In Defense of Globalization

Rating:
Summary: In defense of this book
Review: Aside from a small handful of real Luddites, I don't think there are many people left who are against all forms of globalization, nor can there be many who are completely in favor of it, warts and all. But you'd never know that based on most of what's written on the subject: most literature on the subject tends to treat discussions of the global economy in black-and-white terms. Authors, essayists, and columnists too often rely on gimmicky strategies that pull on the heartstrings but do little to examine the real pros and cons of an increasingly global world, focusing more on what's wrong than on what can be done. And discussion I've seen too often takes too narrow a view -- life in a particular village, the impact on a specific industry -- for a well-rounded debate to take shape.

In Defense of Globalization is the first effort I've seen in a long time that manages to avoid most of those pitfalls, relying on objective and unemotional discussions of evidence rather than anecdotes, and presenting its arguments in a straightforward and gimmick-free way. It is full of important information and still eminently readable.

Opponents of globalization usually base their arguments against the international market economy on a few strong points: that it encourages child labor, that it erodes democracy, that it weakens the plight of women in the developing world, that it kills local cultures, and that it harms the environment. In this book, scholar and author Jagdish Bhagwati addresses each of those issues in a series of chapters that make up the heart of the book.

But globalization proponents will not find in In Defense of Globalization a blind defense of their views. Mr. Bhagwati takes the anti-globalization points seriously. He goes so far as to show that he shares many of the anti-globalists' views and values (especially regarding poverty), and he points out many areas where unchecked global capitalism has the potential to do more harm than good. This makes the book much more effective than it would have been otherwise.

But despite all that, Mr. Bhagwati still sees free trade as the best was to raise incomes and speed up the long-term development of the world's poorest economies, and he compellingly illustrates why any kind of trade protection -- no matter how noble its intent -- in the end leaves the protected and the protected against worse off. And unlike many efforts of this kind, it doesn't simply stop at pointing out what's wrong -- it offers many options for improving the current situation.

In the end, In Defense of Globalization is not aimed at partisans on either side of the globalization debate if what they are looking for is information to back up what they already believe. This is a book will make anyone who thinks much about globalization think again ... and perhaps realize they share more than they thought with the opposite side.

Rating:
Summary: The brighter side of Globalization
Review: Globalization has many faces, and the human face is one among them, according to the author. The fact that this book focuses so much on the human aspect, and argues in every chapter on the beneficial aspects of Globalization, it appears that the author is on a special assignment from some International agency. While I am not an opponent of Globalization ( even after reading Prof Stiglitz's "Globalization and its discontents "- an authoritative report on the darker side of the story), this book by Prof Bhagwati did not impress me since it appears to be highly one sided and rhetorical, that lacks the backing of sound economic evidence. The style, with a rich dose of English literature, is political, bordering on an election campaign, and not a book of substance from a professor of Economics.

However, the best part of the book is that it has helped improve my vocabulary, despite Shakespearean distractions( My copy of the Webster's dictionary was put to good use after a long time). I have absolutely no doubts on the integrity, experience and the academic brilliance of the author. The book devotes one chapter each for discussing important issues ranging from women's rights, child labor, democracy, wages , environment and this makes it a comprehensive coverage of the topic hardly seen in many other books. But most of the arguments are not supported by sufficient data and analysis as one would expect in order to accept the hypothesis of the cases. No doubt, this book has a long list of notes and references from which the author has generously quoted, but again, I was at times a little lost in the maze of quotations.

Despite these shortcomings, the core topic of this book ( globalization with a human face) is bound to be at the forefront of policy formation in most developing countries and also influence discussions and decisions at global institutions like the WTO, IMF and the World Bank. If that happens, the book deserves substantial credit.

Globalization is not a problem, but a part of the solution to usher in an era of prosperity on a global scale with a human face. I have no disputes with the author on this statement.

