Trojan horse - or clothes horse?
Naomi Klone | 19.02.2002 16:19
Is everyone else getting as annoyed with Noreena Hertz as I am? She doesn't speak for us but she thinks she does. She doesn't know what she's talking about. And she talks about wearing anticapitalist designer wear. She's a laughing stock of the movement. Someone slap her.
Trojan horse at the feast of globalisation
Noreena Hertz was dressed for her role in New York. But she had some home truths for the World Economic Forum
The globalisation debate - Observer special
Observer Worldview
Sunday February 10, 2002
The Observer
Last year I stood with the protesters in the snow outside the World Economic Forum. Last week I stood within the hallowed ground of the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
It had been a dilemma whether to accept my nomination as one of their 'Global Leaders of Tomorrow' and I had been planning to go to Porto Alegre to the alternative World Social Forum instead. But the opportunity to challenge the corporate face of globalisation from within was far too tempting. Trojan horse, rather than co-optee, was how I saw it.
And an angry horse at that. Armed with my list of 'unacceptable facts': the 34,000 children under five who die each day from poverty-related causes, the fact that four-fifths of the world's wealth is in the hands of one-fifth of its population; the fact that while the UN struggles to find its $1.25 billion annual budget, Americans spend $29bn each year on confectionery products, and so on.
I determined to use the forum to provoke debate, to ensure that the voices of the voiceless were heard and to get across the key issue at stake, namely that globalisation, in its current configuration, does not work for most of the world's population.
Others used the opportunity of being there in similar ways. From Bono to Kofi Annan, from Professor David Held of the London School of Economics to Global Legacy's Craig Cohon, those of us within who espoused progressive views made sure our voices were heard. To be fair, several business leaders who were there also talked of social injustice and inequality.
That was the good news. The bad news was that although such issues were being aired and heard, I left unconvinced that the business leaders in attendance are really willing to turn their caring rhetoric into any actionable reality.
As Bono put it: 'The Davos grouping has yet to convince that it is anything other than a talking shop.' Trade-offs are required if we are to achieve greater equity, reduce poverty and protect the environment and human rights.
Corporations will have to give up some of their rights and freedoms, accept a higher tax burden, support the strengthening of international institutions other than those that promote trade and be willing to contemplate greater global regulation on the environment or human rights.
At the very least there has to be an acceptance that government has a clear role to play in fettering the excesses of the market beyond the protection of property rights. On the whole, these propositions were too often dismissed.
Instead, I heard talk of essentially a market-based response to the world's ills: philanthropy, self-regulation, corporate social responsibility and voluntary codes of conduct. The belief persisted that deregulated markets would deliver what blatantly over the past 20 years they have not.
And, worryingly, there was an almost complete rejection of government as the appropriate conduit for the distribution of justice, social or economic.
As Richard Parsons, head of Time AOL, said: 'Once the church determined our lives, then the state and now it's corporations.' While he didn't dwell on whether he thought this acceptable, I felt the sense among many in the room was that this was how it should be.
But there are important splits in the Davos grouping itself which need to be recognised - splits between corporate America, which tends to take positions close to George W. Bush's world view, and the many representatives from countries within Europe whose views align more closely with their colleagues from the developing world.
When I asked Louis Schweitzer, the president of Renault, whether he could support global regulation on the environment or ethics, he gave a resounding yes. A Latin American Minister lamented, off the record, the disconnection between US unilateralism and issues of global concern.
I am not convinced that the progressive grouping within the forum can succeed in its quest to establish a new agenda that seeks to make globalisation work for the many. This is why I continue to support wholeheartedly the efforts of those who beavered away at the World Social Forum in Brazil. For those who can only observe the economic forum from the outside (ie, the vast majority) it's hard to see that such a gathering could generate anything positive at all, given the unashamed glitz of the whole occasion.
Even I had to give some thought as to how to present myself in a way that would be taken seriously in this social whirl. And I certainly looked as if I belonged there in my white, Bianca Jaggeresque trouser suit designed by the British design duo, Boudicca. Few who complimented me on my attire, of course, got the irony. Boudicca prides itself on being fashion's first anti-capitalist label.
Noreena Hertz was dressed for her role in New York. But she had some home truths for the World Economic Forum
The globalisation debate - Observer special
Observer Worldview
Sunday February 10, 2002
The Observer
Last year I stood with the protesters in the snow outside the World Economic Forum. Last week I stood within the hallowed ground of the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
It had been a dilemma whether to accept my nomination as one of their 'Global Leaders of Tomorrow' and I had been planning to go to Porto Alegre to the alternative World Social Forum instead. But the opportunity to challenge the corporate face of globalisation from within was far too tempting. Trojan horse, rather than co-optee, was how I saw it.
