Insight

Hassan Hanafi* on Globalization, Civil Society….
(Excerpts from his paper ‘The Middle East, in whose world?’ 1998)

Globalization[like ‘Middle East’] is also another label from the same kind, expressing the power relationship between the East and the West after the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. Globalization is not an essential concept but an existential given, not a substantial factor but an accidental fact. Sometimes political scientists transform a reality to a concept, a fact to an essence, a spatio-temporal situation to an everlasting state of mind, de facto to de jure,doing harm to the discipline itself and switching superstitiously from science to ideology, from political analysis to political position. If the expression Middle East was coined in the British mind the term globalization is also coined in the American intelligence research centers.

Globalization was always a World system. The powerful was the global while the weak was the local. The global was the center while the local was the periphery. Ancient China was the center of the world according to ancient cartography. Persia and Rome disputed the center of the world. Then Islam as a new power inherited both, Western and Eastern powers and became the center of the world in spite the invasions from the West, the Crusaders, and from the East, the Tatars and the Mongols. The West followed, after reaching the Western hemisphere by crossing the Atlantic, even if the intention was to reach India by the western route. Since Western modern times till the end of modern times Europe was the center of the world, Africa, Asia and Latin America were the periphery. Globalization is not a recent phenomenon since the downfall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the socialist block with the exception of Cuba and China. Globalization is not one instant in modern history of Europe but it was always there, expressing the will of the powerful, the balance of power between the center and the periphery.

Globalization expresses one sole course of history of a special historical consciousness, that of the West. In the beginning of modern times, Europe was expanding westwards crossing the Atlantic, two years interval after the fall of Grenada in 1492, and eastwards against the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Europe to the extreme limits of Asia passing by India, putting an end to the Mongol Empire. The XIX century was the peak of European expansion when Europe inherited the center of the world making from Asia, Africa and America its periphery. Colonialism was its outcome. If military colonialism is almost ended with the exception of some aggressions here and there, economic exploitation, scientific dependency and cultural domination are still continuing. Globalization is a new form of Western hegemony after the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the socialist regimes, as if history was blocked in time and in space, nothing after and nothing elsewhere.

Globalization is a fabricated concept, not a reality. It is an ideology in spite of the old myth, the end of ideology and the beginning of technology, another myth. In the name of the world as a global village, the information revolution, the Internet, the E-mail, the satellites and all modern means of communication and mass-media, all borders are dropped, between nations, peoples, cultures, customs and manners called specificities, particularities, value-systems, etc… The purpose is to pass the free market economy, the end of economic planning and the state economy after the fall of socialist regimes in 1991 proved that the free market economy is the most congruent to human activity. With multi-national corporations, economy is implemented on a world-wide scale. The group of eight, the GATT, the World Bank, the IMF and all international financial centers are run globally not locally. There are only two alternatives: to compete or retreat, to produce or to consume, to create or to imitate, to invent or to assimilate, to give or to take, to export or to import, to be in the center or to be in the periphery.

Other side-concepts came into help such as: civil society, governance, human rights, gender, greenery, end of history, clash of civilization, freedom, democracy, etc. Civil society is introduced as an alternative to the state, a society governed by the unions and the NGOs. A free society is the prerequisite for a free economy without any state intervention, irrespective of the historical context of the concept and its anti-religious and anti-state connotation. It is blocked by other traditional concepts such as Ummah, ‘Ashira, Kawm, Ahl, Sha’b, Kabila, Raht, Naas, etc. Governance gives the priority to administration of business instead of the national state. Government is management rather than national sovereignty. It can be run by international experts not by nationals. The value is that of the individual, not the community. The battle is human rights not peoples rights. The individual inherits society as society inherits the state. The state is reduced to society and the society is reduced to the individual. The individual is even split into a male-female dichotomy in the name of the gender. The liberation of the female precedes the liberation of the individual and the autonomy of the state. Feminism is a component of civil society. The struggle for freedom and equality begins by the gender not by socio-political struggle. The struggle for freedom and democracy is not a struggle for freedom and democracy per se as a part of natural right but as a prerequisite for free economy. The Greens are fighting against pollution in the West not against desertification in Africa, to protect environment in the West by stocking the nuclear residuals in countries of the Third World. The collapse of socialist regimes meant the victory of capitalism and the free market economy. History ended, the prophecy accomplished, the Messiah appeared and the process fulfilled. For the periphery where traditional societies live, the clash of civilizations is their destiny as if the conflict between the center and the periphery is not a power conflict including socio-economic conflict, but only a civilizational one as if the clash of civilizations was a cover-up for the real socio-political and economic hegemony.

If globalization is the empowerment of the center, fragmentation is planned for the periphery. The power of the whole requires the weakness of the parts.

Globalization expressing the one-polar world as another new world order does not tolerate any challenge even in potentia and in the future of any resistance or even reluctance to be a part of the global world. The bipolar world is finished for ever. It is not only a part of recent past history but it is the structure of future history. A challenge to globalization may not come from Asia. The new industrial societies are busy in performing their Asian wonder. Their upheaval is dependant on Western capital, Western stock-markets and the free market economy. It is a fragile experience especially after the devaluation of their currency in Indonesia, Malaysia and even in South Korea and Japan. The World global economy goes beyond peoples and cultures. Latin America, the home of Che Guevara, the birth place of liberation theology and of dependency theory is now cooling down, hit by hunger, drugs, poverty and oppression. The sixties were a nice dream. Africa is also hit by civil wars, border conflicts, drought, hunger, famine, genocide, dictatorship, AIDS in spite of the end of apartheid in South Africa. The Arab/Muslim world is still struggling in spite of its dependence on USA and recognition of Israel, defending its own cultural identity and autonomy in a global world. That is why it is antagonized and threatened: Sudan and Iran threatened, Egypt marginalized, Israel supported, Islamic fundamentalism encouraged because of its conservatism and fought because of its anti-westernism, etc. The Arab/Muslim world may represent a possible challenge of the one polar world, given its historical depth, its cultural specificity, its long struggle against foreign domination and its material and moral potentialities. Islamic movements are becoming more and more stronger. Islam is succeeding as vehicle of protest, as an expression of socio-political grievances, presenting itself as an alternative.

*Dr. Hassan Hanafi (born 1935 in Cairo, Egypt) is a professor in department of Philosophy at Cairo University.