People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis (Paperback)

Derber examines the various uses and misuses of the term “globalization” that “globalizers” and “anti-globalizers” are claiming for their own ends. He cuts through the ideologies and myths by probing the concept within its historical context - reminding us that globalization and its driving force, “empire building”, have been around for thousands of years. All ancient globalization systems were based on the exploitative relationship between a “core” and the “periphery”. The net wealth flowed from the periphery (natural resources, cheap labour) to the core (skilled labour, technology) resulting in an ever-increasing gap between the rich core and the poor periphery.

Derber compares such uneven co-dependent power relationships to a dysfunctional marriage where the powerful partner can leave or bullies the other into submission. The win-win myth of globalization is in fact a “race to the bottom” where the corporations alone have the “exit power”. He emphasizes parallels between early US history and the ambitions of recent US administrations. While confined in those days to one country, the concept of globalization can be applied to the American “Robber Barons” then just as much as to the US power brokers of big corporations today. Derber contends their ambitions to expand economic power and political influence are dependent on the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. “Free trade” is a misnomer in the context of unequal power relationships between the rich North and the developing countries of the South. In Derber’s comparison today’s billions of poor in Southern countries have taken the place of the exploited impoverished workforce during the “Gilded Age”, underpinning his arguments with many pertinent examples. Above all, he wants all participants in the “globalization game” to learn important lessons from the past. His fundamental precept is that we must “reinvent globalization to create a safe, democratic and economically secure world”.

He challenges the narrow economic perspective of corporate leaders, arguing that globalization without democratization will fail sooner rather than later. Insisting that the political, social and cultural aspects of a globalized world have to be given equal prominence, he dissects the world economic and trading systems, such as the WTO, IMF and the World Bank. He emphasizes the importance of the “positive rights” of the UN system (right to food, shelter, work, etc.). These issues, he stresses, are of utmost importance in a fairer globalized world. He deplores the refusal of US administrations to adhere to existing international legal instruments. At the same time, he examines the “antiglobalization” movements differentiating between the “UN camp” and the “barbershoppers”, the latter concerned only with the local community. Derber argues strongly that the localists and the globalists have to come together into a network of global justice movements that recognize that real democracy at one level cannot be sustained without democracy at all levels. He challenges his critics who have called him an idealist or similar with clear arguments, reporting on positive trends in intergovernmental trade debates as well as the democratization processes that have emerged since the Seattle demonstrations.

Derber elaborated four principles for a “global New Deal” designed to bring democratic control to the global system and to establish fair economic and trade relationships. One pre-requisite is the dismantling of the Bretton Wood institutions, i.e. the IMF, WTO and World Bank, which he sees as a major culprit for the current unfair global trading system. Real participation of people and accountability to civil society represent other crucial components of his vision. Finally, the “global security” we all want and need, whether citizen or transnational corporation, cannot be achieved without tackling the extreme rich-poor divide in this world. Derber concludes PEOPLE BEFORE POWER with a series of concrete action recommendations for his readers. Read this book, whatever perspective you have on globalization. It might provide you with new insights and understanding of the challenges ahead. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa Canada]

It is a good overview of the issues, institutions and people involved - with two major exceptions. Another reviewer has noted Derber's opening comment that his views are necessarily western-centric - and specifically, American-centric; this is obviously a book written for Americans. In the 'Sleepless in Seattle' chapter, Derber goes on and on about the danger of the movement being seen as one of primarily white, middle-class kids who don't really know what they're talking about. This is an accusation often levelled at it by its critics, and it grates to hear someone who is obviously on the side of the movement lecturing it earnestly about the need to involve the developing world (oh, I just found another annoying thing; Derber refers throughout to the 'First & Third Worlds', apparently having not noticed that the Cold War is over and these terms are rarely used anymore). You feel like saying 'Charles, just because YOU encountered the movement in the streets of Seattle doesn't mean that you should assume your experience was representative'. Derber would have done better to follow the example of Klein, Kingsnorth and others and get out of America and meet the many, many people in the Majority world who are part of the global justice movement (Zapatistas, human rights activists in China, etc., etc.). Just because they don't buy place tickets to Seattle and Genoa and we don't see them on Fox News doesn't mean they're not there. Derber's view here is badly out of date, which is annoying in a book written in 2002.

Another glaring omission; Derber presents the issues surrounding globalisation as being very much those of human welfare and, specifically, labour rights and democracy. Whilst these are central to the cause of the global justice movement, he seems to have ignored the other major issue of the environment. I quite agree that the world's trade and governance institutions need reforming, but Derber has ignored one of the major reasons why; our current systems don't allow us to prevent the damage the mechanisms of unrestrained turbo-capitalism can do to the environment (climate change, extreme weather, water shortages, loss of useable farmland, chemicals accumulating in animals' bodies and causing infertility). These have the potential to wreck even more people's lives than globalisation alone; you can't farm if you don't have water. To use one of those colourful metaphors he himself is so fond of, campaigning for reform without paying due attention to the ecological problems facing us and the radical solutions we might have to implement to deal with them is like rearranging the cabins on the Titanic so that everyone gets to stay in first-class, whilst ignoring the iceberg looming up on the horizon. This book is a good place to start - but don't assume it's a comprehensive approach to the issue.