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Globalization vs. tradition
The first part of the book is true, but what did I learn from it that I didn't already know from experience? The second part is unconvincing: too much propaganda and too little hard analysis. The aim of the book is certainly worthwhile, but the book itself is so poorly written that I hesitated for over a year before reworking and posting this review. A far more useful and reliable source of information, based on real experience with the IMF and world Bank, is Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz's book „Globalization and it's Discontents".
The choice of title is very catchy (Jihad vs. McWorld in the original English version) . The theme, however, is not at all Islam per se, but more generally tribalism and fundamentalism vs globalization of capital, labor and production via deregulation of markets. By tribalism in this context is meant any ethnic group that still is bound together culturally and geographically, in contrast with the destabilizing influence of unregulated free markets on a global scale where the dominant idea is that everything should be for sale with as high liquidity as possible („deregulation"). Much of Europe is still tribal in this sense, in contrast with the US and England where, since the Reagan-Friedman-Thatcher era, everything goes. Maintaining tradition (an attempt at „social stability"), in contrast, requires the drying up of liquidity. It requires rules (either written or understood) against unlimited trading and therefore against unlimited development. It requires rules stating that a meadow or beach cannot be sold to a hotel or to a condo developer. Simply ask yourself: why does Houston look and feel so different than Oslo, e.g., or why does Gatlinburg look and feel so different than Garmisch-Partenkirchen? The answer is: some degree of tradition has been maintained in the latter places via rules against development.
Globalization via deregulation (or, simply, "globalization") based on rapid communication has led to the abdication of responsibility. Global capitalism is like „The Castle", or like a huge thermodynamic heat bath: it influences and controls everything that it touches but is itself subject to no reactive influence. This lack of responsiveness, which also feeds on economic ignorance, is the breeding ground for religious fundamentalists to become terrorists.
The propagation of globalization via deregulation as „progress" is based on an implicit belief in the reliability of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand. The Invisible Hand purportedly stabilizes markets and brings them into equilibrium. We know now, empirically, that unregulated free markets are dynamically unstable. In contrast with reality, textbook economics still successfully propagates the mythology of ‚equilibrium', the absolutely noncomplex idea that supply can generally rise to match demand. Were this true, then in the absence of all regulations there should be no unemployment, e.g.. Real markets are not like that. Real unregulated markets are lawless because there is no social-economic analog of physics, of natural mathematical law. The only law of the marketplace is man made law. Deregulation therefore leads to unexpected new problems that are worse than the ones it purports to solve, as is illustrated by the recent economic histories of Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and a host of other Third world countries. Unfortunately for Europe, the EU is a relatively dictatorial, mainly financial, body whose main function is apparently to replace globalize the EU countries, but this is not adequately discussed by Barber either.
Ein zuverlässiger Wegweiser durch die "neue Weltordnung"
Barber liefert in diesem großartigen Buch eine brilliante Analyse der gegenwärtigen Weltlage. Wie ein Rufer in der Wüste warnte er bereits vor dem 11.September vor den Auseinandersetzungen zwischen kulturellen Beharrungskräften und Kulturassimilieren und -vermarktern.
Die Gefahren für die Freiheit liegen Barber zu Folge in der gezielten Bekämpfung von zivilgesellschaftlichen Errungenschaften und demokratischen Werten durch beide Seiten:
Die Idee des mündigen Bürgers wird durch das neoliberale Ideal des fröhlich manipulierbaren Konsumenten ersetzt, bzw. wird Glaube und/oder Rasse die Leitlinie menschlichen Zusammenlebens bestimmen.
Barber erläutert nachvollziehbar, wie sich die scheinbar entgegensetzten Welten von Djihad und McWorld gegenseitig bedingen und ergänzen. Aber er versucht auch Auswege aus diesem, man kann es wirklich so nennen, Endzeitszenario aufzuzeigen. Benjamin Barber plädiert für eine globale Zivilgesellschaft kommunitaristischen Vorbilds, in der die Weltbürger täglich ihre Freiheit organisieren und verteidigen.
Fazit: Wer die heutige Welt verstehen,und vielleicht sogar erklären will, muß dieses Buch gelesen haben!!!
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