Globalisation

My friend Scott Kaufman asked me to point you to the book event The Valve is hosting on Amanda Claybaugh’s The Novel of Purpose. He was even considerate enough to write this post for me — links and all! [Though, truth to tell, I did edit it a little bit. And the fact that I am saying as much in brackets shows that there are limits to how much control of the author function I will give up.– sm]

Miriam Burstein has already thrown her hat into the ring. And Scott [SEK, that is, not me-sm]* has written a briefer on the context in which Claybaugh’s book is, as we say in the [academico-litcrit] biz, “intervening.”

So if you find the 19^th century, social reform, literary realism or the works of Dickens, Bronte, and Twain at all interesting, I [or we? something like that-sm] suggest you check it out.

* [this is kind of like “Temptation Inside Your Heart” on the “lost” Velvet Underground album which has a couple of tracks of Lou Reed commenting on the song and arguing with his own commentary: “I can talk to myself if I want to….”-sm]

A new “bloggingheads”:http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=233 between Dan Drezner and meself is up, in which, as the blurb puts it, “Dan and Henry analyze Bh.tv’s new business model and then defy it by failing to yell at each other.” One of the topics we discuss is the economic future of the EU, and Andy Moravcsik’s recent “article”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17659940/site/newsweek/ on it. As a slightly belated EU 50th birthday post, and an addendum to my previous “disagreement with Andy”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/16/not-frightening-the-horses/, I’d like to point to this “brand new paper”:http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp07-4.pdf (pdf) by Martin Höpner and Armin Schäfer at the Max-Planck Institut in Cologne. The take home point is that the EU’s market integration processes aren’t neutral and technical, as they are often described as being, but are instead highly political, and have adverse consequences for coordinated market economies. This feeds into the EU’s legitimation problems.

Deregulating the economy is a genuinely political decision that cannot be left to independent agents. … Whether the member states need a ‘neo-liberal’ corrective is not for the observer to choose but must be the result of public deliberation and parliamentary decisions – otherwise, the price to pay is a serious democratic deficit. However, instead of a strengthening of input-oriented legitimacy, we witness ongoing – yet increasingly unsuccessful – attempts to de-politicize EU politics. European-level actors transform essentially political matters into apparently technical ones. An extensive interpretation of the ‘four freedoms’ of the European Treaty allows Commission and Court to enforce
liberalization measures juridically. The law shields these attempts from political resistance especially in organized economies.

Which leads me to wonder, after having read Dani Rodrik’s “critique”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1b13320e-dbb5-11db-9233-000b5df10621.html of the cheerleaders of globalization in the _FT_ yesterday whether the EU isn’t being badly misinterpreted by outside observers, especially in the US. The usual claim that one reads is that the EU’s problems are the problems of creaking economies refusing to modernize, rejecting sensible proposals such as the original, tougher form of the Services Directive etc. But can’t this be interpreted from the other direction? Couldn’t one reasonably argue that the near-stalling of the EU’s market integration process demonstrates how over-strident efforts to deregulate are liable to result in political stalemate and backlash from an increasingly truculent public? In short, can’t the EU’s political problems be interpreted not as a failure of the European social state, but as a demonstration of the political limits of attempts to introduce global deregulation, free trade in services _und so weiter_ without real public discussion?

Now that oil has been discovered off the coast of Cuba, I may eventually be deprived of my best come-back to those lefties who oppose anything that could be called “globalization” but who also complain about the U.S. embargo of Cuba. But the more interesting question will be the reaction of Republicans who will be torn between their love of all things oily and hatred of all things Cuban (post-1959). Some possibilities:

1. Suddenly realize that the embargo isn’t working and end it;
2. Suddenly realize that the embargo isn’t working where oil is concerned – end it for oil, but keep it in place for everything else.
3. Dispute Cuba’s territorial claims where the oil was found;
4. Escalate – either blockade or at least stop suspending enforcement of title III the Helms-Burton amendment [pdf] until Cuba is a democracy like Saudi Arabia;
5. Really escalate – invade Cuba (beyond Guantanamo Bay) or some other country, related or not – I’m thinking Venezuela;
6. Keep very quiet about this and hope Castro dies soon and declare success no matter what the replacement regime looks like.

The early front-runner seems to be 2, with hints of 3, and of course 6 is an old standby.

