Can a Swedish Leftist Anarchist make a case FOR Globalism?
Yes.
From this month's issue of Reason magazine: an interesting conversation with author Johan Norberg. Read the whole thing.
...The anti-globo left has little doubt that anyone who favors international free trade, open markets, and the cultural mongrelization they foster must be a greedy corporate bastard hellbent on plundering the world’s poor and chopping down the last tree left on the planet. On the right, if George W. Bush is any indication, a different sort of blindness is at work: It’s OK to pass nakedly protectionist legislation as long as you talk a good game about favoring free trade.
This is why Johan Norberg, a 30-year-old Swede with roots in the anarchist left, is so important. He is the author of In Defense of Global Capitalism , which makes a powerful moral and economic case for globalization. Norberg throws rhetorical Molotov cocktails both at left-wing critics who would condemn developing countries to poverty by insisting on First World workplace and environmental standards as a prerequisite for trade, and at Western governments whose free market rhetoric is shamefully undercut by draconian tariffs on textiles and agriculture, the two areas in which the developing world can actually compete.
Norberg focuses on the human dimension of globalization, how increased and freer trade is the best way to help the wretched of the earth. A bestseller in Sweden when it appeared there in 2001, In Defense of Global Capitalism is a richly detailed and nuanced brief in favor of globalization...
From this month's issue of Reason magazine: an interesting conversation with author Johan Norberg. Read the whole thing.
...The anti-globo left has little doubt that anyone who favors international free trade, open markets, and the cultural mongrelization they foster must be a greedy corporate bastard hellbent on plundering the world’s poor and chopping down the last tree left on the planet. On the right, if George W. Bush is any indication, a different sort of blindness is at work: It’s OK to pass nakedly protectionist legislation as long as you talk a good game about favoring free trade.
This is why Johan Norberg, a 30-year-old Swede with roots in the anarchist left, is so important. He is the author of In Defense of Global Capitalism , which makes a powerful moral and economic case for globalization. Norberg throws rhetorical Molotov cocktails both at left-wing critics who would condemn developing countries to poverty by insisting on First World workplace and environmental standards as a prerequisite for trade, and at Western governments whose free market rhetoric is shamefully undercut by draconian tariffs on textiles and agriculture, the two areas in which the developing world can actually compete.
Norberg focuses on the human dimension of globalization, how increased and freer trade is the best way to help the wretched of the earth. A bestseller in Sweden when it appeared there in 2001, In Defense of Global Capitalism is a richly detailed and nuanced brief in favor of globalization...
Posted: Tue - December 30, 2003 at 07:55 PM
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Published On: Sep 17, 2004 12:36 AM
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Published On: Sep 17, 2004 12:36 AM