The Collapse of Globalism

The last time I attempted to read John Raulston Saul was when I picked up Voltaire’s Bastards two or three years ago. His ten kilo deconstruction of the global technocracy was rich with insights and observations related to the power of national and global bureaucracies – and the people who loved them – but I gave up my quest to finish the tome when I was barely halfway through. Like Dickens, it seemed as though Saul was being paid by the word.

Fortunately, however, his latest book, The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World was far more concise, and his fresh take on the bi-products of globalization never went the way of last week’s meatloaf. Surprisingly unbiased by his ties to the global elite whose unwavering belief in the capacity of unchecked liberalization to raise the collective bar of the global poor is a constant source of criticism in Collapse, Saul slowly but powerfully succeeds in forcing the reader to question the ideology-cum-religion that’s dominated the global political and economic market place over the past two decades. More importantly, though, is that he succeeds in doing so in language that almost anyone can understand – something he failed to do with Voltaire’s Bastards.

What I found the most striking throughout the book was how easy it was for him to reframe the political and economic history of the past twenty years. Using the same statistics as those who promote unfettered globalization – those living in a constant state of “suspended disbelief” - he argues persuasively how nationalism and the nation-state itself are making a comeback across the globe rather than fading away. Similarly, he underlines just as easily how the growth in global trade and productivity (measured by the classical correlation between GDP and ‘standard of living’) remains largely contained within the bank accounts of the vertically integrated multinationals responsible for all that trade:

"I asked earlier whether the new phenomenon of trade between subsidiaries of the same multinational should be counted as trade at all. This movement of elements probably accounts for the majority of international trade. For the purposes of local regulations, these inner-company movements are usually accounted for as if goods were being sold and bought, as if it were a matter of classical trade. In reality, actual profits are rarely made at each stage of movement. If anything, losses are intended in order to use international movements to avoid taxes.

If the whole process is internal, it resembles not so much market trade as the earliest mercantilist model or that of the nineteenth-century empires.”

From there he goes on to explore the political implications of the resurgence of nationalism – including the increasing prominence of irregular warfare, the growing influence of China and India despite their disconnection from the wave of globalization and implications for the future. These are all relatively prominent phenomenon in our newspapers and television screens, but Saul is one of the first to point out their common foundation.

In the end he makes an appeal for us to use our “most complicated sense of belonging both to feel at home and to find multiple ways to be at home with the widest variety of people and situations.” It’s not a surprising statement to hear from the husband of our Governor General, someone who prides herself on doing more of that than almost anyone else, but an important one nonetheless if embraced by those who remain entranced by the alleged divinity of the gods of globalization.