‘Energy supplies coming under pressure, global unrest, greenhouse warming setting off unprecedented climatic events, the world pitched into recession by a global banking crisis, piracy on the high seas, religious fundamentalism and terrorism growing’.
The headlines over the last 12 months could set the scene for a science fiction novel, unimaginable, as scary as the vision George Orwell conjured for 1984. But contrasting today’s realities with Orwell’s vision provides another way to look at globalisation.
When in 1949 Orwell wrote ‘1984’ he had faced, in just 35 years, two World Wars, the emergence and overthrow of fascism, the creation and rise of communism and global economic depression. Experiencing such upheavals over so short a time may explain why he thought it fitting to predict dire social and political changes to our society within another 35 years. So 60 years on it is remarkable that UK society and its underlying economic and political systems have actually changed very little.
Certainly in the last 20 years technology has radically altered the way we communicate and the internet altered the way some of us shop. But elsewhere has much really changed? Has the way we live, work, travel, shop, vote, organise local authorities, collect rubbish, organise health, pay taxes or school our children changed fundamentally since George Orwell wrote 1984? Our reality is the reverse of Orwell’s vision, a UK society that changed little, stagnating mid 1970’s, tinkered with since like the classic car that ill suits 21st century roads.
Whether you agree about stagnation depends on your age. For those born in the turmoil between 1930 and 1950 or baby boomers who lived through the 1950’s and 60’s the recent stasis seems obvious. But by comparison those born later seem blissfully unaware the world could be any different. The emerging pattern is decreasing rate of change. Using the analogy of a ball thrown in the air, the phase where its rate of climb slows to zero and it eventually hangs stationary before falling is called the apogee. If you were born just before the apogee you can be forgiven for thinking world order is stationary and will remain so forever. Does this apogee argument explain why recent political vision has evolved so slowly? Did the shock of rapid change in the early part of the last century produce to the stasis in the second half?
Apogee of what though? The technological apogee was the Concorde moment; that point in 2003 when we saw Concorde mothballed heralding the end of the era of bigger, faster, higher. From now on technology has to fit global contexts of pollution, noise, CO2 emissions and carbon footprints. But also the apogee seems to mark the end of individual and national freedoms in deference to global responsibilities. Environmental challenges have become strident, global fuel prices are climbing, acts of terrorism through religious fundamentalism impinge on our lives and a global banking crisis has challenged those cornerstones values, our money and our property. We may choose to paint over the cracks in our domestic society and cling to safe comfortable patterns but the world around us changed nonetheless.
The banking crisis served as the shock wake up call. Seeded by US financial activities and germinated via China, it grew to affect financial systems from Japan to Australia, the Americas to India, thus showing how inextricably linked and therefore global our economies have become. Labour, information, goods and money now cross borders so easily, whether nation governments like it or not, that it is hard to see how it can get much easier and what purpose borders serve. The shock served to illustrate how our lives will increasingly be driven by global considerations that put national troubles in context.
Globalisation could have huge upsides translating into greater security, reduction of poverty, positive environmental policies and manufacturing strategies that are less nationally focused and more environmentally sensitive? The global view might allow fair encouragement of weaker partners, more equitable use and distribution of resources and the mechanisms to legislate for global survival where Kyoto proved ineffective. It might allow a central African or offshoot Russian state to integrate into the global system faster and prevent the unrest usual in their transition. Its mechanisms could allow a global view of trade, a better distribution of its taxation so a wider caucus benefits.
One thing is becoming clear, global issues cannot be dealt with by market forces alone and it is unlikely that the political structures that work nationally can adapt. Positive globalisation will demand new world political structures of which the G20, EU, The Commonwealth and United Nations only hint at. So public anger at our political leaders for arguing about expenses earlier in the year was fanned the by frustration that it meant these wider issues were not being discussed. As the conference season winds up pre-election there is little evidence any of the major parties have taken on board this new enlightenment.
That was another way to look at globalisation.