Rating:
Summary: quite poorly done
Review: Here we have an economist who is presenting opinions with little evidence. This book is so off the mark that it is difficult to read. The only interesting points are the facts that he points out about the down side of globalization that I had not heard before. This book should not convince any logical person that globalization is a force for good. Personally I remain unconvinced of the validity of either side, but this book is not even worth reading if you are seriously interested in the debate.

Rating:
Summary: The new benchmark for books on globalization
Review: How can one resist a book that begins with the phrase, "does the world need yet another book on globalization?" To this saturated topic, Jagdish Bhagwati does not try to force a radical new outlook; rather, he surveys the evidence against each accusation levied by the critics of globalization and ends up producing one of the most elegant, eloquent, and persuasive books in favor of globalization.

One problem that any such book faces is that the anti-globalization movement is rather amorphous, bringing together all sorts of groups that make all sorts of accusations; to get around this, Mr. Bhagwati divides his book into the major themes (the link of economic growth to poverty, of trade to the environment or labor rights, etc), and looks at what the various NGOs are saying against globalization. To his credit, Mr. Bhagwati has considered most of the subtleties, nuances and variations of the NGO arguments.

Having done this, Mr. Bhagwati explains whether and why the NGOs are wrong. Predictably, the NGO fears usually prove exaggerated or simply untrue. To their polemic rhetoric, Mr. Bhagwati answers with anecdotes, news reports and econometric studies. Whether one agrees or disagrees with him, no one can accuse Mr. Bhagwati of brushing aside the critics.

Refreshingly, the book is not an unconditional acceptance of globalization. "In Defense of Globalization" is a defense, but it is not blind to what is wrong about globalization; Mr. Bhagwati is cautious, for example, about uninhibited capital flows; he is also critical about the invasion of intellectual property rights into trade agreements; he is also suspicious of businesses that bribe politicians to alter trade agreements to their favor. And so on.

Yet, his verdict is staunchly pro-globalization. He urges against using trade-curtailing answers to economic problems; he also alerts us that many of the ills identified by NGOs have little to do with globalization ("What has globalization got to do with that?" he writes more than once). More importantly, he offers ideas about how to make globalization better, from managing immigration, to rethinking the trade sanctions, to the role that NGOs ought to play, and many more. Nothing here is new; but he assembles the various ideas that he has pronounced over the years in books, op-ed pieces and academic journals.

There is no doubt that "In defense of globalization" will be the book to beat from now on. No anti-globalization treatise should be published without being able to refute Mr. Bhagwati's arguments. For having elucidated this debate even further, Mr. Bhagwati deserves to be read and to be thanked.

Rating:
Summary: Liberal in defence of globalization
Review: I never quit understood what the anti globalization movement stood for (except riots), as a matter of fact I saw globalization as the extension of trade. Thanks to this book of Bhagwati book, I now understand a bit more of the discussion going on in the less radical part of the anti globalization movement.

I gave the book only 3 stars because some how the book annoyed me. The arguments against the anti globalization movement, can be helpful, especially because they are in terms anti-globalizers can accept, because Mr. Bhagwati seems to be so close to them. Throughout his book Mr. Bhagwati is very favorable about the influence of the non-elected, non-democratic influence of NGO's and other institutions. But I wonder why these groups are more legitimate than elected officials.

Although he has some interesting arguments in favor of globalization, I found the inconsistent and moral argumentation not always very strong. For example he argues against the enforcements of setting of universal labor standards, because the conditions in each country is different and hence not each country can afford the high Western standards. But than later in his book he praises the influence of the NGO's and media can wield to these same countries to enforce the Western values on them.

Also not quite clear is why he seems to want to make a point that liberals are better than conservatives. In the last pages of the book he even explicitly states that Reagan and George W Bush practicing "make believe" economics, even claming that Clinton saved us from the Reagan politics. But this not widely accepted claim, he seems not to backup with evidence. I wonder how claims like this, helps to build the case for globalization. Maybe it is to appease the anti-globalizers, he hopes read the book?

