Global Policy Forum

By Ambassador Oscar de Rojas, Chairman of the Second Committee

Thank you very much to you and to the SID and the Chairman of the Group of 77 for organizing this very important discussion and for inviting me to participate in it. We have been asked in this panel this afternoon to refer to a "response to the paradigm of globalization". A very challenging and daunting task...

To start, I'd like to say that I liked very much the background paper for this workshop that was circulated to us by Ambassador Wibisono a few days ago. One of the first things that strike me when reading it, was the observation that, in addressing this subject, it is very important to distinguish between means and ends, and it reminded us that the goal of development -- and not so with globalization -- was conceived as a value system as an ideal of justice, and a strategy for justice. Development was, therefore, in a way an end in itself, for which many means were devised, thought of and pursued during the last 40 or 50 years.

Although the background paper notes that, interestingly, globalization is put on the table (though only ex post) in reference to the same "ideology' of development -- that is, the social progress of the South. the eradication of poverty, etc. -- it entails essentially a set of practices, including in particular practices for the reorganization of international relations and institutions with a view to promote and facilitate the activities which characterize globalization.

I think it is very important to keep those distinctions in mind in a discussion such as this. For, in order to think of a response to a paradigm, we must first understand it well and know what we are dealing with. So let me just bring to recollection a few simple facts, which may seem obvious, and thus pedantic on my part, but which I think sometimes are lost or forgotten in the "politically correct" discourse that we have nowadays about globalization, including in these halls of the United Nations.

In my view, globalization is, and purports to be nothing less than the triumphant, unabashed apotheosis of capitalism. Not of the social capitalism that the Socialist International still talks about, not of the "social market economy" that European and Latin American Christian Democrats still timidly preach, not even of the Keynesian capitalism that many American policy makers continue to have as their mind-set. Globalization is bringing into reality, for the first time since it was 'intellectually conceived and codified a couple of centuries ago, the universal implantation of a pure, unadulterated capitalist model of organization of. And by pure I mean, yes, laissez-faire, because that is the direction 'in which we seem to be going.

No matter where you look, whether it is in the European Union, in the United States, in Russia, in the tiger -- though slightly hurt -- economies of Asia, 'in the larger countries of Latin America, in many countries of Africa plus of course 'in the WTO, the Bretton Woods institutions, the OECD, the discussion centers on how to unregulate, how to liberalize, how to cut the rules and the restrictions, how to dismantle the welfare state and reduce socially-subsidized benefits, how to get the government -- which means the people -- out of the way, out of the way of business, for business to do its thing properly, for business to rule.

When you look at it, all of these things we have been talking about recently -- the Uruguay Round and the WTO, ongoing negotiations of services and intellectual property rights, discussions on new free trade regimes, liberalization of capital accounts and the new role for the IMF, enhanced adjustment programs with new conditionalities, "liberalization" of labor laws, 'investment guarantees agreements, Codes of Conduct such as the MIA or MAI, total reordering of development goals, priorities and programs -- all of this really boil down to the same thing: making the world, the whole world, a better safer place for capitalism to survive and to prosper.

You could argue that 'in the process, as a side effect, people will prosper and be made better off, too -- and this is of course the argument of the apologists of globalization but that, as we all know, really remains to be seen. It may well be that many people will prosper -- but it may also well be that very many will not and, on the contrary, will remain worse off. Or it could be that most people will eventually be better off but that, along the road, in the meantime, many will suffer and have to bear the brunt of much pain, something, that, in my view, is equally discrediting to the overall argument.

Yes, we must recognize, there are many sincere, well-intentioned people in positions of influence out there -- academicians, economists, politicians, statesmen -- who are genuinely concerned about these things and are actively seeking to find alternative, less painful routes,, safety-nets, and all kind of socially-sensitive responses to the different issues. But there is, also, as has been noted, quite a bit of double-standard setting, as many of the things that developing countries are being criticized for doing and asked to change with such urgency for the sake of the greater good are precisely the same things that are, or were for years, done in industrial countries.

And the underlying premise seems, in general, to continue to be there, and that is: that globalization -- with the accompanying enthronement of maxiliberal capitalism on a universal level and as the world-wide model -- is and should be here to stay, that it is the thing of the future, that it is in and of itself the hope for mankind. Is this really true? Is this what we want? Do we truly wish for a world ruled by capital and by the owners of that capital? That is really the first question that we should ask ourselves in searching for a response to the paradigm of globalization. Because, if the answer is negative, then we have a whole different kind of challenge ahead of us -- we would have not so much to respond to the paradigm as to change, to reform it. And there would still be time for that, especially if we act in a concerted way.

I, for one, do not like the paradigm as it stands defined now. I do not like the quasi-idolatry of the free market, I do not believe 'in its infallible efficacy, I certainly do not believe in the capacity of the profit motive to provide or promote social justice. I like many of you, and many others before us, believe that the subordination of people to market forces or to business objectives can be just as dangerous and harmful as the subordination of people to the state. So, at the end of this twentieth century, which saw so many injustices and horrors committed because of this subordination of the person to the state, we should not leap into the twenty-first without taking cognizance of the inherent dangers of this new subordination which can, too, lead to many undesirable and indeed, terrible, consequences.

Man's search for justice, for goodness, for solidarity will not be quenched with globalization per se. Like all the other marvels of the modem world, globalization certainly has in it potential for many good things, and we should strive for them and use them. But that's the key word: use. Globalization and the processes associated with it, including the adoption of a world-wide accepted capitalist economic model, have to be a means to an end. We must design and define this process and this model carefully, in a way that fits and serves the total needs and aspirations of people and of the human person. A system based on a type of latter-day laissez-faire capitalism would not only be unjust and unacceptable, but it would be impossible to sustain, socially and politically. Not only because Marx said it, but because history has shown these lessons once and again. Therefore the urgent need to provide, to assure that globalization has a "social architectures, with built-in checks and internationally-agreed, equity-inspired norms, regulations and controls, is not a cliché, it's an absolute imperative. Otherwise the thing simply will not work, and we will find ourselves in the not too far future in this United Nations --if it's still here-- not looking for responses to a paradigm but responses to something much worse.

Thank you very much.

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