III. Some of the Social Consequences of Globalization: the Problems of Increasing Inequality and Structural Unemployment

Inequality and Social Exclusion
The Rise in Unemployment

 

For decades, in the international fora and especially in UNCTAD, developing countries have, without much success, tried to influence the construction of a new international economic order. The truth is that, to a certain extent unnoticed by them, this new order was already being forged and is now known as lobalization.

Without giving in to the illusion that this new order responds only to market forces, however decisive these may be, and that the power of nation states has ceased to have the same impact upon the course of events, it is precisely the recognition of the "limits" of the market and the strength that some large countries such as Brazil and Mexico have to influence the course of the globalization of the economy, which allows us to adopt measures capable of counteracting the most negative social effects of the phenomenon, such as the growth of inequality and the increase in unemployment.

To do this, however, governments have to accept, as I have already said, certain conditioning factors of the economic order currently being forged with realism and a sense of pragmatism. The novelty of the process and the speed of the transformations require entirely new forms of action in the international scenario.

Inequality and Social Exclusion

As we have seen, globalization creates uniformity even as it differentiates. The trend among many analysts and ideologists is to praise the processes which create uniformity, as if they in and of themselves were sufficient to create wealth and equity. The themes of differentiation are, however, decisive and perhaps constitute the essence of the construction of a political perspective for globalization. In truth, the issue of the rise in inequality and social exclusion which Globalization appears in some way to exacerbate is intricate and hard to combat. It is manifested both on the international plane and on the internal plane by both developed and developing countries. It is paradoxical _ one might even say ironic _ that the increase of inequality occurs precisely at the moment in which, with the end of the Cold War and greater opening to the world of the most hard-line socialist regimes, we move towards institutional uniformity and a greater niversal convergence of values.

In the dimension of interpersonal relations, inequality can be regarded less as the fruit of "capitalist exploitation" or of distortions of the model of accumulation, than of the qualitative differences in labor and of innate or acquired skills and abilities. Material inequality is perversely identified as the result of a natural process of differentiation among individuals. This break in the sense of solidarity has serious repercussions on the very idea of national identity itself, as was pointed out by Robert Reich, the current Secretary of Labor of the Clinton Administration.

In the dimension of the relations between states, inequality is perceived not so much as a historical, political, economic or cultural phenomenon, but rather as an incapacity to adapt to the institutional and ideological framework which prevails in "nations who are winners". This waning of the economic, sociological, historical or ethical explanation for inequality leads to the growth of indifference and intolerance with regard to losers", who are classified as the only ones responsible for their own backwardness.

Still on the plane of the relations between States, the concept that development requires that States "do their homework" satisfactorily, so as to establish the internal conditions of competitiveness has greater currency than the call for international cooperation for development, or for mobilization of the international community in the struggle against the segregation of the poorer countries. Perversely, the existence of inequality and exclusion is thus considered a natural datum reflecting reality, thus losing one of the most important elements of traditional "conservative" thinking, which as has already been mentioned, is solidarity; the protection of the weak and dispossessed in the name of the defense of a higher value, of the cohesion or of the harmony of the social fabric.

The real challenge is thus to go beyond conservatism. We know that it is indispensable to rediscover community values and recreate an ethics of solidarity. It is, however, no easy task to re-arrange the instruments and institutions which have the effective capacity to address inequality and exclusion.

The Rise in Unemployment

The issue of unemployment is another theme which raises concern on the part of governments and citizens, especially because it is an aggravating factor in the process of deepening inequality and social exclusion.

Some preliminary statements are necessary so as to avoid our contemplating the future with our eyes turned back to the past. The first of these is that we have already come up against _ and we will have to increasingly face _ the extremely serious problem of so-called "structural unemployment" which is a consequence of both the loss of competitiveness of certain sectors of the economy which were formerly protected by almost unassailable tariff or non-tariff barriers, and the enormous productivity gains per work unit. The second, that was referred to earlier, has to do with the phenomenon of the outsourcing of the economy and has contributed to the transformation of the nature of work on a global scale. In Brazil, for example, the tertiary sector responds for more than 60% of the total of jobs in the economy. This is a fact of great significance in the decision-making processes of Governments.

Even the developed countries are not immune to the problem of unemployment. Among OECD member countries, unemployment rose by a factor of three between 1970 and 1992, according to data published in a 1993 UNDP Report on Human Development. And as a consequence of migratory movements, the problems of unemployment, both in the North and in the South, began to interconnect more clearly.

The fear of the worsening of this situation in the countries of the North was what led to certain attempts to "react" to the process of Globalization, as was the case of more closed schemes of regionalism and the advocating of such theses as "social dumping" or of "green protection". Market shares which we had worked hard to obtain by being more competitive began to be subject to discriminatory or illegal surtaxes or, worse still, had to face mechanisms of unfair competition, in flagrant disrespect for multilateral rules, as is clearly illustrated by the issue of agricultural subsidies in the developed countries.