I wish Daniel would post more on CT and less on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, partly because I worry that regular CT readers may sometimes miss his pieces. Today he has “a really interesting article”:http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/07/dumping_dumping.html arguing that agricultural subsidies aren’t always bad for the global poor and, indeed, by lowering prices for Africa’s consumers, may often be good for them. That definitely goes against the conventional wisdom (both left and right) in blogdom. Definitely worth a read.

The LA Times reports on the Philadelphia cheesesteak place that refuses to serve customers who don’t order in English. The message to customers is This is America. When Ordering “Speak English”. Just a few observations.

1. I’m not sure what rule of English requires, or even permits, quote marks around the last two words in that sentence. I’m no prescriptivist, so I’m happy to be shown that this falls under some generally followed pattern, but it’s no pattern I’m familiar with.
2. I’m very pleased that no place had a similar sign when I was trying to get fed in Paris using what could, charitably, be described as schoolboy French, as long as the schoolboy in question spent every class watching football rather than, say, studying French. And that pleasure is not just because if I had seen such a sign I’d have been like, Holy Cow, the Americans have captured Paris.
3. This being the LA Times, they have to describe what a cheesesteak is: “a cholesterol-delivery device consisting of grilled strips of beef, melted cheese, onions and peppers on an Italian roll.” They also misquote the sign by removing the errant quote marks and adding a ‘please’. Those polite Southern Californians!

Congratulations to our own Jon Mandle on the publication of his new book Global Justice (UK). It’s part of Polity’s Key Concepts series, which is aimed at the textbook market, and presents contemporary debates about concepts in the social sciences in a widely accessible way. It’s remarkably difficult to write such books (as I know only too well) especially, I think, for philosophers whose disciplinary training does not include such things as literature reviews, but focusses immediately on assessing the quality of arguments and offering one’s own. Jon’s book is a terrific success. He manages to render all the main positions in the various philosophical debates about global justice; to relate them to the public political debates about aid and trade; and to develop a distinctive argument of his own, elaborating and defending a moderate cosmopolitanism that conditions redistributive obligations on the fact that there is a global basic structure. The prose is careful but sparse; none of our regular readers will find it inaccessible, but even the most expert in the field will learn something from it quite apart from finding it an excellent text book, perhaps accompanied by The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism.

The book reinforces the impression I got at a conference Jon and I recently attended together that part (but only part) of the explanation of the contemporary interest in global justice and cosmopolitianism is that almost all the interesting issues in political theory come together in this topic. The book covers questions of obligation and legitimacy, identity, distributive justice, the subject of justice, rights, and the foundations of political principles, as well as addressing some essential questions in meta-ethics. Buy it now!

One thing might surprise some readers, though probably not the political philosophers/theorists. In his final chapter Jon offers a qualifiedly positive evaluation of the economic globalisation we have been experiencing over the past couple of decades, and many of his qualifications are anti-protectionist rather than anti-trade. My impression is that Jon’s judgments are part of something not far from being a consensus left-liberal political theorists working on global justice; a consensus which departs from the views of free-market ideologues, but is very far from the anti-globalisation position that I think some of our more conservative and libertarian readers sometimes assume that strongly egalitarian theorists hold.

On May 11-13, the Kennedy School at Harvard will be hosting a conference on “Equality and the New Global Order.” The three days are organized around “Foundational Questions,” “Institutions,” and “Global Public Health.” The tentative schedule is very impressive. Versions of several of the papers are now available – I’m guessing more will be put up over the next two weeks. The talks are free and open to the public. I’m going to try to make some of the sessions, so please say hello.

I’m back from a weekend in Tallahassee at the Werkmeister Conference on Cosmopolitanism, held at Florida State. It’s rather rare that we Timberites get to see each other in the flesh, so it was a treat that Harry was there, too. There were six papers with commentators, presented over a day-and-a-half. They were all quite good and spanned many different issues related to cosmopolitan political theory. One of the more striking things was how nice everyone was – and not in an obsequious way – despite some fairly sharp disagreements. In fact, Thomas Pogge commented on this at the beginning of his talk, and some interpreted this as a backhanded complement – yeah, and we had good handwriting, too. But I took the comment at face value – people were willing to talk and listen substantively and there was very little grandstanding or showing others up. Most of us went out for meals together, and a generally grand time was had by all. Still, my hotel room looked out over the capital building, and I just couldn’t shake the images of Elian Gonzalez, the 2000 election, Terri Shiavo …

The plan is for the revised papers to appear in Social Theory and Practice. Abstracts are on the web-page.

