The Travesty of ``Globalization''

Stella K. Block

1996

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 3rd quarter 1996, No. 344

Forty-five years ago (May 15, 1951) Howard Scott issued a 15-page analysis of world conditions which he titled, The Tragedy of Errors. We present just three pertinent paragraphs from that document to prove, in the light of what has transpired in the intervening 45 years -- how correct he was in his analysis:

``In the last half century the United States has achieved the technological leadership of the world. We have become the major exporter to the world, of technological equipment, processes, machinery, tools, raw materials and foodstuffs. Our technological equipment and our machinery have been shipped around the globe. The significance of this development is seldom realized by our national leaders, let alone the public at large. We are conscious only of the persuasive power of our salesmanship in selling the latest product of American engineering to one of the backward areas of the globe. All areas outside of United States have, in our eyes, been backward; for, from the dizzy pinnacle of our financial and technological success, we have looked down our noses at the peoples of the rest of the world. This is a strange paradox, for this tremendous out-pouring of technological equipment from the producing centers of United States and Canada has been the chief contributing factor in the creation of revolutionary social change around the globe.
``Our technological installations in the rest of the world have introduced new concepts, concepts that are many times more revolutionary to human society than a thousand Declarations of Independence or a thousand Constitutions. These new concepts have been intuitively recognized even in their embryonic beginning by the 'backward' people of the world. They have simultaneously created visions on the banks of the Amazon, the Ganges, the Yantze, the Amur, the Nile, the Volga and the Danube. They have opened up new vistas of collective unanimity and solidarity of human beings in a unanimity of purpose and collective action, and can, through the use of militant technology, transform their own areas in their own time into something compared to which the quests of the last five thousand years have been but empty gestures.
``We have delineated in the preceding pages some of the major weaknesses and errors in the geographic and resource position of the erstwhile allies of the American Crusade. In summing, we are compelled to add the greatest error of them all, namely, that continental United States no longer has the resources to maintain the profligate consumption of raw materials by private enterprise at profitable prices at home and also conduct an unlimited war of indefinite duration, supported only by allies suffering from resource malnutrition. It is high time that this country and this Continent formulated a national policy and a strategic implementation of that policy which will conform to the technological operation of the geography and resources of this Continent. Unless we do so soon, we will face the tragedy of our errors.''

In practically every publication that we pick up today, in 1996, there is an article on the disintegration, corrosion and degradation of cultures, the environment and the lives of people around the globe because of the tunnel vision of the very successful ``business practices'' of the multinationals. They have spread their tentacles over the whole world wherever there were resources and consumers to exploit. They have been extremely successful -- up to a point, but for the short term only. The tunnel vision of the ``business mind-set'' is manifesting itself in many ways. Just two articles in the April 22nd issue of BUSINESS WEEK emphasizes this ``mind-set.'' One titled, ``Doing Business with Strongmen'' with a subtitle, ``The New China Lobby'' lists a number of American Corporations going to bat for China in the fight to preserve a ``most- favored-nation (MFN) status'', because they do not ``want their investments endangered'' by any brouhaha with China and the United States. According to this particular article, ``They don't want their investments or sales held hostage should China retaliate against Asia.'' Heaven forbid that any thing should get in the way of profits! Another article in the same publication lists the names of the corporations involved in this ``China Lobby'': ``Business Goes to Bat for Beijing. A group of U.S. multinationals...has put together a pro-China Lobbying effort covering several areas.'' On the flip side of the above ``lobbying'' is another article wherein there is evidence that China and Russia are ``becoming friends.'' Again the headline reads: ``The Sino- Russian Thaw is Making Washington Shiver.'' [!] During the ``Cold War'' between USSR and United States, according to this article, the most dangerous flash point may have been the ``stark, rocky valleys of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers that form the border between Russia and China.'' Today, Russia and China are heading toward the closest relations they've had in decades. This also spells ``bad news'' for American business interests!

China is headlined in practically every popular periodical subscribed to by the average North American. The propaganda is very subtle. China's billion and a quarter plus population presents a very lucrative market for all the gidgets and gadjets that can be foisted on any people. NEWSWEEK devoted the bulk of its April 1st issue to China and the implications of China's resurgence as a world power. American business concern is summed up in an editorial at the beginning of the report: ``A friendly China? Not the one that thumbs its nose at America's pretentions to be an Asian power, even as American warships steam through the Pacific --a China that was merely prickly -- that one could live with. But a China that sees itself as a natural enemy of the United States -- that's another matter.'' How can one do business with someone as big as China and who obviously is not impressed with America's brand of salesmanship or diplomacy?

In the May 20th issue of BUSINESS WEEK the lead article was ``The New Economics of Food.'' A subtitle reads: ``As global demand outpaces supply, the haves and have-nots are in for a shock.'' The lead article begins with a description of an Illinois farmer surfing on his computer for the commodity-market news and being very pleased to learn that ``Asia is gobbling up U.S. Grain again.'' This pleases him of course. The article goes on to describe a family sitting down to dinner 7000 miles away in China. It describes the dinner in detail: ``Just five years ago, they would eat mostly rice and vegetables. But these days...they enjoy a spread of meat, fish and eggs...'' This situation is occurring clear across China. Industrialization is creating a ``middle class'' with more income to demand a higher living standard but, in the process, productive farm land is being appropriated for the construction of roads, buildings, warehouses, factories and other accoutrements of a ``consuming'' public. Lester R. Brown of WORLDWATCH publishes a book with the intriguing question ``Who Will Feed China?'' China, with a billion and a quarter population demanding a higher standard of living (commensurate with the United States?) poses a very serious problem. With a declining base of acreage to raise food, how will China feed herself? To go a step further with the population of the whole world approaching astronomical figures, where will the food come from to feed everybody?

