» posted on 8:51am - October 07 2004 | posted by Hutch
When radical socialists, anarchists, and labor and human rights activists took to the streets of Seattle in 1999, were they protesting globalization? Is globalization an inherently bad thing?
Globalization, after all, is at it's core nothing more than the increased interconnectedness of individuals throughout the world and a decrease in the distances of time and space; facilitated most by rapid innovations in communication technology. Essentially, it is the bringing together of the world's people across and beyond national borders. Is this wrong? Do we not want to bring people together? Or is it something else? Is there something else to globalization that makes people shudder at the thought of it, to protest it, to react so violently against it?
I think the answers to these questions can be found in examining the actions and rhetoric of what's been labeled the "anti-globalization" movement. When one takes a good look at what these people are doing and what they're saying, it becomes increasingly apparent that "anti-globalization" is in most cases a tragic misnomer. For instance, the Seattle protesters didn't smash cell-phones and laptops. They didn't burn fiberoptic cables. They didn't say "we don't want to bring people together". Instead, they smashed Starbucks and McDonalds. They burnt Nikes. They said "we're tired of the way corporations act around the world" and "we're tired of corporations sending jobs overseas to cheap labor markets". This isn't an anti-globalization movement; it's an anti-corporation movement. However, the line gets blurred due to the heavy influence of corporations in the globalization process, and the success with which they've been able to use that process to their own benefit. But does it have to be this way? Is there no alternate path for globalization? Must we throw the whole thing to the wayside because of corporate abuses? Can we not change the process and still keep it alive?
Over a century ago, Karl Marx called for the workers of the world to unite; the workers of the world. It seems that now in the 21st Century, technology has finally caught up to Marxist idealism (disclaimer: I am not a Communist). If corporations have been able to exploit the globalization process in order to advance their cause of profit maximization; can the workers, the common man, not employ this same process to advance their cause of liberation? Surely this can't be done. The corporations are too strong. They have all the resources.
In 2001, a relatively small association of men from several countries, united by a strong belief in a cause and undivided by national allegiances, was able to employ the process of globalization and its tools in order to strike a major blow against an enemy previously perceived as "too strong". Granted, while the US didn't collapse in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, it was certainly a bit shaken, and the message of al Qeada was made unmistakably clear (disclaimer: I do not support the ideology nor I condone the actions of al Qeada). Can a movement united under a flag of anti-corporate, anti-nationalist worker liberation rather than anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism not achieve similar results? By shaking off national ties and coming together under a common cause greater than that of any country, and by employing the very same tricks and tools the corporations and their allies use, can the workers of the world not hope to shape an alternate vision of the globalized world?
--- "Towards a new globalization?" has been viewed 
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