You know when you look at a word, and suddenly it appears to be spelt wrongly? ‘Vendor’ is a classic. Somehow you’ve stepped outside the frame, and the obvious no longer appears right.

I just cast my eyes over a press release from an Irish political party that shall remain nameless, and realised, ‘either this is a poor translation from the Manchurian or I have been abroad for way too long…”
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Henry gave me the heads-up on this extraordinary story from Institutional Investor (it is worth watching the interstitial ad in order to read the story as it really is dynamite). It’s an account of the dog’s breakfast that was the Harvard Institute for International Development’s mission to Russia. I learned a few things I didn’t know from it – particularly, it was interesting the extent to which Jeffrey Sachs, who suffered quite a lot of damage to his reputation through being the titular head of HIID at the time it all blew up, wasn’t actually in charge, and to which Andrei Shleifer and his wife were involved in the whole thing to an extent which it is rather implausible to dismiss as the work of a head-in-the-clouds academic who didn’t realise that there might be a conflict of interest. It adds quite a lot to David Warsh’s excellent coverage of the same story, and indeed to the cacophony of fuck-all which has been our beloved mainstream media’s coverage of what is quite visibly one of the most interesting and scandalous tales of the 1990s (I’m linking to Warsh’s own story on the II story because it contains a few quotes that are in the paper version but not the online one, but it is well worth poking around in the Economic Principals archives for other stories on this subject).
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While cooking dinner tonight I was doing my usual intuitive translation between celsius and fahrenheit (i.e., roughly correct and I can’t be bothered to go look at the computer), and I thought, “I wonder if the US is ever going to go metric?” When I was a kid I assumed it was just a matter of time, since everyone had to learn about it in school. Now, though… Still, it would seem really stupid if in the year 2642 people were saying things like “that asteroid is nearly 1,000 miles away”, and then the robot would be like “I think you mean 1,609 kilometers, sir”, and then the captain would get all mad and start muttering about Euro-weenie AI’s. Then again, that whole French revolutionary 100 minute hour never really caught on (though the watches are amazing(scroll down)). Will the US never capitulate to the one-world-government types pushing the metric system? We eventually submitted to the flouridation of water, after all, and that was a threat to our bodily fluids. What would the Englishmen of the 19th century novels, caught up in the mysterious minutiae of l, s, d, and guineas (none of which I have ever bothered to fully understand), make of the looming euro?

Via Andrew Sullivan (and Hit and Run) this fine, fine video. You have to watch the whole thing, because it really grows on you. I agree with scruffy hipster Julian Sanchez: “Anyone who can watch this and complain about the pernicious effects of cultural globalization has no soul.” Finally, a Numa Numa dance video for the generation that grew up 30 seconds ago.

I’m just back from Germany where I’ve been to a very interesting interdisciplinary workshop at the University of Bremen ‘s Sonderforschungsbereich “Staatlichkeit im Wandel”:http://www.staatlichkeit.uni-bremen.de/ on Trade Governance, Democracy and Inequality. As usual in such cases, the bringing together of philosophers and practitioners was both stimulating and revealing of how little we know about one another. Starting my own, basically normative, paper, I asserted that a central purpose of trade rules should be to promote justice. I was informed that “justice” was one word that would never pass the lips of a WTO negotiator. Which, doesn’t show, of course, either that I’m wrong about what should happen or that concerns about justice aren’t lurking in the shadows somewhere. But it suggests a startling disconnect between the public rhetoric about global inequality and the concerns at the negotiating table.

At Samizdata the other day, “Natalie Solent wrote”:http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/007640.html :

bq. In Milton and Rose Friedman’s “Free to Choose”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156334607/junius-20 it says:

bq.

Of course, an egalitarian may protest that he is but a drop in the ocean, that he would be willing to redistribute the excess of his income over his concept of an equal income if everyone else were compelled to do the same. On one level this contention that compulsion would change matters is wrong – even if everyone else did the same, his specific contribution to the income of others would still be a drop in the ocean. His individual contribution would be just as large if he were the only contributor as if he were one of many. Indeed, it would be more valuable because he could target his contribution to go to the very worst off among those he regards as appropriate recipients.

bq. I have a question for all the protestors planning to give up their time and money by going to Edinburgh for the G8 summit. Why is what you are doing better than just giving your spare money to the poor?

Later in comments to the same post she adds:

bq. They could do both: go to Edinburgh and give their spare money away. That’s all their money above what is required for subsistence, of course, because by their own account the Third World is poor because they are rich and money transfer is the way to correct that situation.

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