protestors shied away. Those who did turn up in the streets of Washington turned the event into a march against the imminent American invasion of Afghanistan to remove Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. At the same time, with… the Chinese, Indians, and East Europeans [becoming] some of the biggest beneficiaries of globalization, it was no longer possible to claim that this phenomenon was devastating the world’s poor. Just the opposite: Millions of Chinese and Indians were entering the world’s middle class thanks to the flattening of the world and globalization.
“So as the how-we-globalize forces drifted away, and as the number of Third World people benefiting from globalization began to grow, and as America under the Bush administration began to exercise more unilateral military power, the anti-American element in the antiglobalization movement began to assume a much louder voice and role. As a result, the movement itself became both more anti-American and more unable and unwilling to play any constructive role in shaping the global debate on how we globalize, precisely when such a role has become even more important as the world has gotten flatter. As Hebrew University political theorist Yaron Ezrahi so aptly noted, “The important task of enlisting the people’s power to influence globalism—making it more compassionate, fair, and compatible with human dignity—is way too important to be wasted on crass anti-Americanism or left in the hands of only anti-Americans.
“There is a huge political vacuum now waiting to be filled. There is a real role today for a movement that could advance the agenda of how we globalize—not whether we globalize. The best place such a movement could start is rural India.
“ ‘Both the Congress [Party] and its left allies would be risking India’s future if they draw the wrong conclusions from this [2004] election,’ Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who heads the Center for Policy Research in Delhi, wrote in The Hindu newspaper. ‘This is not a revolt against the market, it is a protest against the state; this is not resentment at the gains of liberalization, but a call for the state to put its house in order through even more reform… The revolt against holders of power is not a revolt of the poor against the rich: ordinary people are far less prone to resent other people’s success than intellectuals suppose. It is rather an expression of the fact that the reform of the state has not gone far enough.’
“This is why the most important forces fighting poverty in India today, in my view, are those NGOs fighting for better local governance, using the internet and other modern tools of the flat world to put a spotlight on corruption, mismanagement, and tax avoidance. The most important, effective, and meaningful populists in the world today are not those handing out money. They are those with an agenda to drive [local] reform in their countries—to make it easier for the little man or woman to register his or her land, even if they are squatters; to start a business, no matter how small; and to get minimal justice from the legal system. Modern populism, to be effective and meaningful, should be about [local] reform—making globalization workable, sustainable, and fair for more people by improving their local governance, so that the money that has already been earmarked for the poor actually gets to them and so that their natural entrepreneurship can get unlocked. It is through local government that people plug into the system and get to enjoy the benefits of the flattening world rather than just observe them. The average Indian villagers cannot be like the Indian high-tech companies and just circumvent the government by supplying their own electricity, their own water resources, their own security, their own bus system, and their own satellite dishes. They need the state for that. The market cannot be counted on to make up for the failure of the state to deliver decent governance. The state has to get better. Precisely because the Indian state opted for a globalization strategy in 1991 and abandoned fifty years of socialism—which had brought its foreign reserves to near zero—New Delhi had reserves in 2004 of $100 billion, giving it the resources to help more of its people into the flat arena.
“Ramesh Ramanthan, an Indian-born former Citibank executive who returned to India to lead an NGO called Janaagraha, dedicated to improving local governance, is precisely the kind of new populist I have in mind. ‘In India,’ he said, ‘clients of public educations are sending a signal about the quality of service delivery: Whoever can afford to opt out does so. The same goes for health care. Given the escalating costs of health care, if we had a solid public health-care system, most citizens would opt to use it, not just the poor. Ditto for roads, highways, water supply, sanitation, registration of births and deaths, crematoria, drivers’ licenses, and so on. Whenever the government provides these services, it [should be] for the benefit of all citizens. [But] in fact, in some of these, like water supply and sanitation, the poor are actually not even getting the same basic service as the middle class and the rich. The challenge here is universal access.’ Getting NGOs that can collaborate on the local level to ensure that the poor get the infrastructure and budgets to which they are entitled could have a major impact on poverty alleviation.
“So although this may sound odd coming from me, it is totally consistent with this whole book: What the world doesn’t need now is for the antiglobalization movement to go away. We just need it to grow up. This movement had a lot of energy and a lot of mobilizing capacity. What it lacked was a coherent agenda for assisting the poor by collaborating with them in a way that could actually help them. The activist groups that are helping alleviate poverty the most are those working at the local village level in places like rural India, Africa, and China to spotlight and fight corruption and to promote accountability, transparency, education, and property rights. You don’t help the world’s poor by dressing up in a turtle outfit and throwing a stone through a McDonald’s window. You help them by getting them the tools and institutions to help themselves. It may not be as sexy as protesting against world leaders in the streets of Washington and Genoa, and getting lots of attention on CNN, but it is a lot more important. Just ask any Indian villager.”