And an angry horse at that. Armed with my list of 'unacceptable facts': the 34,000 children under five who die each day from poverty-related causes, the fact that four-fifths of the world's wealth is in the hands of one-fifth of its population; the fact that while the UN struggles to find its $1.25 billion annual budget, Americans spend $29bn each year on confectionery products, and so on.
I determined to use the forum to provoke debate, to ensure that the voices of the voiceless were heard and to get across the key issue at stake, namely that globalisation, in its current configuration, does not work for most of the world's population.
Others used the opportunity of being there in similar ways. From Bono to Kofi Annan, from Professor David Held of the London School of Economics to Global Legacy's Craig Cohon, those of us within who espoused progressive views made sure our voices were heard. To be fair, several business leaders who were there also talked of social injustice and inequality.
That was the good news. The bad news was that although such issues were being aired and heard, I left unconvinced that the business leaders in attendance are really willing to turn their caring rhetoric into any actionable reality.
As Bono put it: 'The Davos grouping has yet to convince that it is anything other than a talking shop.' Trade-offs are required if we are to achieve greater equity, reduce poverty and protect the environment and human rights.
Corporations will have to give up some of their rights and freedoms, accept a higher tax burden, support the strengthening of international institutions other than those that promote trade and be willing to contemplate greater global regulation on the environment or human rights.
At the very least there has to be an acceptance that government has a clear role to play in fettering the excesses of the market beyond the protection of property rights. On the whole, these propositions were too often dismissed.
Instead, I heard talk of essentially a market-based response to the world's ills: philanthropy, self-regulation, corporate social responsibility and voluntary codes of conduct. The belief persisted that deregulated markets would deliver what blatantly over the past 20 years they have not.
And, worryingly, there was an almost complete rejection of government as the appropriate conduit for the distribution of justice, social or economic.
As Richard Parsons, head of Time AOL, said: 'Once the church determined our lives, then the state and now it's corporations.' While he didn't dwell on whether he thought this acceptable, I felt the sense among many in the room was that this was how it should be.
But there are important splits in the Davos grouping itself which need to be recognised - splits between corporate America, which tends to take positions close to George W. Bush's world view, and the many representatives from countries within Europe whose views align more closely with their colleagues from the developing world.
When I asked Louis Schweitzer, the president of Renault, whether he could support global regulation on the environment or ethics, he gave a resounding yes. A Latin American Minister lamented, off the record, the disconnection between US unilateralism and issues of global concern.
I am not convinced that the progressive grouping within the forum can succeed in its quest to establish a new agenda that seeks to make globalisation work for the many. This is why I continue to support wholeheartedly the efforts of those who beavered away at the World Social Forum in Brazil. For those who can only observe the economic forum from the outside (ie, the vast majority) it's hard to see that such a gathering could generate anything positive at all, given the unashamed glitz of the whole occasion.
Even I had to give some thought as to how to present myself in a way that would be taken seriously in this social whirl. And I certainly looked as if I belonged there in my white, Bianca Jaggeresque trouser suit designed by the British design duo, Boudicca. Few who complimented me on my attire, of course, got the irony. Boudicca prides itself on being fashion's first anti-capitalist label.
Naomi Klone
Comments
Hide the following 11 comments
You dont speak for me either
19.02.2002 17:07
the thing is there is no *us*. I am not an anachist, trot, vegan, animal activist or member many other interest groups that I have marched besides. I agree with some of the aims of the groups above, but not all.
I have never worn label clothes, yet alone designer clothes (oh I have a pair of CK underpants I was given once). Yet I understand that there are people of different backgrounds out there. Noreena's book has a 'legitamacy' in academic circles that many others have failed to have because of her background.
Does her so called designer wear get made in cambodian sweatshops? I think not, and that's the point. There is nothing wrong with looking nice (which she does imho), in fact it may encourage others to join the unwashed masses:)
Sqoo
Sqoo
footprint
19.02.2002 17:19
blooey
footprintz
19.02.2002 17:21
blooey
cashing in?
