Globalization has become to new buzzword to all kinds of movements, addressing all kinds of solutions. The right and left, bereft of their traditionally-held ideologies in the new context, have devolved into caricatures of their former selves and new battles are being fought as proxy wars for or against this new entity in the global village. However, what really dives this engine?
An objective telling of history is an impossibility in any circumstance. Either you are too close to the facts thus creating a slant or bias making the historiography necessarily subjective or you are too far removed from the facts and therefore, your historiography is a shell of a story with gaps. When you add your own perceptions and cultural judgments to this mix, the history that emerges is necessarily corrupt. It is this vein attempt for an objective historiography, more importantly the vein belief that an objective historiography is possible, that leads to problems in interpreting. History becomes a pseudo-science, with rigid notions and standards. This history is then peddled to the masses as “the” truth with which one is supposed to gauge their moral compass and judge the morality of the past.
It is with this corrupt and morally bankrupt historiography that one has to approach globalization. One has to also distinguish between the globalization of the economy and the globalization of the marketplace. If you were to use the image of an Asian bazaar or a Latin American Village market, the concept of the marketplace emerges not only as a place where commerce takes place, but also as a place where diverse cultures meet and interact; values clash and judgments are made. In this regard, the assault of the marketplace is a bigger crime than just the assault on the commerce of the marketplace.
To quote Nicaraguan poet Giocconda Belli, “What worries me about intellectuals nowadays is that globalization has isolated us, and we have to look for ways to rekindle the communication that used to exist, and the influence that intellectuals used to have in their societies. Many intellectuals renounced their commitment when the Left failed. When socialist ideology showed itself to be a failure in the way it was applied in the Eastern countries such as Russia, a wave of shame came over the leftist intellectuals. Many went back to the trenches, this time to hide, swearing, "I won't get involved in politics anymore. I'll just be in my ivory tower writing and doing my thing and that will be my contribution." Thus the critique of the Left was entrusted to the Right.” (interview with Bomb Magazine) What this isolation and abdication of critique to the right has resulted in is a perception, bred through by the right with selective exposure and history, that the entire question of globalization is the question of economy and economic development. Furthermore, with the left not available to defend its own ideology or methodology, the right has had a field day in detailing the troublesome aspects of the methodology to their great benefit. Thus the contrast of well-attired economists meeting in a conference room against unruly mobs chanting in the streets and destroying property is presented as a tacit value judgment on the ideas that they espouse.
What has been the response to this avalanche of public discourse representing the right and the virtual silencing of the arguments from the left? Two things have happened. The left has thus become more lethargic at the prospect of complete loss of voice and have disappeared entirely from the public sphere, retreating back the ivory tower. To this vacuum, a more fascist, jingoistic right, one that have much in common with the group they oppose but with clashing economic interests, has moved in. The new right is appealing to the populace that is fast losing its identity to cling back to its traditional protectionism at the cost of all the gains to the subalterns under previous progressive conditions. Reproductive rights are challenged, language supremacy is asserted, women are increasingly being forced off the public sphere and religion is used in increasingly fascist ways to stifle debate.
This opposition to the globalization is much easily discredited and thus its rise has been a welcome change to the forces of globalization. Having vanquished the voices of the left to the ivory tower, they are now allowing the new opposition to grow and become uglier at which point they can be neutralized with military force which will be welcomed, as the thinking goes, by the native population.
Can globalization, the marketplace variety, be evaluated without paying attention to the historiography on terrorism, revolution, dictatorship and political disfranchising of large populations? As Noam Chomsky points out, the root causes of terrorism lie in the much larger imperial sins of the powers of globalization.