Now I’ve just got a few things to say in response to all of that…
Mr. Friedman means well. He wrote his book in an effort to help things turn out as well as possible for everyone. He’s a great journalist. But he’s no physicist…
I found his book very revealing in a number of ways. First was its showing how the current stage of globalization is affecting people and why it works the way it does—which was what he intended. But in many ways it was also a guided tour behind enemy lines. For the most part, Capitalists mean well in their own way. They’re just blissfully ignorant of the physical limitations of the Earth and the way the Laws of Thermodynamics affect the physical economy of the world. They seem compelled to follow along with the herd like a bunch of livestock, because they seem to lack the creativity or the emotional fortitude to think of any better of an economic system than this. But then, lacking an understanding of the basic laws of physics they’re trying to defy, they have no reason to suspect that their economic system doesn’t work in the way they thought it did.
As I’ve said, the worst kind of supervillain is a superhero who misunderstands how the world works and thinks he’s using his powers for good. Mr. Friedman makes a good spokesperson for the Capitalists because he’s one of the religious, subconscious, passive, misguidedly benevolent Capitalists. He means well, but throughout his book he consistently looks down upon everyone who has a problem with globalization, as though they’re just not smart enough to know any better. He suggests that everyone stop fighting against globalization and instead accept it and adapt to it, because it’s unstoppable. (As far as he can tell, anyway.) He assumes that belonging to the most physically powerful civilization in the world means he knows what’s best for everyone. And whenever he talks about any non-Capitalistic economic idea, he talks about it as though it’s just some weird little thing some teenagers thought they’d try, or some archaic cultural value some people have. He obviously doesn’t fathom that people who are diametrically opposed to his way of life could have valid reasons for thinking the things they do—or in this case, better reasons for thinking the things they do.
(See? This is what happens when you market your books to the people who have the most money!)
The other valuable insight Mr. Friedman’s book offers is just how strong of a sensory illusion defining economic success by personal energy efficiency is. People all over India, China, and the rest of the world are flocking to Capitalism and Globalization 3.0. Everyone has the same natural attraction to material resources, so if you make material resources available to people, suddenly everyone wants them. What did you expect? But with Globalization 3.0, between India and China alone, we’re adding over 2 billion more people to our environmentally suicidal economy. They’re all running head first into an environmental graveyard spiral, because they, like everyone else in the world, are attempting to preserve the survival of their DNA by the most effective means perceivable to them. They perceive the value of personal energy efficiency, and they don’t perceive the Laws of Thermodynamics. A powerful sensory illusion is exactly what you get when you pit the most fundamental law of biology against the most fundamental law of physics.
Then there’s that new antiglobalization movement Mr. Friedman is hoping will develop in rural India. The interaction between human consciousness and the physical limitations of the Earth is the most complicated, most controversial field of study ever undertaken by humankind. Some of the greatest scientific minds in the world have been studying it for 40 years. I am one of the greatest scientific minds in the world, and I’ve devoted over half my life to this project. So I can’t help but wonder: exactly which illiterate peasant rice farmer was Mr. Friedman counting on to have enough scientific background to figure all this out?
I agree with Mr. Friedman that the current antiglobalization movement doesn’t amount to a goddamned thing. That’s why I have to devote this entire book to whipping it into shape.
If you’ve read the first two volumes of this book and then you go read The World Is Flat, you’ll probably be as intrigued as I was to find that you’re actually reading two books simultaneously. The first is the Capitalist’s field manual to globalization that Mr. Friedman intended it to be. The second is a case study in what Dr. R.D. Laing said, about how much of your perception of the world is created by what you fail to notice. If you decide, consciously or subconsciously, that a piece of information isn’t important, then when that piece of information reaches your sensory input, subconsciously you discard it before it reaches your consciousness.
Considering that the first World Social Forum drew 10,000 people and the sixth World Social Forum drew 100,000 people, I think Mr. Friedman might be confusing an absence of an antiglobalization movement with an absence of mainstream media coverage of it. And this takes on a whole new weight when you consider that Mr. Friedman is the editor in chief of the Foreign Affairs department for the New York Times.
Mr. Friedman presents a strong case for Globalization 3.0 by interviewing lots of different people who are being affected by it in lots of different ways from lots of different directions. His goals for writing the book are very humanitarian; he’s doing all he can to try to make sure Globalization 3.0 turns out favorably for everyone.
But now here’s where we get to the part about the worst kind of supervillain being a superhero who misunderstands how the world works…
Mr. Friedman believes that the fact that his economic system has been so successful proves that it’s the best kind there is. This belief is reinforced by the fact that so many people want to use it now that they have the choice. 98% of Indians don’t seem to be benefiting from Globalization 3.0, but they vote to keep at it anyway, because Capitalism and globalization is how they get photos of their children’s birthday parties. And as his visit to the school indicated, a lot of good can come of leveling the playing field between the world’s materially wealthy and its materially poor.
