Page 138 - Culture Society and Economy

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‘LOCALIZATION’ EXPLORED

The current and future well-being of humanity depends on transforming the
relationships of power within and between societies toward more democra-
tic and mutually accountable modes of managing human affairs that are
self-organizing, power-sharing and minimize the needs for coercive, central
authority. Economic democracy, which involves the equitable participation
of all people in the ownership of the productive assets on which their liveli-
hood depends, is essential to such a transformation because the concen-
tration of economic power is the Achilles heel of political democracy, as the
experience of corporate globalization demonstratess. 12

This hints at a lot but does not take us too far explicitly, perhaps with
good political reason! What exactly does ‘equitable participation’ mean
and how will it be realized? Which ‘productive assets’ are being referred to?
It seems only those ‘on which their livelihood depends’. What exactly does
‘livelihood’ and ‘depend,’ mean here? And ‘all people?’ Will employers
and employees be treated in exactly the same manner? All these ques-
tions are left up in the air, but of course in real life they will turn out to
be absolutely critical.
Although dominated by the communitarian ideal of a well-integrated
local community with a common culture that needs to be defended against
the intrusions of a shallow cosmopolitanism, the IFG group understands
that no such homogeneous community is likely to emerge. Indeed, there
is a curious influence of the liberal ideal of a lost golden age of equal
enterprises – perhaps in the eighteenth century at the time of Locke or at
the time of the Industrial Revolution in the early nineteenth century with
Ricardo! In this golden age, enterprises were relatively of similar size,
markets were largely local and inequalities relatively small. Heterogeneity
and individual difference prevailed. There was perfect competition. This
was beneficially re-routed into mutual dependence by the division of
labor and the invisible hand, civilized by moral sentiments and the rule
of law. Neither the London of Dickens nor the Manchester of Engels
existed. Transnational corporations, ‘long distance trade’ and global-
ization were unknown. This is one aspect of the ‘conceptual history’ of
anti-globalization.
Thus, the IFG ideal is not a homogeneous Germanic (or Central
European) Gemeinschaft, anchored by a Volk of Blut und Boden or by a
born-again faith community, or by both. What one is faced with here
is the familiar paradigm of civil society, so deeply embedded in the
Anglo-American tradition from Harrington, Hobbes and Locke through
to Bentham and Mill. This is communitarianism but of the possessive
individualism variety.

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