Beyond Global Capitalism

This chapter discusses globalisation from a historical and anthropological viewpoint. The discussion is about the deeper forces—education, mobility, culture and family systems—that explain the inferior economic choices made today. I first discuss the idea that free trade, as promoted by globalisation, leads to inequality and demand insufficiency, which in turn leads to economic crises. I then discuss how acceptance of the expanding economic disparities in developed countries may be explained by the spread of educational stratification and by population aging in developed countries. Developed countries, rather than emerging countries, still have the potential to change or improve the world’s economic structure and restrain globalisation or free trade. I propose that possibly America has such potential partly due to its dynamic societal structure. For example, criticism against globalisation, including the concept of the richest 1 %, has been spread by the US to the rest of the world. Such optimistic views about America should be considered with some scepticism though.

Since the 1980s, the world economy has been dominated by the neoliberal policy regime. This regime came into being on the claim that it will increase economic growth and stability. Unfortunately, the promise has not been fulfilled and the world has seen slower growth, higher inequality, and bigger and more frequent financial crises. The chapter argues that only a thorough reform can change this situation. Two groups of reform measures are crucial. One is the reform of the financial system in the rich countries in a way that reduces its excessive complexity and excessive capital mobility. Another is the reform of the global economic governance system that regulates international trade and investment in a way that allows the developing countries to use policies that are more suited to them, namely, policies that help them promote infant industries in ways similar to what the rich countries did in the earlier stages of their economic development.

In this chapter, I discuss the consequences and origins of global capitalism, including destabilization and inequality of the economy, globalization of crises, and increase in the power of money and decrease in the power of other values within all realms. I then discuss understanding the origin of global capitalism through the social philosophical concept of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is defined as an ideology, movement, and system in which the superiority of “the whole” is thoroughly pursued. The direction or ideology of the whole, such as Nazism, is not selected by rational reasoning but by secular motivations, such as greed and fear. Those living in a totalitarian state come to lose the ability to think and therefore can commit evil acts without any sense of guilt. After describing the details of totalitarianism of Nazi Germany, I suggest how its basic social dynamics for expansion and basic structure are identical to those of the current global capitalism, while referring to the social scientific theories of Hannah Arendt (The origins of totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace & World, New York, 1951). Since the “top 1 %” in the totalitarianism of globalism (TOG) have ceased to think, they can believe in any irrational theory to support their beliefs, such as neoliberalism, and can therefore blindly commit evil acts without any sense of guilty. Lastly, I discuss the basic direction to follow in order to move beyond global capitalism based on the philosophical theory of totalitarianism.

There are two major points I would like to say in this presentation. The phenomenon of globalization, according to mass media, is something recent. After the Cold War the whole world was covered by capitalism, and this led to the progress of globalization. That is, it is a very recent thing. However, according to the recent studies, globalization has been repeated many times in the past. This is confirmed by the statistics. Another point is that globalization did not continue forever. There was birth and destruction. There was a repetition of this process. Especially from around the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, there was integration of the world economy. This globalization was very fast, and it was on a large scale. It went through the two wars and the Great Depression, and these terminated globalization. Economies get tied up, and this will bring prosperity and peace to the world. That’s what we think of globalization. It is only partly true. As we heard from Professor Chang that globalization would bring instability and make the peace a danger. So, based on that, I’d like to think about the future of the current globalization.

In spite of its emptiness, neoliberalism is an ideology with some curious characteristics, which deserve to be scrutinised. One of them is that neoliberalism has been associated with conservatism, though neoliberal policies such as deregulation and free trade threaten traditions and conventional communities which conservatives respect. However, conservatives in the nineteenth century were opposed to classical liberalism, an ancestor of neoliberalism. They proposed the paternalistic role of the government and the elites. I argue that the ability of the elites, whose paternalistic role, conservatives have for long expected, has degenerated and they came to accept neoliberalism as a principle of governance. As a result, conservatism has married neoliberalism since the 1980s, however, the failure of global capitalism justified by neoliberalism is now obvious. We should be reminded of the original and true meaning of conservatism.

Today, the major nations of the world are, without exception, facing national economic and political crises. Triggered by the 2008 “Lehman Shock” in the United States, the global economy fell into major chaos, pushing Greece, Spain, and other members of the EU to the brink of bankruptcy. Japan has also struggled with long-term deflation, and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.