Globalization

[weaktwos]

Globalization has been presented as purely a trade issue, but it is actually about appropriation of resources. It makes property out of things that have never before been owned as property. Native plant life replenishes itself and belongs to communities. The idea of patenting seeds, plants and even genes of certain organisms threatens to change this. Similarly, water, which has alwasy been recognized as a commons, is being privatized. This confilict involves nearly all of humanity--and all the species on this planet--versus a handful of corporations.

Why is this happening now? Because capital has reached its limits. Capital accumulation always needs new domains, new frontiers. During colonialism, the frontiers were other continents. Europeans came and took the land that belonged to the native communities in India and Africa. Now the frontiers are water, plant life, and life itself.

The limits of capitalization have been reached in teh wealthy, industrialized North: how many more suvs can you sell to families that already have two of them? In the Southern Hemisphere, people are poor. You can't sell them suvs, so you create new markets in teh necessities of life, items that even the poor must have daily. Thus you have a mechanism with which to suck capital from the poorest people of the world.

--Vandana Shiva

Now, if we challenge the notion of property, that has an affect on the validity of ownership in the past. Not that I have done research significantly in the past, but you owned property based on whether your government acknowledged you owned that property. Before organized government, you owned it by virtue of being able to defend it from others. Is the only thing making property valid is that you merely have a powerful authority acknowledge that it is yours?

Discuss.

Comments

ooh, good stuff...

[imlac.livejournal.com]

First off, I think this is a conflation of issues. Globalization is not necessarily intertwined with the expansion of property she speaks of. I'm very much in favor of the former, somewhat opposed to the later.

Second, the 'patenting of genes' is a really distorted fear. People think it's some insidious plot so corportations can control the market and keep a strangle hold on those who they make dependant on their products. This is just paranoia. GM foods are pretty much the only way we can hope to feed this planet's 6 billion people. The companies that do this are, indeed, companies and that means that they are looking to make a profit. But they're neither so stupid nor so malevolent as to think they could hold billions of people for ransom by controling their food suplies like a dealer to a junkie.

Third her claim about 'why this [globalization] is happening now?' is just bullshit. It's happening now because communications technologies are expanding, global consciousness is arising, democracy and free markets are burgeoning, and for the first time in history we have the leasure of caring about the starving billions and the technology to do something about it. Yeah, maybe you can't sell another SUV to a family with two, but that's why marketing is capitalism's best friend--it creates new artifical desires. If the limits were simply at the basis of our needs, globalization would have happened shortly after the industrial revolution. 'Capitalization' works because marketing convinces people that they constantly need more pointless, expensive shit, and there is no limit to how much pointless, expensive shit this culture can churn out.

"Thus you have a mechanism with which to suck capital from the poorest people of the world."

This is the worst kind of demagoguery. By definition, you CAN'T suck capital from people in absolute poverty. These measures are designed to transform the third world into a place that is NOT in absolute poverty, so that capital can be sucked from it. The intent is to create a market (selfish and self-serving), the effect is to raise standard of living, create educated, technological and free societies, and save a few billion lives (benevolent and magnanimous.) Anyone who would choose to deny this effect because of the distastefullness of the intent is a callous, morally twisted person.

As for your point about property, 'private property' as a politically protected institution is a relatively new invention. Throughout the middle ages the 'divine right of kings' said that all property in a kingdom belongs to the king, and that the individuals merely hold the property for the king as stewards. It wasn't until the Enlightenment, when people like John Locke challenged this idea with 'Labor theories' of personal property, and other 'natural right' arguments. When Locke's ideas found concrete formulation in post-American revolution in the USA, post-'Bloodless Revolution' in England and post-French Revolution France, 'private property' as we currently know it really became established. It is Locke's theory that provides the intellecutal justification for property in many/most western countries (Hegel's justification plays a role in Germany, France and a few other European systems.)

So it's not just arbitrary 'can you find a powerful authority to defend your property?' In short, if you mix your labor with it, it becames yours. How this applies to things like gene-sequences and the like is still an open question in both the legal and philosophical spheres.

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

Shiva brings up a lot of points worth considering.

GM foods are pretty much the only way we can hope to feed this planet's 6 billion people. The companies that do this are, indeed, companies and that means that they are looking to make a profit. But they're neither so stupid nor so malevolent as to think they could hold billions of people for ransom by controling their food suplies like a dealer to a junkie.

Shiva argues that Biotech fails the productivity test, that there is not a single genetic modification that has given us higher yields by itself. While these plants are resistent to herbicides or producing insect toxins, basically it leads to an emergence of resistent weeds and pests that can resist the toxin.

She claims that before biotech cotton was introduced commercially in India, yields were at 15 quintiles per acre. After the introduction of biotech cotton, output dropped to 2 quintiles per acre. Furthermore, she asserts that Monsanto cooked the books and planted articles in scientific journals.

With regard to privatization and sucking resources from the poor, we need to be aware of situations like Cochabamba, Bolivia. The World Bank, with the intent (or supposed intent) of easing the poverty situation in Bolivia, advocated privatization of as many of the public services for Bolivia. International Water, a subsidiary of Bechtel got the contract for privatization. In a city where the minimum wage is less than 100 dollars per month, cost for water from International Water was reaching 20 dollars. This ammounted in mass protests, violence, etc., until the Government withdrew the contract from International Water.

