Introduction
Paper presented at the Fourth Annual Kent State University Symposium on Democracy
But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having.
—John Perry Barlow
This Symposium on Globalization and Democracy exemplifies the good that can arise out of the ashes of evil. The four deaths caused by the opposing forces within our democracy thirty-three years ago have served as a catalyst for this meaningful discussion about the powerful global currents that engulf us today. Having the opportunity to discuss these issues with others from various cultures and countries gives me hope for a positive global future even in the face of the overwhelming odds of poverty, hate, and violence.
We must make a conscious effort to foster hope in order to realize the positive possibilities of globalization and to neutralize the negative impact that we see regularly. That task is mighty, but we can prevail if we remain open to the constant flow of information, respect one another’s differences and remain aware of how those differences inform our decisions and our behavior.
Definitions
Both terms that title this symposium defy easy definition. Each of us understands what we mean by them; however, those meanings are in the eye of the beholder. And they are inextricably linked.
Democracy
Immediately after
WWII, the
Fareed Zakaria identifies Western liberal democracy as “a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property.” However, while democracy is flourishing, liberty is not. He identifies a number of democratically elected authoritarian governments that he terms “illiberal democracies.” He reminds us that Adolf Hitler was democratically elected.2
In his paper, Dr. Conway-Long notes
that even within the
In other words, all democracy is local. “Different forms of democracy are linked to the particular social contexts out of which they emerge and reflect the relations of power found there, of capital and labor, of core and periphery.”4
Globalization
Defining the term globalization is no less challenging. Laffey observes that globalization means different things to different people and that those differences of understanding inform the different interpretations of democracy.5 Thomas Friedman describes globalization as “the inexorable integration of markets, transportation systems and communication systems.”6
Globalization is composed of opposing forces. It is incredibly empowering and incredibly coercive. It nurtures democracy and authoritarianism. It homogenizes cultures while fostering individuality. It tempts us with new technologies while urging us to cling to our cultural roots. It allows us access to the world while giving the world similar access to us. It harbors environmental triumphs and environmental disasters. It trumpets the triumph of free market capitalism and the accompanying backlash. It engenders the domination of nations by corporations and capital while demonstrating the durability of the nation-state. It empowers and humanizes while disempowering and dehumanizing. It is a unifying force and a monumental disconnect.7
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, defines economic globalization as “the closer integration of the countries and peoples of the world which has been brought about by the enormous reduction of costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge and . . . people across borders.”8
Dynamics
Establishing or even maintaining democracy in this increasingly globalized world is even more challenging because of five countervailing dynamics and the uncertainty their interaction engenders:
1. The profusion of religious and spiritual beliefs;
2. The supremacy of the corporation;
3. The impact of the immediacy of communication systems that simultaneously bring us closer together and push us farther apart;
4. The inherent tension between common good and individual rights in those liberal democracies that have been established long enough to have a modicum of stability;
5. The danger of voter apathy in many of those same democracies.
The degree and intensity of the globalization experience and the sheer number of people and countries affected by it are astonishing. I will endeavor to examine these various dynamics while recognizing that they are inextricably linked and an inherent part of our daily experience.
Religion and Spirituality
An extraordinarily
powerful dynamic is the swirling current of contemporary religious and
spiritual evolution. As the widow of a Methodist minister, I have observed that
the fundamentalists of all religions are dangerous because they are
all-exclusive. They believe that only they have access to their divine being so
only they know what that divine being directs. We experienced the danger of
that fundamentalism on
Paradoxically, at the same time, the mainline established Christian religions in the United States are declining in declared membership and participation. One third of the people surveyed in 2000 never go to church or synagogue. Beginning in the 1990s, numerous sociological studies have found that actual attendance at church is approximately half the stated rate. This may indicate that while people believe in God, their relationship with God is very personal and they don’t especially care much about religion. They do not always belong to a formal organization to follow their chosen spiritual path. Rauch defines this as apatheism, “a disinclination to care much about one’s own religion and an even greater disinclination to care about other people’s.” This is a gift the United States has given to the world, because it neutralizes the potentially divisive and dangerous forces of religion.12
I am very hopeful about the potential for democracy in Muslim states given the conclusions in the paper by Don Conway-Long about the potential of theo-democracy in Middle Eastern and North African Muslim countries. I found wonderful similarities to Methodism, especially as it evolved in the United States. Methodism is rare among Christian denominations, because it is a bottom-up religion. Its birth coincided with the birth of the United States; its governance is similarly democratic.
