Shelf life - Hey Hey? Ho Ho! - books about globalism, synagogue architecture, founding fathers - book review

National Review, Dec 31, 2001 by Michael Potemra

In the rhetoric of malcontents of all stripes-Left, Right, and center- "globalization" has become the all-purpose bogeyman, the deepest "root cause" of almost every injustice (real or perceived) in the modern world. It stands to reason that at a time of unusually rapid change, the easy explanation-the convenient demonization-will find ready acceptance; it's no coincidence that Islamist extremism, for example, burgeons even as the information economy creates miracles.

But eventually, thoughtful people will want to look behind the protest chants-and let me concede that now, as usual, the protesters have the best songs-and investigate the truth of the matter. Two new books are very helpful in this regard. In The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization (Cato, 164 pp., $9.95), Swedish journalist Tomas Larsson investigates the real-life effect globalization has had in various countries, and concludes that many of the supposed ill effects of globalization are actually the result of the exact opposite: self- interested local institutions blocking their peoples' access to the global market. He writes that the Asian economic crisis of the 1990s-to take a spectacular example-was produced by "homegrown shortcomings . . . South Koreans and Thais were up to their eyebrows in corruption, domestic corruption. Rotten banking systems. Rotten education systems."

This is why some of the Asians Larsson interviewed view globalization as part of the solution, not part of the problem: "Globalization is a strong force on their side, a force that can help topple the walls that have sheltered corruption." And their insight is supported by a speech Larsson quotes from this year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: "The main losers in today's very unequal world are not those who are too exposed to globalization, but those who have been left out. . . . Governments [of rich countries] all favor free trade in principle, but too often they lack the political strength to confront those within their own countries who have come to rely on protectionist arrangements."

That's Kofi Annan-quoted by a Swedish journalist, no less. The word is clearly getting out that the world's dictators of local economic reality-greedy politicians, powerful business interests, and protectionist unions-have much to fear from the spread of globalization: They could lose their leverage over the economic lives of local workers and consumers. Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times believes that globalization is as inevitable as the next sunrise, but Larsson warns that perhaps it won't be "quite so automatic as that. . . . To politicians, and certain of their constituents, walls confer a certain sense of control. That sense of control was always somewhat illusory, of course," but it exerts a lasting appeal-one that enables people to tolerate injustice in the name of preserving "stability."

It's natural, then, that globalization has powerful enemies; and in his important new book Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism (Wiley, 368 pp., $29.95), Cato trade-policy expert Brink Lindsey demonstrates just how powerful they are. The book is much longer than Larsson's, and tells a sadder story; the "dead hand" of the title is the remnant of statist economic thinking that has survived the fall of the Soviet bloc, and continued the rule of poverty in many nations.

Lindsey finds an excellent analogue for today's anti-globalization movement in the rise of collectivism late in the 19th century, when conservative forces-led by Bismarck-turned their backs on free-market orthodoxy and set about creating what was to become, in the 20th century, the full-fledged welfare state. The fecundity of the analogy lies in the fact that, as Lindsey writes, "collectivism was a reactionary force, not a progressive one-an Industrial Counterrevolution, not the fulfillment of industrialism's promise. Consequently, it is not especially surprising that the forces of reaction were especially potent in the world's economic backwaters."

It is, of course, those backwaters that most need the liberating breeze of globalization-the whisper in a laborer's ear that somebody thousands of miles away is willing to pay him more for a day's work than the local hacienda plutocrat and his political cronies will. Lindsey doesn't soft-pedal the traumas of dislocation and rapid change, but he asks us to focus on a much more important truth: "The far greater tragedy is the humdrum, everyday deprivation suffered by the billions of human beings who are born, live, and die in conditions of economic underdevelopment. We know now how to lift that curse: All the best in economic theory and analysis, and all the accumulated disillusionment of a century of collectivist experimentation, tell us that market competition is the surest path to affluence."

-- Some of mankind's most beautiful achievements have arisen in the attempt to create suitable places for worship. The organization of a sacred space-aesthetically pleasing in human terms but at the same time visibly set apart from ordinary human concerns-has challenged the devotion and ingenuity of artists and architects since the dawn of history; a Chartres can stand as shorthand for the acme of human accomplishment.