Page 134 - Culture Society and Economy

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‘LOCALIZATION’ EXPLORED

In fact, one of the striking features of the anti-globalization literature
is the almost complete silence on the standard political objections which
are made to attempts to regulate capitalist relations of production which
is what is explicitly proposed by the IFG group, as shall be seen in a
moment. The familiar and time-honored critiques that such changes
inevitably lead to a highly controlled and bureaucratic society in which
personal autonomy and the rule of law are sacrificed in the name of some
social cause – be it the environment, preserving the ‘local economy’,
defending the local culture, reducing social inequality, or whatever – is
not even raised, much less discussed. Yet these are real issues which
cannot simply be dismissed as neo-liberal propaganda, especially if one
claims to be seeking to restore ‘the classical liberal economic ideal’. 8
As is well known, in this tradition, this kind of economy is thought to
have a political counterpart in the form of liberal democratic parliamen-
tarianism and the rule of law, the existence of which is not simply a
matter of ‘bourgeois right’. As we shall briefly see towards the end of this
chapter, the political dimension of the alternatives to globalization are
certainly referred to but not adequately discussed.
I regard this disconnect between previous theoretical and practical
attempts to construct alternatives to capitalism and the current thinking
of the anti-globalization movement as one of the most harmful aspects of
the present situation. Whether this avoidance (evasion?) is for good tactical
and ideological reasons or not, the fact is that the movement will hardly
be allowed to get away from the uncomfortable reality of confronting
these experiences, nor should it attempt to do so.

Localization

Hines and the IFG group put forward their position as one of ‘localization’.
By this they mean that they wish to return to what they describe as ‘human-
scale’ living in relatively small communities and they want to institute an
economic and a political system which, they argue, would bring this
about. We shall return to the issue of what ‘human scale’ means and the
complex and contradictory attempts to give it substance.
This notion of the alternative follows from the understanding of the
problem of ‘globalization’ to inhere in its global character – its extensiveness
and spatial scale, so to speak. According to this view, globalization is impe-
rialist and exploitative in nature – of its own societies, of economies and
peoples in the developing world and above all of the global environment.

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