The Methodist system is very
similar to the essential Muslim concept of umma,
which is a community or nation linked by faith.13 The umma selects the leader as the
Methodists appoint a local minister.14 The Charge Conference of the
local
A second essential Muslim concept is shura, which means deliberative consultation of advisers when making decisions. Decisions are made through the shura.16 In the Methodist system, Methodists consult regularly (at least monthly) at the local church level, annually at the annual conference for each conference, and every four years in an international general conference. During these various conferences, delegates from the local churches and conferences deliberate, consult, and vote on issues of concern to the entire body. The general conference is the Methodist church’s highest legislative body and is responsible for writing the Discipline, the canon law of the Methodist Church, which is updated every four years as deemed necessary by the participants in the general conference.17
Like Methodism, Islam has no pope, no supreme authority. It is the individual person’s responsibility to engage the religious texts and to live a life according to them.18 Methodism has no minor doctrine. It rejected a religious authority. A person’s faith and religious experience is between that person and his or her God, so how can anyone else decide if it is valid or not?19
I take enormous hope in the courage and perseverance of the three contemporary political Islamic theorists that Conway-Long describes as posing democratic constructs for Muslim countries: the Tunisian, Rashid Ghannounchi; the Iranian, Abdolkarim Soroush; and the Pakistani, Khurshid Ahmad.
Ghannouchi sees nothing in Islam that opposes democracy, defining democracy as a system in which people freely choose their leaders with an alteration of power and all freedoms and human rights for the public. Soroush believes that democracy is the only form of government truly compatible with Islam. In his opinion, any attempt to restrict interpretations of Islam would impede intellectual growth and obstruct individual freedom. He believes that “religion is democracy in that both are concerned with the mitigation of imbalance in both power and wealth.” While Soroush was exiled from Iran during the reign of Ayatollah Khomeni, his ideas remain influential and are contributing to the positive changes underway in that country today. Ahmad believes that any economic system must provide for the full gamut of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ranging from the daily necessities of life to the opportunity for self-actualization, the personal fulfillment of one’s potential. “Theo-democracy is a democratic system inseparable from divine guidance.”20
It is very possible that Islam can nurture theo-democracy as the Methodist Church nourished and flourished with the development of democracy in the United States.
While the spectrum of religious and spiritual beliefs includes many that could nurture democracy, the dynamic of corporate supremacy bodes ill for the future of liberal democracies. Corporate dominion requires that everyone who has the opportunity to participate in a democratic society must do so to the utmost in order to ensure the survival of that democracy.
Corporate Supremacy
In 2000 the economy of Wal-Mart exceeded that of the majority of Eastern and Central European nations. In 1999 fifty-one of the hundred largest economies in the world were corporations; the hundred largest multinational corporations controlled 20 percent of global foreign assets.21
That international corporations, modeled by U.S. companies, have such tremendous power is a sad irony. Jefferson, and Madison had argued for an eleventh amendment to the Bill of Rights, one that would limit the ability of companies to grow so large that they could dominate other companies or that they could influence government. They wanted “a freedom of commerce against monopolies.” The other founders considered it unnecessary since that sort of corporate power was universally condemned at that point in history. They felt they had insured against that possibility by endowing the states with the right to establish and to dissolve corporations. The absence of that amendment and the head notes to the Supreme Court’s 1886 decision in Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad provided fertile soil for the international corporate dominance we experience today. The lead sentence of those head notes states: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which forbids a state to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” That statement succeeded in granting corporations the same constitutional rights as an American citizen, without the same responsibilities.22
“Men made the corporation, but they cannot control it. Men die, but the corporation is an “‘immortal being’: a kind of Frankenstein monster of freedom that, once started, can be stopped only by failure. The economic freedom of the corporation . . . can crush the individual freedom of mere mortal beings.”23
Mr. Framarin details the dilemma of this dynamic in his discourse on the expanded property rights of NAFTA and the challenges those expanded rights present to the sovereign democratic rights of the citizens of the NAFTA nations. The intent of NAFTA is to eliminate nontariff barriers to trade and investment, especially in the service industries.
