The UN insists that neoliberal globalisation works then
If you think about it what is really being said here by the United Nations chief is that this neoliberal globalisation - the extension of trade and markets to regions previously untouched by their graces - works.
Humanity is facing a “perfect storm” of crises that is widening inequality between the north and south, the UN secretary general has warned. The divide is not only “morally unacceptable” but dangerous, further threatening peace and security in a conflicted world.
The global food, energy and financial crises unleashed by the war in Ukraine have hit countries already reeling from the pandemic and the climate crisis, reversing what had been a growing convergence between developed and developing countries, António Guterres said.
“Inequalities are still growing inside countries, but they are now growing in a morally unacceptable way between north and south and this is creating a divide which can be very dangerous from the point of view of peace and security.”
Any form of economic structure is going to be touched by the arrival of the Four Horsemen: we’ve at least attempted conquest, pestilence, possible famine and Death is, of course, not far behind.
But note what is also said - before that we had a world which was moving in that optimal direction. We had that desired convergence and we were getting it not by the rich becoming poor, but by the poor becoming rich.
That is, the base driving force of the global economy of the past 40 odd years, that neoliberal globalisation, works. Further, it works not just to achieve capitalist glee, it works to produce what the non-capitalists have always insisted only their policies would manage - to make the poor rich and thereby reduce global inequality.
Again, we’re entirely agreed that war and pestilence are undesirable, that they would derail any economic system or structure. But once those are past the claim here is that we should - must, for moral reasons - return to that structure which actually works. Neoliberal globalisation is what makes the poor rich, given that we desire the poor become rich therefore we must return to neoliberal globalisation.
The head of the UN is telling us exactly that.