19.02.2002 17:52
fair point, but have you ever seen noreena hertz walk beside anyone in solidarity on a protest? in genoa she stayed in her hotel room and watched it all on tv. you are more likely to have read her claim to be the 'it girl of the anti-globalisation movement' in the pages of the washington post then to get a decent piece of analysis out of her. i think she's more interested in cashing in, defending ariel sharon and getting paid to go to corporate meetings when they want to hear about 'the movement' than about challenging those in power. she talks about how since governments are giving up power we should go straight to corporations for our social contract -- this is all pretty far from what the kids on the street are saying. no-one speaks for the movement - and no-one, except ms hertz, has ever claimed to.
Emiliano.
Emiliano Zapata
she's a plant
19.02.2002 17:57
so maybe she has the back ground to criticise from within, or more likely - given the political weakness of what she actually says and does (if her 'killer facts' really did kill there'd be a lot of dead CEOs and bankers around by now...) - she's just been planted in another place to do another job.
I presume she knows what that job is, but it's not really clear to me what she really wants... more consultancies?
zedhead
Britney
19.02.2002 18:47
bored
Hey Emiliano Zapata
19.02.2002 20:03
I thought her whole arguement was that corporations are now in control and not governments - and that the people should 'reclaim the governments'. Not the other way round as you said.
I guess this is why a lot of folks like her and why she is seen by many as one of the few acceptable faces of the 'movement', since a lot of campaigns did focus around how International Financial Institutions in league with corporations were even bypassing individual governements attempts to ban XYZ dangerous product etc etc MAI?
Therefore it's in her interest to slag off the World Economic Forum.
There are more comments about this article from when it was posted last week -
GovCorp
No, she is definitely a stupid cow
19.02.2002 21:28
Come on people, read this self-serving article and see this woman for the self-promoting idiot she really is.
'the protesters were selling my book on globalization in the corridors and quoting from it in the cars' , 'it girl of anti-globalization' etc etc.
WASHINGTON POST
Who's Protesting Now
I'm On Their Side, To a Point
By Noreena Hertz
Sunday, July 29, 2001; Page B01
LONDON
"I am willing to die for this cause," a girl with pink hair and glitter stars around her eyes told me, in the midst of the chaos and carnage that was Genoa last weekend. And although she never defined her cause, her words echoed those of others I spoke with -- others who saw this as simply the latest bold uprising in the war they had already waged upon the streets of Washington, Seattle, Quebec and Goteborg.
I went to Genoa to chronicle the anti-G-8 protest, traveling aboard a train chartered by a group called Globalise Resistance to take British demonstrators to Italy. There I saw to my surprise that the protesters were selling my book on globalization in the corridors and quoting from it in the cars. I came home to London to find that the book was heading up bestseller lists and that the media had dubbed me one of "the three generals" of the protest movement, the "It Girl of anti-globalization." All of which leaves me struggling over whether to refer to the protesters as "they" or "we."
Certainly, I share with the protesters their concerns about the increasing power of multinational corporations, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the devastation to the world's environment caused by the overriding focus on growth. While I have no hesitation in believing that capitalism is the best system for creating wealth, I also believe that economic globalization in its current form exacerbates inequalities. Trickle-down doesn't work, and capitalism alone cannot resolve the problems it creates.
Where I differ from some of the protesters I met last week is that I advocate reform of the current system; they want to overthrow it.
It was with some irony, then, that I realized in Genoa that I had become a voice of the movement at the same time that I was at odds with parts of it.
The protesters are a diverse bunch. Take the anxious 16-year-old girl I met on the Globalise Resistance train (a k a the "Anarchist Express") [I think she means the SWP express]. She told me she was asthmatic. Would she be able to use her inhaler if tear gas was fired, she wondered? "No," said a nearby veteran of Prague and Seattle. "It'll only pull more tear gas into your lungs." Then there was a secretary, in her fifties, who told me she had "just had enough." There was a pacifist priest named Brian who said that nonviolent protest is "the only way forward." And there was Marc, a 32-year-old union delegate, who was on his first protest. Diverse they may be, but all are convinced that the world is becoming an increasingly unjust place.
This hodgepodge of teenagers and pensioners, socialists and environmentalists share that conviction with students I've met recently in America organizing sit-ins on their campuses to protest sweatshops or criticizing the system that puts politicians in the pay of corporations, from oil companies to Big Tobacco. They share their conviction with Bolivians, 100,000 of whom marched into Cochabamba to protest the government privatizing their water supply. And with farmers in India who describe burning genetically modified crops in Karnataka. And they clearly share it with the working people, trade unionists and other disaffected members of the local communities who crowd around in support wherever the protesters gather. In Sweden, it was a blond demonstration. In Italy, I looked out onto a sea of olive faces and dark hair.