Chapter 11 of NAFTA allows corporations to sue governments for “lost market opportunity” if the governments’ laws don’t comply with NAFTA provisions. A panel established by NAFTA trade officials and lawyers, not a court of law within the sovereignty of the concerned nation-state, would hear these suits.24
The chapter 11 courts of NAFTA impose penalties on countries whose regulations interfere with investors’ rights to make a profit. The “lost market opportunity” redress is rooted in the legal theory of regulatory taking; this posits that investors are entitled to compensation if a government regulation deprives them of profits, including future profits. It had been widely regarded as an outrageous legal theory in the early eighties but has become encoded in chapter 11 of NAFTA.25
This NAFTA chapter grants supranational legal and institutional guarantees to corporations, which supersede and limit local, regional, state, and national governments from providing public services. Essentially, NAFTA is a corporate Bill of Rights. It is a weapon corporations can use when they oppose any social program. The scope of NAFTA reaches far beyond the readily recognized impact on jobs and wages. Its ultimate goal is to commercialize all essential human needs, including science, technology, education, health care, and natural resources. It has a double standard, preaching free trade while establishing transnational corporate monopoly control over all sources of scientific knowledge and technological progress, which essentially includes economic and social progress. Any attempt by the electorate to decide democratically their own values and priorities in these areas is subject to a suit by a corporation who may determine that their democratic decision presents a “lost market opportunity.”26
Framarin cites several disturbing examples. When the governor of California ordered the phaseout of the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) because it was creating a health hazard, Methanex, the corporation producing it, sued in a chapter 11 NAFTA court with the U.S. taxpayers potentially paying the possible billion-dollar settlement. Canada has abandoned its plan to require tobacco companies to label their packaging with the potential health consequences of smoking because it feared a chapter 11 suit. When Metalclad planned to reopen a toxic dump in Mexico, the citizens of the local community declared it an environmental area to protect itself from further environmental hazards.27 The NAFTA court awarded Metalclad 16.7 billion dollars to be paid by the citizens of Mexico.28
Framarin rightly states, “it is abhorrent to pay a company that would otherwise have polluted vast water systems and contributed to the health problems and possible deaths of countless people so that they do not pollute and injure. This suggests that they had the right to pollute and injure in the first place and they really did not.” The valuable insight that Framarin offers is that the corporations who require restitution under loss of market opportunity should adjust their loss required by deducting the amount of profit gained by their reinvestment opportunity as well as the damages to the community that would have been precluded if the NAFTA court had not voided the regulations. Given that formula, corporations could very well receive no monetary compensation and might even owe communities monetary compensation.29
For instance, a corporation has been awarded one million dollars for “lost market opportunity.” It reinvests that million but earns only one-half million. The precluded losses to the community were one million. Thus, not only would the corporation not be entitled to any additional compensation from the community’s government but also it might very well be expected to provide restitution of one million to the community’s government.
Another potential solution to this dilemma is the Fair Exchange Proposal propounded by Deborah Groban Olson of the Capital Ownership Group. It “provides an equity return to citizens for specific government benefits provided to businesses . . . it calls for ownership of company stock by a ‘commonwealth agency’ that may be organized in a number of ways including: a community land trust, a community economic development fund, or individual accounts for all the local citizens.”30
These could correct the situation Laffey observes with the policies of NAFTA that “subordinate democratically developed standards to those created by supranational and democratically unaccountable entities.”31
International policy makers who also praise the work of economist Hernando De Soto have lauded NAFTA. His Institute of Liberty and Democracy is devoted to establishing full legal protection for the informal property rights that exist among the extralegal communities of third world countries. The work of his institute has documented that political, social, and economic stability is possible only when legal systems exist in which people feel that the law protects them.32 This is clearly not the case with the supranational courts of NAFTA.
George Soros has observed, “Perhaps the greatest threat to freedom and democracy in the world today comes from the formation of unholy alliances between government and business. This is not a new phenomenon. It used to be called fascism. . . . The outward appearances of the democratic process are observed, but the powers of the state are diverted to the benefit of private interests.”33
Even Economist, that bastion of the free market, has noted recently “close ties between business and government are detrimental to a democracy and to the public trust in democratic government.” It requires a Sisyphusian effort to prevent the extinction of capitalistic and democratic freedoms.34
We are experiencing some things we never imagined, such as the multiplicity of religious and spiritual beliefs and the concomitant range of beliefs within each of them from fundamentalist to liberal. We are experiencing other things we don’t quite understand, such as the establishment of supranational courts by national governments. The speed at which we are expected to process information about these often means that we are unable to do so.