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I somehow did not find a coherent picture in defense of globalization. I wanted to believe that globalization was for the good, but ended up doubting it even more.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book on Globalization
Review: I'm not an economist and don't particularly enjoy reading about economic subjects. What made this book so fascinating is that the author is able to wrap sophisticated economics in prose that sings. I must confess that I've been one of the knee-jerk anti-globo's whom Bhagwati criticizes in his book. After reading it, I can at least say that I understand why globalization needs merely to be fixed and improved, not ended.

Rating:
Summary: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Review: In 1964, sociologist Jacques Ellul in his prophetic book THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY wrote: "The human being is changing under the pressure of the economic milieu; he is in the process of becoming the uncomplicated being the liberal economist constructed" (pg. 219). Readers of IN DEFENSE OF GLOBALIZATION are certain to recognize in its pages the latest neo-liberal incarnation of that theoretically necessary, but historically implausible construct, "homo economicus" not only in Bhagwati's view of humanity but, perhaps, in Bhagwati himself.

In a nod to those legions of philosophers and writers who over the past two hundred years have attempted to arrest the career of this reductive model of humanity, Bhagwati's updated version of homo economicus is imbued with some non-rational characteristics, envy for one, and, culture, for another. In this Bhagwati, to his credit, is more up to date than his contemporaries from Chicago. He recognizes that not only does man not live by bread alone, but that globalization did not invent bread, ancient non-capitalist cultures did. Eventually, however these concessions to the many critics of homo economicus are revealed as strategic concessions only, because ultimately Bhagwati believes that all humans, though they are not necessarily born to be rational wealth maximizers, must become so. Those who do not comply will hold humanity back from the best form of goodness that can be achieved: economic prosperity through global capitalism. For him other forms of prosperity, such as spiritual or moral prosperity, while noble, are necessary only insofar as they promote and support wealth creation. We certainly have not achieved the best of all possible worlds yet, Bhagwati replies to his critics, and we may never achieve it, he concedes, but of the means at our disposal the neo-liberal economic system is the best there is. Sure, there are "externalities," he admits, but on balance, of all the possible systems that are known, it works best.

The strategic concession is by far Bhagwati's most effective rhetorical strategy. Yes, he agrees, pollution is bad, but, he insists, pollution can be fixed (blithely overlooking the fact it has not yet been fixed, seems to be increasing to the point where it threatens our existence and that those who have power are disinclined to undo the mechanisms that brought them into power). Yes, he acknowledges, people's societies are becoming emptied of their old meanings by the techniques of global capitalism. But, he argues, in this best of all possible worlds the omnibenevolent energies of global capitalism have stimulated the genius of writers like Salman Rushdie who meld the ancient and modern together in a bold new hybrid (a rationale which overlooks the fact that much of modern literature, including Rushdie's, is an attempt to find meaning in a world that is everyday upended through the "creative destruction" of capitalism).

So using the technique of the strategic concession, the critics of global capitalism might say, yes, we agree our standard of living has risen in the past hundred years (but the disparity between rich and poor is wider now than it has ever been, a disparity that means greater influence accrues to fewer and fewer people who have more and more say about how the world economy will be structured.) Sure, we in the United States live as kings could not even conceive of living 200 years ago (and consume 25% of the world's energy and in so doing, endanger the present environment and the lives of generations to come). Yes, the promotion of literacy is a good thing (except that it generally it takes a generation or so for a people to learn that they will never be as prosperous as those who imposed the technique of capital upon them and another generation to understand that their old ways of life have become emptied of meaning, ancient human meanings that can never be fully recovered).

The cultural critique of globalization is particularly difficult for Bhagwati to manage. Indeed, it's a critique that has been around since the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the works of Carlyle, Morris, Dickens, and those other Englishmen of that time whom Bhagwati is perversely fond of quoting. These Englishmen saw the evils of the dark satanic mills in a time before such evils were reclassified as externalities by business schools and their wealthy donors, before the mills and their more distressing byproducts were moved out of sight and out of mind. Yes, he agrees that capitalism can be destructive of community, but maintains that that older beliefs about the nature of humankind can live peacefully together with global capital as in the Rushdie example above. Here he leaves the realm of the disingenuous argument and passes into dissembling. [The] "Technique" [behind globalization] "worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means...The sacred cannot resist." (Jacques Ellul again, pg. 142, The Technological Civilization).

