Page 40 [40]
38 | The PhıLosorny or Eco-Porrrics
The defenders of the free trade system view this differently. In their
opinion, reality proves the critics of economic globalisation wrong, since
in the last few decades the average difference between the performance
of the rich and poor countries has decreased and, for a while now, it is
exactly those who are successfully closing the gap who boast the most
spectacular growth indicators.'* These data cannot be interpreted on
their own, however. The fact that a significant part of investors’ money
does not generate a return in the wealthy countries does not necessarily
mean an increase in prosperity of the countries they have been favouring
of late. The favourable growth indicators come at a terrible cost: the
overburdening of nature, the drastic decline of indispensable natural
facilities, poverty, hunger, untreatable public health issues, dissatisfaction
that explodes into bloody civil wars, etc. But even if set all this aside,
we must still see that the benefits of growth are divided extremely
unequally within the individual countries, thus exacerbating social
tensions.’ The whirlwind increase of the wealth of the old and new
elites of the poor countries stands in sharp contrast with the
impoverishment of the farming population and the catastrophic situation
of the inhabitants of the big city slums that are sprouting up like weeds,
where they live in their millions in previously unimaginable poverty and
overcrowding. In the meantime, income and cultural differences are
increasing in similar fashion in the rich countries as well, where capital
is flowing out of the country, the bargaining position of employees is
weakening, some of them do not have work and the social state is forced
to reign in its welfare expenditures. It seems that what Susan George
established with regard to international aid applies to economic
globalisation in its entirety as well: the free trade world order finances
the enrichment of the poor countries’ rich at the expense of the rich
countries’ poor."
4 The picture would be significantly modified if from these successful countries China
were omitted, where behind the economic miracle lies a civilization at least as old and of
equal value to that of the West and which has as its immediate prelude the most successful
and most ruthless attempt at the totalitarian organisation of the industrial state. The
statistic is also improved by the atypical case of a few oil-rich Arab countries: their
prosperity is due not to the dynamics of the global economy, but to a monopoly over the
most important energy resource.
5 Giovanni Arrighi — Beverley Silver — Benjamin Brewer: Industrial Convergence,
Globalization and the Persistence of the North — South Divide. Studies in Comparative
International Development 38.1. 2003.
16 Susan George: The Debt Boomerang. Pluto Press, London, 1992.