Inexorable Speed and Incredible Scope of the Internet and Other Communication Systems
Mortimer Adler has identified, in ascending order of value, these “four goods of the mind”: information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Data is the raw material that we have processed ideally into useful information. “Knowledge can be defined as information transformed into meaning. Understanding is knowledge integrated with a world view and a personal perspective and exists entirely within the human mind, as does wisdom, (which is) understanding made whole and generative.”35 For instance, the U.S. Census Bureau obtains raw data every decade and organizes it into demographic information that impacts many facets of life in the United States.
While the advent of the Internet and increased electronic communications has enabled the amount of data to double every five years, the amount of useful information has not kept pace. In fact, the amount of useful information may actually be declining.36 Data and information are worthless if they do not contribute to organized knowledge.37 With information in decline, how sad is the present state of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
This third dynamic, a relentless deluge of data and information, exacerbates the situation Laffey describes. Human beings do not have the time to process it to the level of understanding and are too easily subject to the interpretation presented by our chosen sources of information.
Communication experts tell us that 90 percent of communication is nonverbal. However, the data and information we receive through modern communication systems are predominantly verbal. We are receiving exponentially increasing amounts of data skewed to only 10 percent of our human ability to receive and process the data and information. Bill McKibben has attempted to address this concern in his book The Age of Missing Information.38
Laffey details the media treatment of the many protests against the democratic deficits in the global economy by the global citizens movement. While the majority of the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, the visual media have selectively chosen to emphasize only the few violent incidents. The protesters are protesting for democracy because they perceive that their democratic rights are being diminished by neoliberal economic globalization. They are especially concerned about the potential for privatization of such public services as health care and education.39
However, the need for media attention to highlight the diminution of democracy can be a double-edged sword; it can inspire violence. As one student stated en route to the 2001 protest in Genoa: “There has to be trouble or the papers won’t report it.”40
Unfettered access to information has been a cornerstone of democracy. Contemporary information comes through filters unimagined in previous eras. Corporations sift information through the profit filter, which may mean bowing to whichever religious denomination is most dominant. Those persons who take the time to be informed often lack the skills to discern the validity of the information they receive and on which they could base their governance decisions. Often they receive a greater quantity of it than they could ever want to know.
Inherent Tension between Individual Rights and the Common Good in Liberal Democracies
A fourth dynamic is the persistent tension in the liberal democracies between the rights of the individual person and the common good.41 The global citizens movement is “a response to the perceived failings of electoral politics” and their loss of influence over the system governing them. Democracy requires transparency and quality information to produce substantive input and legitimate results. This is absent when multinational corporations have privileged access and a dominant role in international negotiations.42 The protest movement gives voice to people who feel they have lost their voice to the ballot box, especially the young citizens who are the least likely to vote in the world’s liberal democracies.43
However, police violence against protestors in the global citizens movement has escalated increasingly from the 1997 APEC meeting in Vancouver through the fatal shooting at the 2001 G-8 Summit in Genoa. Police apparently did not differentiate between those protestors who were using violent tactics and those who were nonviolent. This has effectively criminalized protest and dissent. Increases in European surveillance and policing have intensified tremendously since 1990 when the Schengen Implementing Convention was introduced. The Schengen agreement was initially established to ease European citizens’ travel across the borders of participating countries. The Schengen Implementing Convention was instituted to ensure extensive European police cooperation on criminal matters as well as increased intelligence gathering and data exchange on people not suspected of any criminal offense. Schengen charges police with preventing crimes as well as detecting them.
For civil libertarians in liberal democracies, this reached its nadir in 2001 when the Schengen network linked with the SIRENE (Supplementary Information Request at the National Entry) network. This network stores pictures and fingerprints that link readily with the European national databases on groups and persons combined with their intelligence gathered from various open source information from the Internet. Purportedly established to abolish border controls and promote free movement within the EU, Schengen instead has become focused on increasing policing and surveillance of EU citizens. In the United States, the tragedy of September 11 created an atmosphere that encouraged the U.S. government to enact legislation that defined political protest as a security risk. Governments are subordinating the freedom of expression of political protests to security achieved through questionable policy and surveillance methods. While all states are necessarily police states to a certain degree, the crucial issue remains what kind of police states they are. The policing and surveillance of protests in the world’s great liberal democracies demonstrate the severe limits of democratic expression in these settings and do not bode well for democracy’s future. After all, these democracies are the purported ideal to which other newer democracies theoretically aspire.
