have become especially loud from the right (including a long list of European politicians). Furthermore, there are the new widespread alter-globalization movements that have their basis in critical perspectives on globalization.
Former President Donald Trump is among the list of politicians attacking globalization. Speaking at the United Nations in 2018, Trump stated: “we reject the ideology of globalism” in favor of the “ideology of patriotism” (Friedman 2018). This rejection is especially significant for its delivery to one of the institutions most known for global cooperation, the UN. Trump continued that “America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination.” He cited as examples the United States’ denunciation of the International Criminal Court, departure from the Human Rights Council, and withdrawal from the Global Compact for Migration. For Trump, this intense distrust of global institutions and an “America first” attitude also came with ongoing attacks on individual nations, making international cooperation difficult.
When we turn to criticisms from the left, there is no shortage of them either, including from such notable political figures as Venezuela’s late president, Hugo Chávez. The latter, in a speech to the United Nations in 2006, lambasted the US as an imperialistic nation endeavoring to create a world empire through globalization. In the process, Chávez called then-President George W. Bush a “devil.” At several points during his speech he held aloft a book authored by the noted American linguist, turned left-wing political analyst, Noam Chomsky (2003, 2013).
Noam Chomsky is not opposed to globalization per se. Rather, his target is neoliberal globalization dominated by the US and its economic interests (2003, 2013). To put it another way, he is opposed to corporate globalization, a process aimed at opening markets in order to maximize profits and the interests and economic well-being of investors. However, he favors globalization as it is represented by, for example, the labor movement and by the World Social Forum. In other words, Chomsky favors globalization from below rather than from above; he favors alter-globalization. Most generally, he argues that no one really opposes globalization as an overall process (which is really just about international integration); it is the specific ways in which it is presently operating that he and other left-wing critics oppose.
Chomsky is critical of neoliberal economic globalization on several grounds. For one thing, such globalization is largely sponsored by the US and is designed to further its interests as well as those of American corporations and the “haves” within the US. More generally, it works to the benefit of the North in general, and the elites there, as well. Related to this is the fact that globalization of this type benefits the few in the world, but does not benefit the masses, the “people.” Chomsky obviously favors a globalization that works to the benefit of the vast majority of people in the world, not just a select few.
Chomsky also argues that neoliberal globalization does not enhance, but rather operates to the detriment of, democracy. That is, it enhances the power of the inter-linked corporate and state leaders who exert control over the economy, and much else, without being answerable, accountable to the people. Privatization, which he sees as one element of neoliberalism, “reduces the arena of potential democratic choice” (2003: 138). Furthermore, with truly important matters usurped by those in power, the people are left to decide democratically upon relatively trivial matters: “What remains of democracy is largely the right to choose among commodities” (2003: 139).
As an American, and as a world-famous scholar, Chomsky’s stinging attacks on the US are particularly notable. He is critical of not only America in general, and of its economic actions, but also of its political and military undertakings. He was particularly critical of American actions throughout the world, such as the invasion of Iraq, during the presidency of George W. Bush. He sees these as part of an American effort to achieve hegemony in the world. But Chomsky sees the US as an extreme form of the real problem: “concentrated power,” which “pursues the war relentlessly, and very self-consciously.”
Moving beyond specific arguments such as those offered from the right (Trump) and the left (Chomsky), what are the more general criticisms of the globaphobics? As is clear from the above, a major criticism is that globalization has not had the positive effects that globaphiliacs like Friedman assume and assert. The critics tend to emphasize globalization’s negative effects on the less well-off, especially in the South. The latter are seen as losing more than they gain from globalization. Indeed, what is often emphasized is that instead of catching up as a result of globalization, many of those in the less developed world fall farther behind those in the developed world; the gap grows wider rather than narrower as a result of globalization. Thus, global capitalism, like capitalism in general, serves to benefit the “haves” while disadvantaging the “have nots”; it makes the latter’s economic situation worse rather than better, at least relatively. To put this another way, the globaphobic view is that globalization leads to greater global inequality (see Chapter 13). This is in stark contrast to at least one of the implications of Friedman’s “flat world” thesis that globalization is leading to greater global equality.
Needless to say, the globaphiliacs have little use for the globaphobics (and vice versa). For example, Martin Wolf, a prominent neoliberal, often argues that the criticisms of globalization are “wrong,” “almost entirely mistaken,” “largely, though not entirely, groundless,” and so on. Wolf calls one of the a well-known critical works in globalization, Hardt and Negri’s Empire, an “absurdity” (Wolf 2005: 57). His most general judgment of the critics is the following:
The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the collapse of the Soviet communist tyranny, an unprecedentedly rapid spread of democracy and nigh on universal economic liberalization. East and South Asia, home to 55 % of humanity, enjoyed a leap towards prosperity. Yet critics of globalization talk of this period of hope and achievement as if it were a catastrophe. Some do so out of a genuine and understandable dismay over the extent of poverty and misery in a world of plenty, but then reach the wrong conclusion on the causes and cures. Others do so because they lament the death of the revolutionary tradition that held sway over the imaginations of so many for two centuries. Most of these critics compare the imperfect world in which we live with a perfect one of their imagining. It is in their way of viewing what has happened in the world, rather than the details of their critique, that those hostile to global economic integration are most in error. (Wolf 2005: 308, italics added)
FINDING A MIDDLE GROUND
Some scholars have sought to find some sort of middle ground position between the two extremes discussed above. One example is In Defense of Globalization by the well-known economist, Jagdish Bhagwati (2004). However, the title indicates the problems involved in finding such a compromise position since the book is mainly a defense of globalization, especially the economics of it, in the face of a raft of criticisms. Bhagwati uses hard data, subjective impressions, and personal experiences to argue that, in the main, economic globalization has been a good thing. However, he admits that left to itself globalization will produce good results, but not necessarily the best results. Thus, he grudgingly acknowledges that there are not only benefits, but also problems, in globalization today: “Everything does not necessarily improve every time! There are occasional downsides” (2004: 228). His solution to the problems, his suggestion on how to make globalization better, is to manage the process by coming up with more appropriate social policies. Managing globalization is heresy to most economists (especially neoliberals) who believe in a market free of outside interference, but Bhagwati is willing to deviate from established economic dogma. In the process, he offers a comparatively balanced position, but nonetheless his work is most strongly associated with globaphilia.
Another middle-ground position is taken by de la Dehesa who argues that globalization, “although positive overall, entails certain unavoidable, but mainly temporary, negative economic, social, political, and cultural consequences that must be urgently addressed” (2007: 2). De la Dehesa closes his analysis with a long