Those wary of globalization have seen enough of its antecedents to know that this newest manifestation of capitalism turns once functioning societies into compost, and sometimes dangerous compost. Perhaps many societies, as Bhagwati asserts, are worthy only of the garbage heap of history. Agreed. There are traditional societies and beliefs which are repressive, cruel, or which have been radicalized to become so when they are touched by globalization. The difficulty lies in the fact that globalization does not make distinctions -- it does not pass over worthy societies and undermine only the less worthy. It is a technique and as such simply cannot understand or go easy on societies where people are defined as other than rational wealth-maximizers. It has no answer for those once culturally rich and fertile cultures which are now only the stilled poetry out of which grows the prosaic apologetics of the neo-liberal economist.

Rating:
Summary: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Review: In 1964, sociologist Jacques Ellul in his prophetic book THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY wrote: "The human being is changing under the pressure of the economic milieu; he is in the process of becoming the uncomplicated being the liberal economist constructed" (pg. 219). Readers of IN DEFENSE OF GLOBALIZATION are certain to recognize in its pages the latest neo-liberal incarnation of that theoretically necessary, but historically implausible construct, "homo economicus" not only in Bhagwati's view of humanity but, perhaps, in Bhagwati himself.

In a nod to those legions of philosophers and writers who over the past two hundred years have attempted to arrest the career of this reductive model of humanity, Bhagwati's updated version of homo economicus is imbued with some non-rational characteristics, envy for one, and, culture, for another. In this Bhagwati, to his credit, is more up to date than his contemporaries from Chicago. He recognizes that not only does man not live by bread alone, but that globalization did not invent bread, ancient non-capitalist cultures did. Eventually, however these concessions to the many critics of homo economicus are revealed as strategic concessions only, because ultimately Bhagwati believes that all humans, though they are not necessarily born to be rational wealth maximizers, must become so. Those who do not comply will hold humanity back from the best form of goodness that can be achieved: economic prosperity through global capitalism. For him other forms of prosperity, such as spiritual or moral prosperity, while noble, are necessary only insofar as they promote and support wealth creation. We certainly have not achieved the best of all possible worlds yet, Bhagwati replies to his critics, and we may never achieve it, he concedes, but of the means at our disposal the neo-liberal economic system is the best there is. Sure, there are "externalities," he admits, but on balance, of all the possible systems that are known, it works best.

The strategic concession is by far Bhagwati's most effective rhetorical strategy. Yes, he agrees, pollution is bad, but, he insists, pollution can be fixed (blithely overlooking the fact it has not yet been fixed, seems to be increasing to the point where it threatens our existence and that those who have power are disinclined to undo the mechanisms that brought them into power). Yes, he acknowledges, people's societies are becoming emptied of their old meanings by the techniques of global capitalism. But, he argues, in this best of all possible worlds the omnibenevolent energies of global capitalism have stimulated the genius of writers like Salman Rushdie who meld the ancient and modern together in a bold new hybrid (a rationale which overlooks the fact that much of modern literature, including Rushdie's, is an attempt to find meaning in a world that is everyday upended through the "creative destruction" of capitalism).

So using the technique of the strategic concession, the critics of global capitalism might say, yes, we agree our standard of living has risen in the past hundred years (but the disparity between rich and poor is wider now than it has ever been, a disparity that means greater influence accrues to fewer and fewer people who have more and more say about how the world economy will be structured.) Sure, we in the United States live as kings could not even conceive of living 200 years ago (and consume 25% of the world's energy and in so doing, endanger the present environment and the lives of generations to come). Yes, the promotion of literacy is a good thing (except that it generally it takes a generation or so for a people to learn that they will never be as prosperous as those who imposed the technique of capital upon them and another generation to understand that their old ways of life have become emptied of meaning, ancient human meanings that can never be fully recovered).