Economic globalization disrupts survival strategies throughout the global society. While the type of disruption reflects the society affected, the common denominator is that people feel insecure. Their world has been shaken. As the survival mechanisms are increasingly dismantled and an increasing number of people are affected and rise to protest, the states will find it less credible to “identify them as marginal radicals.” The recent globalization protests occurred in first world countries, not those of the developing world.44
The hopeful sign of the protest movement is that the participants are exercising a democratic right to express their opinions, even if many of them are unlikely to vote. They feel that the ballot box has become ineffectual, that the only way to be heard is to take to the streets.
Voter Apathy
Throughout the world, liberal democracies have diminishing electoral participation. The most recent U.S. congressional elections had only 49 percent voter participation. In developing countries with democratic governments, those governments have found their effectiveness impaired by devastating economic situations.
Surveys have indicated that many of the Latin American democracies established during the 1980s are very fragile because of the 80-20 problem: 80 percent of the people live in poverty while 20 percent enjoy considerable wealth. An increasing number of Latin Americans surveyed since 1995 believe that in certain circumstances an authoritarian government is preferable to a democratic one. They have been disappointed at efforts to privatize and prefer the government to regulate the economy.45
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs indicates that unless basic physical needs are met and people feel sufficiently secure, they are unlikely to be able to focus on anything but meeting those physical needs.46 Democracy is the hardest form of government, the most disruptive and the most demanding.47 To participate in a democracy requires time and freedom from the distraction of hunger and the lack of shelter. If people believe that a democracy will not allow them to meet those needs, they are more likely to choose or to submit to a political system they believe will meet them. This is compounded by the emphasis that the liberal democracies place on individuality and freedom.
Erich Fromm’s classic work, Escape from Freedom, attributes the rise of fascism to modern man’s emphasis on individuality and freedom, the core values in our society’s democracy. This emphasis on individuality and freedom renders people either more independent, self-reliant, and critical or more isolated, alone, and afraid. If the latter, we care too much what other people think and tend to conform to ease our isolation.48
Only if man masters society and subordinates the economic machine to the purposes of human happiness and only if he actively participates in the social process, can he overcome what now drives him into despair—his aloneness and his feeling of powerlessness. Man does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning. The victory over all kinds of authoritarian systems will be possible only if democracy does not retreat but takes the offensive and proceeds to realize what has been its aim in the minds of those who fought for freedom throughout the last centuries. It will triumph over the forces of nihilism only if it can imbue people with a faith that is the strongest the human mind is capable of, the faith in life and in truth, and in freedom as the active and spontaneous realization of the individual self.49
The sense of powerlessness identified by Fromm contributes mightily to voter apathy in the United States.
A political cartoon aptly summarized why so few Americans go to the polls. Uncle Sam is listing the benefits of democracy to an incarcerated Iraqi: big money politics, joke elections (California recall, Bush and Gore), special interest legislation, rant and rave media, attack ads, sound bites, photo ops. He promises the Iraqi that in two hundred years, he too could live in such a democracy.50
The litany of challenges democracy faces in this era of globalization is overwhelming. Is it possible that enough of us will put our energies to positive ends so that democracy will flourish? Is it possible that we will focus our spiritual energies toward positive goals? Is it possible we can balance the influence of the corporation with the needs of people? Is it possible that the speed of communication will not overwhelm us so that we do not become numb to the information we need to participate in a democracy? Is it possible we can maintain the necessary stasis in liberal democracies between the common good and individual rights? Is it possible that the increase in voter apathy will not be a death knell for democracy?
Imagine the Possibilities
Several notable activists and economists have recognized the challenges and possibilities presented by globalization for the democracies of the world. David Korten and economists Joseph Stiglitz and Noreena Hertz, both previously of the World Bank, have drafted potential solutions.
Hertz has a clear outline of solutions in the six recommendations of her New Agenda, designed to reunite the global economy with social justice and to restore the balance of power between governments and corporations:
1. Campaign reform at the national level. Corporations must be disenfranchised. Public trust in the political process will not be restored until citizens believe that politicians are working for the public good instead of the private benefit of those who contribute most to their campaign coffers.
2. Repeal trickle-down economics at the national level. Its result has been corporate welfare coupled with a dangerous increase in growing economic inequality.
