Editorial

Citation

Coleman, J. (2001), "Editorial", European Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2001.05413cab.004

Editorial

Deputy Editor Aidan Rankin

Editorial

The global dilemma

The whole world today is clearly at a crossroads and perhaps the most important question is whether at that global level we take one road out of it or two. If the WTO follows the route of not connecting with people, or only nominally working with and using elected politicians to put on a front which is not truly democratic, then it will take one road from the crossroads and people and those who protest very actively on their behalf will take another. It will be to the advantage of neither of them and in the end will lead to a battle on a global scale like the one Thor Heyerdahl describes in his book on Easter Island, Aku Aku, where almost the whole population wiped itself out.

This issue puts the piece by Mike Moore, the Director-General of the WTO, side by side with John Bunzl's contribution about his forthcoming book The Simultaneous Policy. It must be abundantly clear that at the very end of the day even the multinational corporations need people as their customers and must allow, if not encourage, them to create wealth in their own small units or they will destroy themselves. What happens along the way is the immediate problem and their leaders need to be very far-sighted, if they are to avoid the catastrophic effects of immediate greed. Bunzl has chosen an often obscured quotation from Fritz Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful, recognising "the duality of the human requirement when it comes to the question of size …" and that "we need the freedom of lots and lots of small, autonomous units and, at the same time, the orderliness of large-scale, possibly global, unity and co-ordination". Gerard Fairtlough used a similar quotation from Schumacher as the basis of his book Creative Compartments (Fairtlough, 1997).

Mike Moore has said that in both rich and poor countries people are three times better off than they were in 1950. That is no doubt true but there is a catch in it. The consumerism that producers relentlessly encourage may threaten the very framework in which these advances in prosperity have been brought about. Merely being more prosperous – particularly if much of that prosperity is only being thrown into skips by people who do not really want it – can be dangerous and lead to social and environmental disaster. John Bunzl takes this kind of disaster into account and yet wants a version of globalisation. This journal has always argued that it is dangerous to be for or against Europe. No sensible person is against Europe. Sensible people ask questions about the kind of Europe that is desirable. It is surely the same with globalisation. No sensible person is against the world. It is a question of what kind of world we are creating. That question is one to be put equally to both the WTO and the protestors.

Jürgen Krönig, in his article on television in the age of globalisation, echoes the prophecies of Thomas Carlyle in the nineteenth century in trying to contradict the optimistic picture of the future that hides the sickness of the modern world. Those who wish to promote consumerism grow rich by telling the world that they are providing prosperity, yet prosperity is not the mainstay of human happiness. Of course ending starvation and deprivation must be a major goal of sound governments but prosperity beyond necessity does not guarantee satisfaction. While life is fairly hard, people have sympathy for one another and, after the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter are met, that perhaps is the most valuable commodity human beings generate.

In his article "Political correctness and globalisation: two sides of the same coin" Aidan Rankin provides a very significant analysis of current political trends. He shows how the New Left is supporting the aims of the giant multinational corporations – instead of "connecting with people". One of the most interesting aspects of his contribution is the part played by emotion, i.e. emotion played upon, in the development of authoritarian liberalism. In a speech in the Roman Senate in 63BC Julius Caesar began: "It is the duty of all men, Conscript Fathers, in their deliberations of subjects of difficult determination, to divest themselves of hatred and affection, of revenge and pity. The mind when clouded with such passions cannot easily discover the truth, nor has any man ever gratified his own headstrong inclination and at the same time answered any worthy purpose". Rankin challenges the headstrong New Left and exposes the part emotion plays in the imposition of their policies. Surely the idea of free speech as "repressive toleration" is a dangerous concept and, in the wiser words of John Stuart Mill, "we lose the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error".

Normally this journal, when it discovers interesting talks, asks the speakers to convert them into appropriate articles on the same or similar lines. Christopher Fildes' talk, "Dollars and pounds: euros and yen", however, was in a category of its own and could scarcely have been converted without losing its impish character, which conceals its serious message that diversity not uniformity must characterise a globalised world.

The next piece is a non-technical account of a very technical paper by Richard Baldwin and Paul Krugman produced for the Centre for Economic Policy Research, representing the views of the authors, not necessarily those of the Centre. It aims to show that low taxes are not the only thing that attracts companies to establish themselves in a particular country.

Finally, a letter from David Wells is an interesting response to Aidan Rankin's earlier article "Are human rights becoming old-fashioned?" (New European, EBR, Vol. 12 No. 2, 2000). He highlights the danger that "Extreme liberalism" or neo-liberalism "is one-sided and blind, both to the merits of its opponents and to the weaknesses in its own fantasy polity".

There is yet another danger in the process of globalisation, namely that the legalistic development of simple, basic human rights can turn that into a web of tyranny.

New European is publishing four new books this year which have a direct and intriguing bearing on the globalisation process: Richard Body's England for the English, John Bunzl's The Simultaneous Policy, Aidan Rankin's Politics of the Forked Tongue and with Green Books is republishing Leopold Kohr's Breakdown of Nations.

John Coleman

Reference

Fairtlough, G. (1997), Creative Compartments, Adamantine, Twickenham.