28 Feb. - 6 March 2002
Issue No.575
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 Feb. - 6 March 2002 Issue No.575 |
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Globalisation at crossroads
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed wonders whether the exacerbation of terrorism could generate alternative forms of globalisation
In my previous article, I argued that terrorism is not an accidental occurrence but a phenomenon deeply rooted in the present world system, otherwise known as the age of globalisation. If that is true, then any attempt to analyse the phenomenon cannot be set within the time frame of the present, or even of the recent past, but should be placed in a historical context stretching at least two centuries back.
It should also be perceived as a reflection of what I claim is still a bipolar world system, divided not along geographical/ideological lines but along economic/technological ones. The prosperity brought to some by the amazing technological advances of the last decades is beyond the reach of the vast majority of humanity, which continues to suffer from poverty and all its related ills. There are still rich and poor, people able to use the transformations underway to their advantage and others who remain marginalised, rejected and unable to find a place for themselves as the third millennium sets in. Given the inability of the present world order to overcome the growing dichotomy between its beneficiaries and those who see themselves as the victims of globalisation, it can hardly call itself unipolar. To reduce world order to one pole is defective, arbitrary and descriptive of only part of reality, not reality in all its complexity.
As the world polarised around the confrontation between capitalism and communism, bipolarity was obvious throughout the half century that followed World War II. But communism is no longer a world pole in confrontation with capitalism. Bipolarity today takes more insidious forms, such as the confrontation between the haves and the have-nots, not on the world scale alone, but in each country taken separately, and the confrontation between parties enjoying legitimacy within the present world system and others whose legitimacy is not recognised.
The confrontation between capitalism and communism was a form of bipolarity in which each of the two poles recognised the legitimacy of the other. This recognition was consecrated in the veto right mechanism devised for the UN Security Council. The idea behind putting such a mechanism in place was not so much to allow the five so-called "great" powers to further their respective agendas as it was to provide a means for the two states representing the two poles of the bipolar world system, the United States and the Soviet Union, to block passage of any Security Council resolution that threatened their interests. Thanks to this global decision-making process, the two superpowers were able to reach a state of coexistence, albeit uneasy, which guaranteed the stability of world order and was the basis of its legitimacy.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War brought an end to the bipolar world system based on mutual recognition. However, this was not accompanied by the disappearance of contradictions on the world scene and the emergence of a single pole representing humanity as a whole. Indeed, President Bush himself confirmed the bipolarity of the present world system with his designation of a number of states, namely Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, as constituting an "axis of evil." This is an implicit admission that the world continues to be made up of two poles, the difference being that while both poles in the previous bipolar world system operated within the scope of international legality, the counterpole in the new bipolar world system lies outside its scope.
With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, bipolarity was transformed from a confrontation between capitalism and communism into a confrontation between capitalism and terrorism. Thus terrorism has replaced communism as the "other" pole in the world system. That is not to say, however, that terrorism can in any way be equated with communism. Communism, at least theoretically, is based on hope, on the conviction that man can be freed from the exploitation of his fellow man. Terrorism, on the other hand, is based, both theoretically and in practice, on despair, frustration, the belief that death can be a lesser evil than life, and a sense of alienation so profound that it makes no distinction between the innocent and the guilty, both indiscriminately targeted by the terrorist as equally responsible for his perceived misfortunes.
Communism, as conceived by Karl Marx, had to be not only the antipode of capitalism but also its product. Socialist society, according to Marx, is the product of the contradictions in capitalism, specifically, of the class struggle within the system. In this logic, the features and characteristics of socialist society cannot come into being independently from capitalism. The more a society progresses in the direction of capitalism, the more favourable the conditions for a socialist revolution to move forward, toward communism. Marx believed that the best placed nations to undergo a communist revolution were the most developed capitalist states, particularly Germany, the United States and Britain.
But, as it happened, contradictions reached the most critical stage at various moments of the 20th century not in the most developed capitalist nations but in underdeveloped pre-capitalist societies, starting with Russia after World War I then countries in East Europe and Asia, particularly China after World War II. The emergence of the downtrodden as the class in command in all these countries fired the enthusiasm of their people at first, especially that the ascendancy of socialism had widespread reverberations throughout the underdeveloped world and lent impetus to the national liberation movements in the newly independent countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. It seemed as if the world had moved from a stage where world capitalism encircled world communism to a stage where socialism and national liberation movements were beginning to encircle world imperialism.
But this proved to be an over-simplistic reading of the global situation. The countries which called themselves socialist, whether they adhered to the Marxist model or any other form of socialism, were far from ideal breeding grounds for the healthy development of socialism, largely because they had not attained the required degree of capitalist development that is indispensable for a genuine transformation. Perversions and anomalies occurred, thus strongly prejudicing the cause of socialism and making its efforts to catch up with capitalism still more difficult. Then came the scientific and technological revolution that further distanced the more advanced from the less advanced. For over four decades after World War II, the socialist camp stood up to the challenge but eventually collapsed. That the 20th century experienced a form of socialism rooted in underdeveloped social environments contributed to reinforcing capitalism and immunising it against the socialist threat. Capitalism was further invigorated by the advent of globalisation. With the collapse of the socialist camp, the hopes once pinned on socialism as a countervailing force to rampant capitalism were replaced by a sense of deep despair. This provided a fertile breeding ground for the emergence of dangerous nihilistic phenomena, foremost amongst which is the current scourge of terrorism.
The historical significance of 11 September is that it shattered the myth of unipolarity once and for all. As the horrifying events of that day proved, the disappearance of bipolarity between capitalism and communism did not put an end to bipolarity in all its possible forms. But if it is true that communism as practiced in the 20th century failed as a substitute for capitalism, it is also true that terrorism, as the alternative, expresses frustration, alienation and despair, not hope -- and thus contributes to deepening the abnormalities entrenched in an overextended, unbridled neo-liberal capitalism.
It thus seems that neither capitalism nor socialism as practiced in the 20th century proved to be successful recipes for the future. The success of the Porto Alegre demonstrations is significant from this viewpoint. The world's stability and security will not be sustained as long as terrorism is not eradicated. And terrorism will not be eradicated unless its underlying causes are eliminated. As these causes are deeply embedded in the world system itself, no eradication of terrorism is possible without a fundamental restructuring of the world system along lines which are neither the capitalism nor the socialism of the pre-11 September era.
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