3. At the national level, re-regulate the corporations with the possible federalization of public goods. Increase antitrust enforcement and restrictions on cross-media ownership.
4. Global legal aid for workers and communities, and national legislative reforms to ensure transparency of corporations. Corporations must be accountable for the actions of their subsidiaries in whatever country they function.
5. Establish a World Social Organization to counterbalance the World Trade Organization. This will ensure the protection of human rights, labor standards, and the environment. Its powers of enforcement must be as effective as those of the WTO. A reliable mechanism must be established to adjudicate the inevitable differences between these two bodies.
6. A Global Tax Authority to fund these goals. Taxes on pollution and energy consumption could protect the environment. Taxes on tobacco and alcohol companies could fund a global health fund. Taxes on multinational corporations could fund the development of global norms for the environment, labor, and human rights.51
Korten’s proposals complement those propounded by Hertz:
1. Campaign reform for citizens to reclaim their political authority and to remove the influence of corporations from the political process.
2. Local control of productive assets through a community enterprise market economy.
3. Localize the global system by decommissioning the Bretton Woods system and replacing it with U.N. equivalents. Current global governance is divided between the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank. The latter dictate economic policy without accepting the social and environmental consequences of that policy. While the United Nations has virtually no authority over the global economic policies, it has the responsibility of dealing with the environmental and social consequences without the funding to do so.52
Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has synergistic recommendations. He believes that the international economic institutions can be reshaped so that globalization can realize its potential for good. He recognizes that for development to be successful in underdeveloped countries it must address the needs of the entire society, not just the economic and financial needs of capital and natural resources.
He recommends pivotal changes in international economic institutions.
1. Reform the World Bank and Development Assistance by replacing conditionality with selectivity as a guideline for granting assistance and increase the amount of assistance available. Often the conditions imposed by the World Bank undermined the democratic processes that they purportedly were established to support.
2. Forgive the debt of developing countries to allow them to grow.
3. Reform the World
Trade Organization to develop a more balanced trade agenda that goes beyond the
scope of trade to include the interests of developing countries and concerns
such as the environment.53
Signs of hope abound that globalization can be a positive dynamic to foster the development and maintenance of democracies. That economists of the stature of Joseph Stiglitz and Noreena Hertz have chosen to leave the World Bank and address the economic challenges in other arenas is hopeful. A recent IMF report has acknowledged that its emphasis on free trade policies in developing countries has been detrimental. It also recommended that developing countries create strong domestic financial institutions before carefully joining the global economy.54 The efforts of organizations such as David Korten’s People-Centered Development Forum, the Capital Ownership Group, and Jubilee 2000 have made positive strides.
However, the most substantial justification for optimism can be found in the Basque region of Spain, where democracy, equality, and social solidarity are core values. The Mondragon Cooperative was established in the 1950s, a period of economic devastation and massive unemployment in the Basque region. It recognizes labor’s primacy and attempts to provide employment for all who need it. Through the Mondragon Cooperatives, those most in need of employment have discovered ways to provide it for themselves.
Its ten basic principles include open admission, democratic organization, sovereignty of labor, the instrumental and subordinate character of capital, participatory management, payment solidarity, intercooperation, social transformation, universality, and education. Members own four different kinds of property: their jobs, the money in their capital accounts, shared ownership in the assets of the cooperatives, and a shared ownership in the subsidiary cooperatives. Through its cooperative structure, Mondragon has grown to become Spain’s sixth largest corporation with subsidiary cooperatives throughout the world. It has done that by giving people precedence over profits. Its exercise of local control over capital and the primacy of labor exemplify Korten’s emphasis on local control and provide a beacon of hope to the rest of the world struggling with the turbulence of globalization.55
I must conclude that democracy will remain viable in our increasingly globalized world only if we foster an economic climate in which labor hires capital and people hold primacy over profits. We need local control of productive assets. We need to localize the global economic system and align its goals with the United Nations. We need a global legal aid for workers in opposition to communities. We need a World Social Organization to counterbalance the World Trade Organization. In concert with the challenges of globalization, we need to meet them at various levels, ranging from the local to the international. Globalization has arrived and it is not within our power to change that, even if we wanted to do so. It is within our power to do our best to see that globalization is a positive force for the majority of the world’s population and to mitigate its negative impact. We have work to do. We need to get to it.