Yes, business has gone world-wide in its blind, unswerving drive to maintain this anarchic consumer way of life. What has been the result in terms of human and environmental degradation? Robert Kaplan, in his latest book THE ENDS OF THE EARTH (published by Random House, 1996) paints a graphic and rather grim picture of what has happened to the world in the wake of American business ``globalization.'' The two most frequent subjects that he has described is the population density and the environmental degradation that he has encountered in all the lands he traveled through. To quote from the review on the cover, ``Kaplan's intention was to investigate first-hand the effect of population explosion and environmental degradation in these countries and to see how the various cultures he encountered repsonded to them. But, as he traveled, talking to gun smugglers and government warlords and shantytown dwellers, he discovered that the real problem in places as far afield as Sierra Leone and Western China, was the re-emergence of longstanding cultural rivalries and dissolution of national boundries as regions redefine themselves along ethnic and historic lines.'' This redefinition is leaving in its wake conflicts of historic and long- standing rivalries between the various tribes and people. The breakup of Yugoslavia resulting in the present ``Bosnian War'' is only one example. The tribal conflicts that have been tearing up Africa is less widely publicized but just as bloody and traumatic for those involved. As Christopher Hitchens points out in his article in the May 27th issue of THE NATION ``Africa as a continent has been cut adrift, the great powers have no further use of it. It can be left to rot and crash. Every now and then a nation struggles up from nowhere -- like Eritrea, or like once despised Uganda. And every now and then a people collapses into a Medusa-like spasm of Hobbesian war, the war of all against all. Liberia is a salient recent example. But the spectators do not have the delicacy or sensibility of Delacroix. They look on the disaster as a wreck, an act of God, a calamity -- as anything but a crime or an abandonment. They even know enough to mention the Medusa, without knowing enough to know that they are missing the point. (By way of explanation the ``Medusa'' was one of four ships in the year 1819, that left France for Senagal; the Medusa hit a reef and became stranded. As the story goes, there were not enough lifeboats, so a raft was constructed for the rank and file soldiers, crew and some passengers. This was towed by the officers in the lifeboats; but that situation did not last long because the officers cut the tow ropes and left the occupants of the raft adrift on the ocean. Two survived and were picked up by a passing ship.) Africa is, indeed in a struggle for survival.

A grim picture of mindless industrialization by the Russians is presented in the June/July issue of NATIONAL WILDLIFE by Glenn Garelik, a reporter, who spent two years in Russia. He titled his article, ``Russia's Legacy of Death.'' He describes in chilling detail how the pressure to industrialize has devastated the environment and polluted the streams and the very air that people breathe. Just one example will serve to present the picture of devastation: Due north of Kusbass, near the Arctic Circle, acid rain from the smelting of nickel, copper and platinum has deforested 880,000 acres, according to the Russian newspaper IZVESTIYA. Solid waste processing facilities can handle barely more than a quarter of the seven billion tons produced annually. A 1994 report by the Security Council of President Boris Yeltsin declares that three quarters of Russia's water is unpotable. Other studies place the figure still higher.'' Garelik declared at the beginning of his article that one of the things that he missed most while in Russia was to be able to get a clean glass of water out of the tap. Now that he is home he can't get enough of it.

The above examples are but the tip of the ``iceberg'' of the social upheaval that is taking place globally due to the technological progression world wide. Nowhere is there a voice raised calling for an entirely new way of structuring society except from Technocracy. North America can show the way, as we already have the blueprint for a Technological Social Design. Again we quote Howard Scott who stated in 1962:

``Technocracy, the body of thought, is a technology of geomechanics, a scientific system for the control of all operations involving this earth. It is therefore applicable on every other continent of the globe and would achieve vastly different results from the present political, economic operation of any area, whether privately owned or state owned. However, it must be borne in mind that each continent has an entirely different setup and continental complex of arable land, fresh water, number of growing days in a year, and precipitation, along with a geological structure and conformation that would provide the natural resources and energy potential. It is therefore obvious that, while Technocracy's system of social operation can be applied to any major area of the earth's surface the social resultants will be different due to the basic differences heretofore stated.
``The philosophy of political socialism has as one of its fundamental tenets the expropriation of the owning or capitalist class and the operation of the socialized state for the common good of all. This, of course, would be accomplished through legislation by the new government of the people. It does not axiomatically follow that a change of ownership would bring about one iota of change in the energy factors or in the load factors of operation. On the other hand, in a system designed to change the load factors of operation and the energy factors of a design and control, it does axiomatically follow that any ownership by individuals of the means of production and distribution of physical wealth would be abolished. This is the difference between the concepts of philosophic socialization and that of technological socialization. Only machines can reproduce machines and, as this social system continues to install more and more energy-consuming devices, more technological equipment and processes will be introduced, thereby making more jobs for the machine and less and less for the human being. We, in Technocracy, think it is high time that we North Americans of today face the fact that there never has been any virtue in toil. A continued application of more technology and more energy-consuming devices will result in the continuous elimination of toil. The working class is fast disappearing and, when it goes, the bourgeoisie too will disappear as an exploiting class.''

North America must show the way.