Another example is the industrialization of marine farming in India. For every dollar exported, it was generating ten dollars in damage to the local economy and ecosystem.

These are opportunities for additional investigation. If I had a choice between believing a person whose goal is to ensure the nourishment of poor families around the world versus the word of corporations who seek to maximize profits to acquire more luxuries, I'm going to believe the well educated individual who is motivated by feeding the poor.

We are currently in a world where governments and businesses are not separate. In many cases, governments are making decisions that benefit businesses directly at the expense of the basic needs of the people.

If there really was a free market, perhaps things would work more smoothly. But we don't have a free market. Corporations, already possessing of a certain amount of wealth and priviledge, will abuse that in order to maintain or maximize their position. If a company, for example, manufactures a product that is faulty, that company would diminish and be replaced by a company that offers a working product, or divert resources to make a product that does function properly. Instead, they alter the representation to make a faulty product or business appear as if it's working properly. You can't have a double standard of companies being able to rig the results to make more money, yet expect peasants to behave as if they are in a "free market".

[imlac.livejournal.com]

"Shiva argues that Biotech fails the productivity test, that there is not a single genetic modification that has given us higher yields by itself. While these plants are resistent to herbicides or producing insect toxins, basically it leads to an emergence of resistent weeds and pests that can resist the toxin."

I'm not quite sure what 'by itself' means, but no matter what, that's just false. Dwarf wheat quadrupled the yield of wheat in Mexico, India, Pakistan and several countries in Africa, saving about 1 billion lives. Remember all those Neo-Malthusian predictions that in the 80's there would be mass starvations? Know why that didn't happen? Because of Dwarf wheat, and other GM foods like it. Check it out here: http://www.usu.edu/cpl/research_dwarf_wheat3.htm

Moreover, it's not just about productivity. So called 'Golden Rice' has the potential to prevent blindness in a few hundred thousand children a year in areas where adequate amounts of vitamin A are scarce. (Shiva has written on Golden Rice calling it a 'hoax,' but her case was quite weak.)

"She claims that before biotech cotton was introduced commercially in India, yields were at 15 quintiles per acre. After the introduction of biotech cotton, output dropped to 2 quintiles per acre. Furthermore, she asserts that Monsanto cooked the books and planted articles in scientific journals."

Well I can't speak to these points in particular, except to say that no one claimed that GM foods was a pancea. It's a trail and error method, much like any other humanitarian effort.

"he World Bank, with the intent (or supposed intent) of easing the poverty situation in Bolivia, advocated privatization of as many of the public services for Bolivia. International Water, a subsidiary of Bechtel got the contract for privatization. In a city where the minimum wage is less than 100 dollars per month, cost for water from International Water was reaching 20 dollars. This ammounted in mass protests, violence, etc., until the Government withdrew the contract from International Water."

Again, I can't defend everything that the World Bank has done, but this clearly seems like a well-intentioned case where things just didn't work out like they hoped. It's in no one's interest to have people dying of thirst.

"If I had a choice between believing a person whose goal is to ensure the nourishment of poor families around the world versus the word of corporations who seek to maximize profits to acquire more luxuries, I'm going to believe the well educated individual who is motivated by feeding the poor."

Oh, I don't trust the companies. I believe people like Norman Borlaug. He was responsable for Dwarf Wheat, and when he won the Nobel Prize in 1970, they estimated that he had saved 1 BILLION human lives (you can speculate as to how many his work has saved in the 34 years since.) Borlaug clearly qualifies under your criterion. I'm also curious what alternatives Shiva proposes in place of GM foods.

"We are currently in a world where governments and businesses are not separate. In many cases, governments are making decisions that benefit businesses directly at the expense of the basic needs of the people."

I just don't think this really makes sense. Companies can't make profit by starving people in absolute poverty, and they can't make much by merely exploiting them. What they want, ne, what they NEED is more customers. That's why they have a vested interest in raising the quality of life.

"If there really was a free market, perhaps things would work more smoothly."

This is one point I agree with you on. There's all sorts of hypocricies and double standards regarding 'free trade' between industrialized nations and the third world. These need to be exposed and remidied. But the remedy is consistency, and the expansion of globalization, not the constriction thereof. These double-standards have (for the most part) lessened as globalization continues, as a direct result of international presure brought to bear by institutions like the WTO.

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

With regard to the Golden Rice issue, I'm not sure her arguments against it have been solidly refuted. Borlaug doesn't address the fact that the amount of Vitamin A in rice is negligable from the Vitamin A content of other crops that would not be grown instead of Golden Rice. And what about the issue of water scarcity? Rice requires more water to grow, yet the people who are starving are also having water issues.

As for companies involved in GM foods, they have succeeded in driving the subsistance farmers out of business, and creating a dependency of people on their products. If it is true that creating super crops leads to super pests and weeds (which makes sense) then these business guarantee business for them because they have to keep developing new crops to keep ahead of the pests and weeds that are adapting. So we basically step up evolution, and truly may not experience a long term improvement, while experiencing a dramatic shift in income inequality.

When reading Borlaug's arguments with regard to these issues, he doesn't seem to have a lot to say, based on the research I've done so far. And I haven't yet found an article where he addresses Shiva head-on.