Rejecting globalisation

                                        Babar Ayaz  

The writer is the author of What’s Wrong With Pakistan?


When progressive writers formulate terms like ‘design of global cultural hegemony and the writers’ role in the defence of heritage, culture and peace”, as they did recently at a conference in Islamabad it honestly sounds – to me – like a right-wing proposition.

It is, therefore, important at the very outset to understand what ‘globalisation’ is, and then analyse the positive and negative influences it has on society and its values. That is important because rejecting globalisation via sweeping statements is fashionable.

So first a re-reading of the Communist Manifesto is perhaps in order when we discuss globalisation and its influences on our society. Interestingly, Marx and Engels had forecast the inevitable rise of globalisation in 1848: 

“Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguished the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify... The need of a constantly expanding market for its production chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.” (Read globalisation).


“The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of the industry the national ground on which it stood.” (emphasis added)

“All old established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose productions are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants requiring for their satisfaction the products of different lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. 

“And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature…

“The cheap prices of the commodities are the heavy artillery, with which it battles down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on plain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeoisie mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

Moving towards mankind progress, according to political theorist Michael J Sandal the question is: “which frictions and barriers are mere sources of waste and inefficiency, and which are a source of identity that we should protect.” 

Total rejection of globalisation is irrational. So let’s leave that to religious parties – the Left should not stand with them. Then how do we judge what is good in globalisation for the people and what is not? Perhaps the best approach for the Left would be to sift through globalisation and support that which contributes to raising the standard-of-living of the people. And oppose where it goes against the people by suggesting alternate means that are workable today and not in the unforeseen future. They should not forget that in today’s ‘flat world’ – thanks to the cyber revolution – it is not just capital has no boundaries, labour has no boundaries either.

Writers are doing that to a certain extent. We should bring into focus social and humanitarian issues in this market and profit driven world order. At best writers should be creating literature that promotes humanism; they should lobby for those who are successful in reminding policymakers and economic managers that they have to rise above their class interests. This is important to reduce frictions in the world at large, which makes good business sense as well.

The questions for the Left are: Can debating and screaming pressurise policymakers to do some good for the people? Can we just go on cribbing about what is wrong with the world all the time? Is it enough to tell the people who are poor and suffering to reject all that is good and bad about the capitalist system and its global manifestation and to wait for their redemption till there is a socialist revolution? 

For decades we said the revolution is around the corner – and failed to deliver it. Societies where revolutions were successful failed to sustain them largely because they degenerated into highly centralised inefficient bureaucratic states.

In this backdrop another question writers have to ask themselves is: what are they offering to people to join them now? Yes, now is important. The world is moving fast, the old paradigms are falling, new division of labour is being created at cyber speed, it’s moving beyond the industrial society references. In this world where technology is changing relations of production at a faster pace than when Marx and Engels took notice of it, writers have to rethink its theory, strategy and tactics.