The New World Order

I finally finished Noreena Hertz's book 'The Silent Takeover' last night. A fascinating companion-piece to 'No Logo' and Eric Schlosser's 'Fast Food Nation', it is another book which has managed to take some of my intuitive feelings and beliefs, substantiate them with meticulously researched factual evidence, offer a rigorous analysis of the issues on a global scale and forge a compelling and reasoned argument. Like Naomi Klein, her subject is global capitalism and multinational corporations, but her interest lies more specifically in exposing the increasing degree to which companies influence and impinge upon the sphere of politics. Her tone is not uniformly critical and despairing - she acknowledges, for instance, that some corporations and individual entrepreneurs do seem genuinely benevolent in their attempts to benefit the disadvantaged when the state is unable to meet their needs, and that ordinary people, in their role as consumers, can hold corporations to some kind of account and put pressure on them. However, the bottom line is that, as Hertz puts it, the business of business will always be business first and foremost, and in any economic downturn philanthropic projects will ultimately be jettisoned to protect profits. Despite efforts apparently indicative of the contrary, capitalism is an inherently exploitative economic system. The idea that in a deregulated capitalist economy financial gains "trickle down" to the lowest strata in society is not borne out by the facts, and a genuinely neutral state is needed to redistribute the generated wealth and counteract the inegalitarian excesses of unfettered capitalism.

Perhaps the one single argument with which I most strongly agree is her suggestion that ever lower voter turnouts, particularly amongst the young, should not simply be condemned as apathy. Political issues are just as important to us now as they ever were, if not even more so - what isn't as important to us is the evidently inadequate political system. Exploring new methods of registering your vote is to be commended, but this can be at best a preventative measure. What we need is for politicians to engage with a sympathetic and curative analysis of the problem, like that offered by Hertz. WHY is it that voters are increasingly disillusioned with what is traditionally conceived of as "politics"? WHY is it that people feel increasingly marginalised and ignored? Books like 'The Silent Takeover' and 'No Logo' have some of the answers.

I read with interest a recent New Statesman article which suggested that the anti-globalisation movement has been stagnating over the last year or so, its progress stalled by infighting among all the ideologically disparate factions which originally grouped under a common cause. This may well be true - but with 'Fast Food Nation' and Michael Moore's 'Stupid White Men' still lodged firmly in the bestseller lists, and Hertz's arguments fresh in my mind, I hold out some hope for change.

In the meantime, go to Make Trade Fair and tell Nestle what you think about them trying to reclaim $6 million from Ethiopia when the country has millions of people starving to death.