But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having. Its true name is faith. As it is a shallow faith that goes untested, so it is that if we can keep our faith through this terrible test, we will emerge with a conviction of enduring strength.
—John Perry Barlow
Notes
1. William Ebenstein, Today’s Isms, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 139–41.
2. Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy
at Home and Abroad (
3. Don Conway-Long, “Contentious Forces: Globalization and Theo-democracy in the Middle East and Africa” (paper presented at Fourth Annual Symposium on Democracy, Kent State University, 2003).
4. Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, “Antiglobalization Protests and the Future of Democracy” (paper presented at Fourth Annual Symposium on Democracy, Kent State University, 2003).
5. Ibid.
6. Thomas Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the
World after September 11 (
7. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 331–46.
8. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (
9. Ben A. Franklin, “Bush Wears
Religion on His Armored Sleeve,”
10. Tim Dickinson, “Cognitive Dissident,” Mother Jones (Feb. 3, 2003): 5, www.Mother Jones.com (accessed June 14, 2003).
11. Pat G’Orge-Walker, Sister Betty! God’s Calling You! 2d ed. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: A&E Sewells, 1998).
12. Jonathan Rauch, “Let It Be,” Atlantic Monthly (May 2003): 1–2.
13. Conway-Long, “Contentious Forces.”
14. Ibid.
15. J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath, 1978), 168–69.
16. Conway-Long, “Contentious Forces.”
17. Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, 176.
18. Conway-Long, “Contentious Forces.”
19. Edwin Scott Gaustad, Religious History of
20. Conway-Long, “Contentious Forces.”
21. Noreena Hertz, The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and
the Death of Democracy (
22. Jim Hightower, “How a Clerical Error Made Corporations ‘People,’” Hightower Lowdown (Apr. 2003): 2–3.
23. Jack Beatty, Colossus: How the Corporation Changed
24. Esmail Hossein-Zadeh, “NAFTA and Sovereignty,” Science and Society (Summer 1997): 2–3.
25. Lisa Climan, “On a Fast-Track to ‘Free-Trade’ Hell.” Dollars and Sense (Jan.–Feb. 2002): 2.
26. Hossein-Zadeh, “NAFTA,” 1–4.
27. Chris Framarin, “Democracy and the Expanded Property Rights of NAFTA: An Analysis of the Potential Conflict” (paper presented at Fourth Annual Symposium on Democracy, Kent State University, 2003).
28. Climan, “On a Fast Track,” 2.
29. Framarin, “Democracy and the Expanded Property Rights.”
30. Deborah Groban Olson, “Fair Exchange,” photocopy (Capital Ownership Group, Ohio Employee Ownership Center, Kent State University, May 2003), 2.
31. Laffey and Weldes, “Antiglobalization.”
32. “Economist vs. the Terrorist,” Economist (Feb. 1, 2003): 58.
33. David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 2d ed.
(
34. Bill Emmott, “Radical Thoughts on Our 160th Birthday: A Survey of Capitalism and Democracy,” Economist (June 28, 2003): 16.
35. Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman, Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness, and Reality (Chicago: American Library Association, 1995), 4–5.
36. Ibid., 72–73.
37. Ibid., 7.
38. Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information (New York: Dutton, 1993).
39. Laffey and Weldes, “Antiglobalization.”
40. Hertz, “Silent Takeover,” 39.
41. Laffey and Weldes, “Antiglobalization.”
42. Ibid., 13–16.
43. Hertz, “Silent Takeover,” 199.
44. Laffey and Weldes, “Antiglobalization.”
45. “Democracy Clings on in a Cold Climate,” Economist (Aug. 15, 2002): 1, www.economist.com (accessed June 14, 2003).
46. Richard J. Lowry, A. H. Maslow: An Intellectual Portrait (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1973), 24–29.
47. Jessica Tuchman Matthews,
interview by Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Show,
NBC,
48. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1941), 104–5.
49. Ibid., 276.
50. Joel Pett, “The Week in
Cartoons,”
51. Hertz, Silent Takeover, 209–12.
52. Korten, When Corporations Rule, 267–80.
53. Stiglitz, Globalization, 241–47.
54. “Trade: An Overdue IMF Mea Culpa,” The Week (Apr. 4, 2003): 35.
55. Race Matthews, Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stakeholder Society (Kent, U.K.: Comerford and Miller, 1999), 182–85, 233–34.
Home | Back | Next Article