The National Interest
Spring 2002

Stress Testing the Global Economy

by Eric Jones

 

. . . Joseph Schumpeter once feared that capitalism’s success would undermine the work ethic. The counter-cap assault gets its backing today from an ever-changing brew of discontents among the very middle class that is the beneficiary of business endeavor. Some of the individual objections to globalization may have merit but many positions are frivolous ("capitalism should be nicer"), others are mindless ("don’t trade, blockade"), and still others are clearly wicked (web sites directing that the cobblestones of Gothenberg could be pried up and used as missiles). No operable and consistent policy alternative is offered; protest strikes out blindly. Less than three weeks after September 11, anti-globalization demonstrators in London had switched to protesting against government plans to involve the private sector in the provision of Britain’s health and education services. The Green Party co-sponsored the rally. Two female "activists" danced topless. Seven others were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit violent crimes.

The counter-cap movement is held together by the suspicion of markets, a strong collectivist instinct, and a belief in protest as a form of moral uplift (signaled, no doubt, by topless dancing). The demands of such a movement cannot possibly be appeased. The movement is Stakhanovite: when one goal is reached, the target indicator shifts upwards, as in some Soviet factory. What, then, drives all this? Lurking beneath the kaleidoscopic variety of causes seems to be a rise in expectations capable of outstripping even the rise in wealth and leisure achieved in Western society, indeed made possible by this very achievement. Fuel is heaped on the flames by readily-aroused hostility to any increase in competition in the workplace. . . .