Home > Nobel Laureate Warns Globalization Will Lead to Violence
Nobel Laureate Warns Globalization Will Lead to Violence
by Open-Publishing - Friday 23 January 2004Path of Globalization Will Lead to Violence
Warns Nobel Laureate
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Raul Pierri, Inter Press Service (IPS)
January 20, 2004
MUMBAI, Jan 19 (IPS) - The path of economic
globalization must be changed to avoid undermining
social security. Otherwise it will continue to
exacerbate poverty, and therefore violence, warned
World Social Forum panellists here Monday, including
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics.
"The essence of economic globalization is that it
should bring job security. If there were such a
commitment, developing countries could have opened
markets by explicitly tying market access to job
opportunities," said the U.S. expert who served as the
World Bank (news - web sites)’s chief economist from
1997 to 2000.
Economic instability and social insecurity will lead to
a rise in violence in the world because it is
impossible to separate economic issues from social and
political issues, he said.
The loudest applause went to Stiglitz at Monday’s
conference, "Globalization, Economic and Social
security," which drew more than 1,000 of the reportedly
more than 150,000 people participating in the Mumbai
World Social Forum (WSF).
To protect the workers’ social benefits, "economic
policy cannot be delegated to the technocrats of
international financial institutions," but instead
should be at the centre of democratic debate in each
country, he said.
Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University in New York,
condemned the insistent pressure that the International
Monetary Fund (news - web sites) exerts on countries of
the developing South to reform their social security
systems, reforms he says ends up eroding the few
protections that millions of workers might have.
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics and famed
for his harsh criticisms of how the international
finance institutions handled the 1997 Asian crisis, he
also proposed that the World Trade Organization (news -
web sites) (WTO) should include on its agenda plans to
strengthen social security and to fight poverty.
The fourth World Social Forum, underway in the former
industrial center of Goregoun, in Mumbai, since Friday,
has drawn activists from around the world to take part
in workshops, seminars and conferences on a wide range
of social issues. The six-day event wraps up on
Wednesday.
Groups of activists—the vast majority from Asia—
arrive at the WSF venue daily for the conferences and
panel discussions. Many are dressed in colorful
national attire, others are dancing to the sound of
drums and shouting slogans against neoliberal
globalization, against multilateral financial
institutions, and especially against the U.S.
government.
Participating in the same panel as Stiglitz, Antonio
Tujan, a Filipino economist and journalist, said that
the current process of economic globalization has two
major harmful impacts on social security: the creation
of "flexible" benefits for workers and the weakening of
trade unions.
Tujan, of the IBON Foundation, a non-governmental
Filipino think tank, explained that the adoption of
flexible labor policies is a means to attract
investment "institutionalizes unemployment."
In the Philippines, for example, an employee can only
join a union after working for a company six months. As
a result, many firms hire workers only to fire them
before they reach the six-month mark, he said.
Monday’s conference also included the testimony by
workers like Mexican unionist Bendicto Martnez, who
enumerated the negative effects on Mexico’s social
security system caused by the North American Free Trade
Agreement, NAFTA, which also comprises Canada and the
United States.
"Between 1994 (the year NAFTA took effect) and 1995,
thousands of small and medium businesses shut their
doors; businesses that employ nearly 60 percent of the
Mexican labour force," said Martnez, member of a
Mexican metalworkers union.
In the past 15 years of economic and trade
liberalization in Mexico, he said, the pace of work in
industry has accelerated drastically, while wages have
been reduced and obstacles have been erected to prevent
union activities.
"The unions were severely impacted, because faced with
the closing of the sources of jobs, they lost many of
the benefits they had enjoyed before," Martnez said.
"The Mexican government signed all of the WTO
agreements, but none are heeded, and there is more and
more repression against unions," he said.
Laura Tavares, an expert from the University of Rio de
Janeiro, said that the major questions affecting the
population, such as social security issues, are taken
over by the ones wielding power, and there is little
participation by the people.
Tavares said the Brazilian (news - web sites)
government of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, of the leftist
Workers Party, is working to change that dynamic, and
has made some progress.
"Though it remains a very difficult task," she added.