A Commentary By World Bank Press Review
On an Article from the French Newspaper Liberation
October 1, 2002
There are categories that kill, or by default, render impossible all debate, generate confusion in the most enlightened discussions and cause the movement of ideas to regress. "Anti-globalization", which has carved a prime niche in the politico-mediatic space in the last 5 years, is one example of such false, deleterious and even deadly categories. From Seattle to Kananaskis, through Davos, Porto Alegre, Quebec, Genoa and now Washington, this category pretends to lend reason to positions, theorization, and the most diverse, opposed and problematic protests. But this group forces stances that weren't necessarily frozen, says Bernard. It ignores the complexity of the questions involved.
This group is deceitful because it aims to make the aversion to "globalization" a common, homogenous, clear, and uncontestable thing. But the protesters who gather under the "anti-globalization" banner often denounce movements as varied as privatization of the public sector, market liberalization, structural adjustment, monetary and market speculation, environmental threats, cultural imperialism, and less and less a single "Globalization," which increasingly all recognize to be neither a given nor monolithic.
The group sees and hears what it wants with regard to its street protests against citadels under siege such as the G8, European Union, IMF and World Bank, but doesn't concern itself with the content, and even less with the indispensible critical analytic work of the controversial projects, the evolution of positions.
Today, we surely do not need a pseudo-concept such as "anti-globalization" to rethink the future of a worrying and unstable world. Rather, we need true concepts such as alternative, monetary code, cosmopolitanism, community ownership, dignity, domination, emancipation, equality, fragmentation, intercultural, migration, knowledge-sharing, regulation, solidarity [etc.] to reposess the discussion the issues related to "globalization", concludes Bertrand.
Meanwhile, Bruce Bartlett of the National Center for Policy Analysis comments in the Washington Times that while the World Bank and the Fund still make a lot of mistakes, at the end of the day are rational institutions that are at least trying to do the right thing. Where they err, it is often because the conventional wisdom among economists in general is wrong. As much as I criticize the Bank and the Fund, I should say that they are also forces for good in the world. For the most part, they promote market-oriented policies and provide a measure of discipline to wayward governments that would not otherwise exist. They have many first-rate economics who produce vast quantities of research and data that are essential reading for anyone studying international economic development.
Moreover, historically, both institutions have been largely open to their critics. The websites of both organizations are filled with papers and reports that are often critical of their past actions and policies. In short, both the Bank and the Fund try as best they can to learn from their mistakes.
The same cannot be said of the anti-globalists. There is no research, no data, nor any academic literature supporting their position. It is based solely on emotion. Even communism, which turned out to be a monumental disasters in every country in which it was imposed, had a more rational basis than the rants and tirades of the anti-globalists, says Bartlett.
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