What is Globalization? By Richard Grossman

Richard L. Grossman PO Box 390 Milton Mills NH 03852
<www.poclad.org> Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy

29 May 2001

1. Corporate operatives have made the word "globalization" a potent weapon
in their campaigns to consolidate power, authority and wealth; to frame and
control public debate; and to divide-and-conquer opponents. When corporate
operatives -- including writers in the corporate-owned press,
corporate-drenched politicians and intellectuals-for-hire -- use this word,
they mean one thing for public consumption, and quite another thing for
their internal plotting.

Public consumption: they work hard to have people to believe globalization
refers to a world characterized by greater and friendlier interactions among
peoples and nations, where folks are happily trading with one another,
exchanging ideas, sharing quaint customs, traveling to and fro, equally
enjoying the boundless prosperity which comes from "lifting barriers" to
free and full expression of human wants, aspirations and money flow. They
want people to link "globalization" with some vague ideas of constant
progress, eradication of poverty, planetary justice. Within corporate
boardrooms and think tanks, along with USA government sanctums:
globalization describes a privatization of the world. It is about the global
corporatization of practically everything: from goods and services to water,
air, health care and education; from ideas and histories to art, genes and
body parts. It is about the "rule of law" -- and therefore the military
power of the United States of America (and its so-called "allies" in
assorted multi-nation alliances like NATO, WTO, etc.) -- empowering the
propertied few and their giant corporations.

Globalization also is about the homogenization of everything from biology to
law and jurisprudential principles; from food to films to language to sales
and consumption. Globalization is the corporatization of life. It is about
the few who run global corporations crushing the aspirations of peoples in
communities, regions and nations for self-governance. Globalization is the
end of human rights...the end to the idea of species rights, place rights --
accompanied by the commodification of everything under the sun (from water
to soil to space, to, of course, the sun itself. As lawyers and
propagandists well know, those who do the defining and the naming control
discussion, control ideas, control rules and laws. They therefore dictate
when and where police, courts and the armed forces bring their coercive
power to bear. In the United States, the rule of law has enabled men of
property to govern through their giant corporations. It has helped these men
of property inflict legal violence against women and men struggling to bring
about democratic futures. There's nothing unique here: segregation and Jim
Crow laws in the United States, along with apartheid laws in the Union of
South Africa, manipulated the rule of law -- and hence the armed force of
government -- against people of color.

2. It is regrettable that people and civic organizations around the world
opposing corporate +government efforts to control and homogenize the Cosmos
play adjectival reform with the word "globalization" (as in "equitable"
globalization, "kinder" globalization). The same is true for "free trade." A
new abomination in this part o! f the world is what corporate+government
advocates are calling a "Free Trade Agreement of the Americas." But this is
not an agreement about "free trade." It is a corporate property rights
agreement...a corporate governance agreement. And so every time an opponent
publishes a book or pamphlet denouncing this agreement and calls it a "free
trade" issue, corporate operatives win a great victory. Every time opponents
say that the appropriate response to "free trade" is "fair trade," they
reinforce the corporate idea that this controversy is about "trade," and not
about dictatorship by the few who run global corporations.

Let us reject all corporate language -- which is, after all, the language of
deception and sales. We can speak clearly and simply about how laws
advantaging corporate interests over human rights are fundamentally
illegitimate, unjust, anti-democratic. This would make it easier for people
every-where to see that each time an agglomeration of property organized as
corporations increase their authority under law, they exterminate people's
rights. As we frame issues in the context of democracy and legitimacy,
People are better able to put corporate operatives and pimping politicians
on the defensive. People can help one another see that communities and
nations have many choices when fashioning the rules for living in harmony
with one another, with other species, and with the Earth.

3. As for me and my work with the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy
(POCLAD): I do not use the word "globalization" except to define it as I did
above. I do not define myself as "anti-globalization." I do talk about the
"global corporatization" being imposed by a very small minority, and
encourage activist efforts which nurture democracy, self-governance,
biological and cultural diversity. I favor greater contact and interaction
among people of the world. I favor democracy and self-governance, public
ownership of the commons and clear public authority over necessities like
energy, water, education, health care, food, etc. I believe that people in
different communities and nations should be able to trade with one another.
But I do not believe that any community or nation should have the authority
under law to dictate rules to other communities and other nations. People
around the world are increasingly being instructed that public decision
making is less "efficient" than corporations' private decrees (gussied up as
"market decisions"). But surely there is ample evidence that public decision
making invariably leads to wiser and fairer results than fiats by
self-appointed big shots of commerce, finance, industry and bellicosity. In
the United States, corporations wield greater rights under law than people
do.

Corporations successfully claim constitutional rights of freedom of speech
and freedom of assembly. They use the protection of government to deny these
rights to their employees. Corporations also successfully claim
constitutional rights of due process and equal protection of the law. Such
fundamental rights were written into our constitution by radical activists
seeking to enable all human beings to be part of the "self-governing people"
so that they could use elections, lawmaking, jurisprudence and education to
prevent tyrants from running the country. To grant constitutional rights to
property organized as corporations is to establish a rule of law which makes
it easy for the few to tyrannize the many. [It is my understanding that the
constitution of the Union of South Africa -- probably one of the most
freedom-inspiring and human liberty - protecting constitution in the world
-- explicitly grants citizenship rights -- and therefore constitutional
powers --- to corporations. Is this true?] Today my country, your country
and the Earth face a corporate holocaust against human and Earthly rights
which corporations are trying to establish as "legal." This is because when
giant corporations wield human rights backed by constitutions and the law
(and therefore enforced by police, the courts, and armed forces -- and
sanctioned by cultural norms), the rights of people, other species and the
Earth are annihilated.

4. In sum: globalization as conceived and implemented by leaders of giant
corporations and their politicians is about domination over the many by the
few, protected (and camouflaged) by the rule of law. This has been the
reality in my country since its founding in 1787, despite all the propaganda
you may have heard to the contrary. People across the world are struggling
to substitute their own visions of democracy and self-governance and enough
for the relentless destructions that will be guaranteed by corporate
dominion over the Earth. Such struggles cannot be won using the language,
values, tools, and methods of our corporate oppressors.

***

In Solidarity & with Best Wishes, Richard Grossman