As I talked to the protesters in Genoa, I once again became aware of the extent to which they are moved by a common disillusionment with traditional politics. Their mood of resistance is born of a widespread sense of disenfranchisement -- not because they don't have the right to vote, but because they believe their vote is irrelevant.
They reject the ballot box as the appropriate means of expression, several told me, because they see Western governments, coopted by the interests of big business, as unwilling or unable to uphold the collective good. When the European Union tried to ban synthetic hormones from beef on the basis of evidence that they could cause cancer, for example, it found itself unable to do so thanks to a World Trade Organization ruling that put the interests of Monsanto and America's National Cattlemen's Association, Dairy Export Council and National Milk Producers Federation first. The demonstrators see protest as the only means of grabbing the attention of the public, corporations and government -- the necessary precursor to change.
I'm sympathetic with those views -- I've written about them, after all -- but I recognize that protest does not offer the ultimate solution. It is no substitute for democratic decision making, and it is an ineffective context for negotiations. If political institutions are failing, it is on those institutions that the protesters should focus their anger.
Still, I am at one with their rhetoric. Why has the number of people living on less than $1 a day increased over the past two decades in every developing country in the world (apart from East Asia), I heard protesters demand in Genoa? Why, after inequality declined in most countries between 1946 and the 1970s, has this trend reversed all over the world since the ideals of free trade and privatization became mainstream?
"One solution -- revolution" was an oft-repeated chant last weekend. But revolutions are typically violent. And if nonviolence is the goal, as many of the protesters I talked with argued, how should it be defined? I sat in at a meeting where these issues were discussed. Was it an act of violence to tear down the fence that cordoned off the meeting area -- the symbol to the protesters of the divide between the haves and have-nots? No, according to most people at the meeting. (But how could it not endanger people, I wondered?) Was smashing a McDonald's window violent? No, they ruled again. (Though I got the sense some others shared in my quiet dissent on that issue.) How about wearing a ski mask? I agreed that that wasn't a violent act in itself, but I'm not sure it is compatible with a goal of nonviolence.
These are the sorts of questions that are likely to divide the movement, for although it is unified so far on the issues at stake, it is not united over how to address them.
I went to Genoa because I support the protesters' freedom to dissent. But what I witnessed there was a loss of that freedom. What you saw depended on your vantage point. The Italian police fired tear gas into the peaceful crowd I was part of. I heard reports about paramilitary police attacking teenagers resting at a local school. It was only in the evening, on the hotel television, that I saw protesters burning cars and smashing windows. Marc, the 32-year-old union delegate on his first protest, never came on the train back to England; beaten up by the security forces, he had to return sooner.
The whole experience made me recognize the flaws in a movement that values solidarity of cause above all else and thus is unwilling to expel the Black Bloc, the group of anarchists who caused most of the mayhem and demanded most of the media attention.
Like many others who have come to think of themselves as part of this movement because we share its concerns, I am left questioning the way forward. Are the casualties -- the dead young man and the hundreds injured -- an inevitable outcome? I hope not. I can't stop the police brutality. But surely this movement can take a real stand against the violent factions within it. Surely it can find a way of expressing its concerns without allowing a girl with pink hair and stars around her eyes to set her sights on becoming a martyr for the cause. On those issues, I wish my voice were more clearly heard.
Noreena Hertz is associate director of the Centre for International Business and Management at the Judge Institute at the University of Cambridge and the author of "The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy" (Heinemann, U.K.), which will be published in the United States next March by Random House.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
paul
she's a twat, and supports TWAT
20.02.2002 18:15
For all this, i dont like the violent slant of these comments; slapping and kicking are not legitimate methods of criticism, and could incite some real crank to do worse.
==========
I think she is good
20.02.2002 19:03
you need people like Hertz onboard otherwise the arguments about globalisation & retreat of govt etc get dominated by hysterical teenagers with nothing more to say than "we need a revolution".
all power to the realists
Tom
what retreat of government?
20.02.2002 21:29
corporations are not taking over governments - the corporation and the state are getting married. just ask the afghanis how weak the western governments are...
hertz' solution that because governments are weak we should petition corporations is not just scary, but bad analysis.
i am quite shocked than anyone is convinced by her arguments. they are extremely thin.
noreena sucks