But in spite of what appears at first glance to be a very thoroughly researched book, he never actually interviewed a single Anarchist who’s opposing globalization to see what they had to say for themselves. Like I’ve said, even your worst enemy knows something important about life…
The fact that 3 billion people are jumping at the opportunity to build globalized Capitalist economies in their countries only proves just how big a sensory illusion the contradiction between the survival instinct and the Laws of Thermodynamics really are. The fact that 3 billion people want to join globalized Capitalist economies only proves that’s the most effective means 3 billion people can perceive of preserving the survival of their DNA. Earning more money lets them use more technology, either directly or indirectly, and that lets each individual use their personal energy more efficiently for survival and reproduction by supplementing it with the use of environmental energy. But that does nothing to change the fact that the industrialized economy that Globalization 3.0 depends upon functions by making energy leave the Gigantic Chemical Reaction of the global environment faster than new energy is replacing it. If people all over the world grow ever more dependent on our finite supply of environmental energy to help them survive and reproduce, it’s a mathematical inevitability that they’re going to overextend themselves.
You know, there’s a Sesame Street sketch I’ve seen, which starts with Bert looking at his five cookies sitting on a plate. Then he leaves the room and Ernie walks in. Ernie sees the five cookies on the plate and decides that there are so many cookies he can eat one and Bert will never notice. So he does.
Then Bert comes back and announces that he’s ready to eat his five cookies. But then he looks at his plate and only sees four cookies. So he asks Ernie where his other cookie went. Ernie says, “Well, gee, Bert, I’m sure it must be there somewhere.” So he tries rearranging the cookies on the plate in a lot of different ways. But no matter how he does it, every time Bert counts the cookies, there are only four cookies on the plate.
Now we live in a world full of weapons, with a population that’s increasing at an exponential rate, and a supply of material resources that’s diminishing at an exponential rate, and in which pollution is being generated at an exponential rate. And instead of moving away from depending on environmental energy to make our economy function, we’re making our economy depend on environmental energy more and more. If people all over the world believe that the energy needed to make their economy function exists, and they plan on it existing, and then it turns out it doesn’t exist, people’s economies break down without anyone expecting it or knowing why or what to do about it. Despite how strong of emotional attachments anyone has made to the idea that Capitalism is a good idea, the mathematics don’t work any other way.
So this is yet another example of how the anti-globalization revolutionaries paid attention to Sesame Street and the people who are trying to globalize the American Dream didn’t. Anarchists aren’t stupid. They aren’t as smart as they think they are, but at least they can understand pre-school-level mathematics, which is more than the Capitalists can say for themselves.
The goal of the anti-globalization revolution is not to oppose globalization itself. It’s to build a global community within the physical limitations of the Earth. Globalization 3.0 is moving the world in the exact opposite direction from that. That means that before a global community can be built within the physical limitations of the Earth, globalization in its current manifestation must be defeated.
But then, when you’re a small number of people who understand that 2 + 2 = 4 and you’re surrounded by a world full of people who have been taught to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, brute force won’t solve the problem. That means it’s aikido time. It’s time to identify your enemy’s weaknesses and attack.
I think it’s very illuminating here to note that in George Orwell’s 1984, government officials had ordered that 2 + 2 = 5 be painted everywhere, like, on the walls in the hallway in the main character’s apartment building. They did this to teach people that they will believe whatever the government tells them to believe. George Orwell realized, and as a lot more scientific evidence will attest today, if the first thing you see when you leave your apartment in the morning is a mathematical falsehood, you grow accustomed to seeing mathematical falsehoods and then carrying on with your life anyway. So the government was training the hero of the story, and everyone else in the country, not to notice mathematical falsehoods.
Then, some number of decades after George Orwell published 1984, Jim Henson decided to direct a sketch in which Ernie learns the hard way, through direct observation of the evidence, that 2 plus 2 never equals five, no matter how you look at it. I can’t help but wonder if Jim Henson intended that as an echo of 1984 (whether he did it consciously or subconsciously and seriously or jokingly) and was preemptively teaching kids that 2 plus 2 always equals 4.
So what do all the numbers mean now? Has the anti-globalization revolution versus Globalization 3.0 really come down to a duel between Sesame Street and 1984? If so, I’d rather be on the side of Bert and Ernie, Kermit the Frog, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster any day, even if everyone’s bright, colorful Muppet friends do turn out to be Anarchists, and they do start drawing a circle around the a in Ses@me Street.