The cultural critique of globalization is particularly difficult for Bhagwati to manage. Indeed, it's a critique that has been around since the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the works of Carlyle, Morris, Dickens, and those other Englishmen of that time whom Bhagwati is perversely fond of quoting. These Englishmen saw the evils of the dark satanic mills in a time before such evils were reclassified as externalities by business schools and their wealthy donors, before the mills and their more distressing byproducts were moved out of sight and out of mind. Yes, he agrees that capitalism can be destructive of community, but maintains that that older beliefs about the nature of humankind can live peacefully together with global capital as in the Rushdie example above. Here he leaves the realm of the disingenuous argument and passes into dissembling. [The] "Technique" [behind globalization] "worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means...The sacred cannot resist." (Jacques Ellul again, pg. 142, The Technological Civilization).

Those wary of globalization have seen enough of its antecedents to know that this newest manifestation of capitalism turns once functioning societies into compost, and sometimes dangerous compost. Perhaps many societies, as Bhagwati asserts, are worthy only of the garbage heap of history. Agreed. There are traditional societies and beliefs which are repressive, cruel, or which have been radicalized to become so when they are touched by globalization. The difficulty lies in the fact that globalization does not make distinctions -- it does not pass over worthy societies and undermine only the less worthy. It is a technique and as such simply cannot understand or go easy on societies where people are defined as other than rational wealth-maximizers. It has no answer for those once culturally rich and fertile cultures which are now only the stilled poetry out of which grows the prosaic apologetics of the neo-liberal economist.

Rating:
Summary: Missed Opportunity
Review: In Defense of Globalization promised to be the magnum opus of Bhagwati's brilliant career - a promise held out by the rapturous advance praise printed on its dust jacket. From that perspective, the book is a major disappointment.

Globalization is not particularly well-written. Bhagwati's "defense" is neither focused nor is it presented in as compelling or eloquent a manner as we have come to expect from his writing. Interspersed among the arguments are petty and almost vindictive observations that do not reflect well on Bhagwati. At times, the book reads less like a grand summation of Bhagwati's philosophy, and more like the wanderings of a cynical old professor. Maybe this is what De Soto had in mind when he inconceivably described this book as "surely the most humorous piece of economics ever written" - whatever else it is, Globalization is not funny.

Oddly enough, the book is further diminished by an excess serving of Bhagwati's ideology. As the book progresses, Bhagwati makes it more and more clear that he doesn't particularly hold America, "Wall Street", the west, and political conservatives in high regard. These allusions become tedious because they are utterly irrelevant to a defense of free trade.

The core arguments are all here, but they are not as crisply presented as in many, if not most, other works on the subject. In addition, Bhagwati is too solicitous of activist NGO's - withholding the cynicism that he applies liberally to other institutions and parties. This may be in the interest of establishing a more productive engagement with long-standing opponents of free trade, but having repeatedly offended the sensibilities of long-standing proponents of free trade, this doesn't sit well.

What is most unsettling about Bhagwati's vision is his dependence on unaccountable players. A world in which cross-border economic activity is "governed" by bureaucrats and so-called experts (such as himself) in supranational bureaucracies, self-appointed activists in NGO's (such as Ralph Nader), and judges (such as his brother) is not a world of free trade. In fact, that is a world not worth an intellectual defense.

In addition, Bhagwati's thesis that free trade in goods and services does not require the free movement of capital, and that the latter can be restricted without hindering the former, is not convincing. A cynic might perceive this to be a way to assign blame for an inherent and recently obvious risk of globalization onto the villainy of the Washington-Wall Street cabal.

In summary, the effect of In Defense of Globalization in the eyes of this reader is that I am less convinced that Bhagwati - despite his moniker - is genuinely interested in the cause for globalization and free trade.

De Soto -- who, having written a few, should know about such books -- claims that this book will make history. For the sake of Bhagwati's legacy, let's hope not.