Giving globalisation a "left hook"

By Alex Singleton | 18 January 2006

In the run-up to the G8 summit last year, I was on the BBC World Service debating against someone from the National Farmers' Union. For the first time in my life, I found myself arguing against a trade union representative from the left. I was, of course, arguing for the need to think about poor countries: she was arguing for the interests of agribusiness in rich countries.

A tactical mistake that many free-marketeers have made is to allow globalisation to be painted as right-wing and pro-corporate. The effect has been to give the critics of globalisation too much ground.

Let's face it: there's nothing intrinsically right-wing about supporting globalisation. After all, in the 19th century, the main British free traders, Cobden and Bright, were Liberals and their friend Frederic Bastiat sat on the left in the French national assembly. The newspaper of the free traders was The Guardian. Moreover, a liberal immigration policy, which surely goes hand-in-hand with trade and capital liberalisation, is hardly a right-wing policy. As lower-case-L liberals, we at the GI oppose the right on some issues and oppose the left on other issues. On a left-right political spectrum, the most appropriate place to put us would be the extreme centre.

We need to expand the support for globalisation more widely than just on the right: it needs a "left hook". Perry de Havilland describes giving something a "left hook" (a term he created) as follows:

Let us take the fact that as the airline industries across the world are said to be in dire troubles, various interventionist governments are pouring tax monies into flag carriers to prop them up. This is not really the sort of issue to greatly exercise people on the traditional 'left', who view economic intervention as perfectly normal or the 'right', who view 'helping' companies as perfectly normal, provided they are big companies. However, this issue can indeed be made to resonate with the 'left' by framing it precisely in the terms that fit their traditions of thought:

"Yet again the boardroom is using its corrupting influence with politicians to screw the common man and take our tax money to reward poor management by the board and bale out some fat cat shareholders. It is hard to say who is worse, the incompetent directors who did not plan for unforeseen problems, the greedy shareholders or the money-for-the-boys politicians doling out our tax money."

What have we just done? We have just made a seemingly "anti-business" argument designed to fit within the meta-contextual world view of the left. We have also just made an argument in favour of laissez-faire.

It's not only protesters that are a threat to globalisation. Vested interests come in all shapes and sizes. Often the most formidable opposition comes from corporate interests. We should be willing to criticise multinational companies when they lobby against free trade, engage in rent-seeking, and damage trade negotiations with their demands.

To win the debate, we need to combine a support for markets with an opposition of vested interests. If that makes people accuse us of being left-wing, so much the better.