Now as for the anti-globalization movement serving as the conscience of Globalization 3.0, and the balance of power that keeps globalization fair for everyone…
We of the anti-globalization revolution are not just another resource for you Capitalist pigs to exploit! Think about it. Suppose we were all to sit in a room together to work out our differences, and you said, “So, you feel the need to make the chemical reaction of the global environment work in a way that can keep everyone alive. Well I feel the need to make as much money as possible. So let’s see how we can work out a compromise.” What the f*ck would you expect to get out of a conversation like that besides a broken bottle in your f*cking face????
If your primary goal is to make as much money as possible—also known as controlling as much capital as possible—and making the global environment work in a way that can keep everyone alive is secondary to that, then there’s nothing to discuss. We of the anti-globalization revolution do not compromise on mass murder!
The struggle between globalization and anti-globalization is not going to be conducted on the Capitalists’ terms, no matter how the Capitalists feel about that. This is the same political struggle that has endured throughout the history of agrarian civilization, and probably longer. Those who control the most material resources write the rules. And they always write the rules to make sure that their side is going to win. As long as you try to resist your opponents while staying inside the boundaries of the rules your opponents have written, you aren’t resisting your opponents, by definition. You’re doing what you’re opponents want you to do. Whatever amount of resistance you’re going to be able to put up from inside the boundaries of your opponents’ rules is not going to be sufficient to stop them. Your opponents know that. That’s why they wrote the rules that way.
If you try to oppose your enemies by cooperating with your enemies’ rules, all you’re doing is validating their political system. If you choose to obey their rules of protest, you choose to allow them to defeat you. If you allow your revolution to be defeated, you make it appear to the public that you didn’t know how to win, that you don’t know what you’re doing, and that your enemies’ political system works better than yours. By waging a revolution according to your enemies’ rules, you attract a lot of support for your enemies’ political system. And a lot of support for their political system is exactly what your enemies wanted all along!
You know, back in the days of the American Revolution, the British and some other Europeans decided that sniping at your enemy’s officers was an unfair tactic. Then the British army came over here and tried to kill a bunch of Americans. And you know what the Americans did? They started sniping at British officers. They did what people have always done, which was to fight in whatever way seemed to them to offer them the best chances of winning. And in the end, the British thinking the Americans didn’t fight fair because the Americans violated some arbitrary British rule that favored the British didn’t make a bit of difference. Because the Americans won.
Furthermore, if the success of Globalization 3.0 depends on a lot of Capitalists making money and a lot of unpaid activists doing whatever it takes to keep the Capitalists honest, what the fuck do you Capitalist assholes call that besides globalizing slave labor? Look at what I just said. You depend on other people’s unpaid work to make your economic system function so you can make a lot of profits from it. May I remind you that making profits from other people’s work without paying them for it was outlawed here in America in 1865. If we of the anti-globalization movement were to agree to be your slave labor, we would be your slave labor forever, because you will never have any motivation to learn on your own to start taking responsibility for your own actions. So if a global movement of political activists think your economic system deserves to be ground into dust, it’s not by coincidence.
So on behalf of the anti-globalization revolution, here’s my counter-offer to the Capitalists. We are prepared to accept your unconditional surrender at any time. Until then, if you dare to push people to the point that they’re willing to fight with machetes to defend themselves against you, and we get the chance to put guns in those people’s hands, we’ll do it. I won’t do it personally, and most people who call themselves progressive activists won’t do it either, simply because advocating violence wouldn’t help move society forward, and by definition, would not be progressive. On the contrary, advocating violence would make us stay-right-where-we-are activists—also known as conservative activists. But there are some people who consider themselves progressive activists who do see violence as a piece of the puzzle.
Pretty much all progressive activists agree that people have the right to fight in self-defense. If some peasant farmers with simple farming tools and rusty old pickup trucks get into a battle with soldiers with machineguns and helicopters and tanks and artillery, it’s not hard to figure out who started the fight. And that raises the question: What was the government trying to do to the farmers that made them feel so badly threatened that they were willing to fight against odds like that? So that’s when we start probing your defenses, we identify your weaknesses, and we attack. I fight with weaponized education, but I can’t speak for everyone.
And by the way, some people are already fighting with machetes to defend themselves against Globalization 3.0. If you don’t believe me, Google search for Chiapas and Indymedia, and see what you find. You can read dozens of articles by journalists embedded on the revolutionaries’ side. And then try adding “Brad Will” to your search. Brad was an Indymedia journalist from New York City who was covering the Chiapas rebellion when he was shot in the stomach intentionally by Mexican government forces. He died of his wound.
Capitalism is driven by competition. Violence is competition. If you don’t like our version of competition, you’d better think of something else.
We are not here to serve as the conscience of globalization. If you Capitalist pigs don’t have brains enough to act conscientiously on your own, that’s your own goddamned problem. Don’t expect us to carry your share of the weight.
Meet Globalization 4.0.