This book by Thomas Friedman, despite my having been working my way through it for literally nineteen months,* will not be treated with a long post, because it really annoyed me.
It is a book seeking to provide a clear, objective, accessible overview of globalisation - but anyone reading it with a modicum of awareness of the actualities of neoliberal capitalism or America's hegemonic distortion of political-economic foreign policy to its own ends will be struck by how utterly blinkered it is. Bordering on propaganda for the corporate empire; it is full of oversimplification, ham-fisted analysis disguised in colourful (and often quite apt) metaphors that nonetheless wash over the true complexity and nuances of the issues he discusses,** highly reliant on anecdotal and conversational stuff to support his points instead of actual assessments of reality,*** resorting with alarming regularity to even making his case by walking us through entirely hypothetical imaginary scenarios,**** barely any hard data or robust models of how any of this actually works, and all of this sickery in buckets. It wouldn't be so bad if he were merely spouting the glories of American-hegemony-led global capitalism - he does also take care to point out some of the shortfalls and flaws in its current mode and pace - only to shortly after, each time he brings these up, discard them as "we'll be alright the market will soon adjust" or "this is something people are starting to notice and so there'll probably be a political solution soon." His picture of the global political economy is one of resigned delight in the grand impenetrable inevitability of American consumer capitalism spreading itself ever further and entrenching itself ever deeper.
Please, for the sake of your own self-respect as a thinking individual,***** do not read this book - and I ask this not because I don't see the value of reading viewpoints with which you disagree, that was literally the reason why I read it - but there must be better advocates for global neoliberal capitalism than this shoddy compendium of travel-writing extracts peppered with weird clunky metaphors and made-up situations all blended together with relatively reasonable explanations of how global capitalism works. One simply cannot, in this book, easily separate fact from sort-of-fact from ideological propaganda from outright fiction.
It is a book seeking to provide a clear, objective, accessible overview of globalisation - but anyone reading it with a modicum of awareness of the actualities of neoliberal capitalism or America's hegemonic distortion of political-economic foreign policy to its own ends will be struck by how utterly blinkered it is. Bordering on propaganda for the corporate empire; it is full of oversimplification, ham-fisted analysis disguised in colourful (and often quite apt) metaphors that nonetheless wash over the true complexity and nuances of the issues he discusses,** highly reliant on anecdotal and conversational stuff to support his points instead of actual assessments of reality,*** resorting with alarming regularity to even making his case by walking us through entirely hypothetical imaginary scenarios,**** barely any hard data or robust models of how any of this actually works, and all of this sickery in buckets. It wouldn't be so bad if he were merely spouting the glories of American-hegemony-led global capitalism - he does also take care to point out some of the shortfalls and flaws in its current mode and pace - only to shortly after, each time he brings these up, discard them as "we'll be alright the market will soon adjust" or "this is something people are starting to notice and so there'll probably be a political solution soon." His picture of the global political economy is one of resigned delight in the grand impenetrable inevitability of American consumer capitalism spreading itself ever further and entrenching itself ever deeper.
Please, for the sake of your own self-respect as a thinking individual,***** do not read this book - and I ask this not because I don't see the value of reading viewpoints with which you disagree, that was literally the reason why I read it - but there must be better advocates for global neoliberal capitalism than this shoddy compendium of travel-writing extracts peppered with weird clunky metaphors and made-up situations all blended together with relatively reasonable explanations of how global capitalism works. One simply cannot, in this book, easily separate fact from sort-of-fact from ideological propaganda from outright fiction.
Just to feel more constructive, I'm also now going to include a list of books that deal well with many topics relevant to the book's content that Thomas Friedman entirely neglected:
- the entirety of practical economic theory
- the co-opting of mainstream economic theory by plutocratic interests
- common misconceptions about capitalism
- the fact that American hegemony isn't actually 100%
- how the global north messes up development in the global south
- the role played by gender in political economy
- the fact that aiming for infinite growth on a finite planet is dumb/dangerous
- any properly contextualised discussion of anti-capitalist movements
Remember, kids - they'll always tell you it's just the way things are and always will be if they have vested interests in it remaining so.
* Two of the chapters in it were key readings on liberalism for my core module last year, and I decided for the sake of understanding more in-depth the case for a view of the global political economy much at odds with my own it was worth reading the whole thing. Boy was I wrong (see above). Anyway, I'd got about three quarters of the way through, but have just finished it in a don't-really-care-anymore speed-reading spurt, because I need to get loads of books out of the university library for my dissertation but apparently I've hit my maximum amount of loaned items - so this one's going back to the returns bin after a year and a half in my 'currently reading, sort of' pile.
** For example, the 'electronic herd' being the global flow of money to wherever financial and investment opportunities seem liable to spring up; or the 'golden straitjacket' as the set of deregulatory allowances a society much make for free market operations so as to not get left in the dust-wake of our rapidly globalising world economy.
*** The most damning criticism of this book, I think, is that it is 475 pages long, purports to be a well-researched highly reliable account of the way the world ticks, and has not got a bibliography or any references. This isn't academic snobbery - this is the simple principle that arguments, especially about large highly-contested convoluted things like, oh I don't know, the world economy, should be supported by evidence that the person arguing has tried to get to grips with the subject in a way somewhat more accountable than just flying round the world asking people what they think and cherry-picking quotes and stories to suit the paragraph's topic. There isn't even an index! Of course, this doesn't matter to his target market, which is presumably Americans who just know that capitalism is all fine and America is awesome and who needs to understand what's going on in critical depth, this guy's talked to lots of important people, he clearly knows what he's on about (and I believe he does, he's just very dedicated to his role as Laymans'-Intellectual Defender of Pure American Neoliberal Hegemony).
**** I shit you not, chapter twelve concludes with a full four pages of entirely fabricated conversation between Warren Christopher and Hafez al-Assad... in what school of writing robust non-fiction has he been told this is acceptable!? The man has a Pulitzer Prize for goodness sake!
***** I mean, I assume you are, if you're reading this blog. Who are you people? Please leave an indignant comment if you think I'm a ridiculous nutter whose concerns about global capitalism are entirely overblown. I've never had an indignant comment before but would love one, in part to feel like I'm provoking debate, but mostly just to confirm that actual human people are reading these posts. Pfft.
***** I mean, I assume you are, if you're reading this blog. Who are you people? Please leave an indignant comment if you think I'm a ridiculous nutter whose concerns about global capitalism are entirely overblown. I've never had an indignant comment before but would love one, in part to feel like I'm provoking debate, but mostly just to confirm that actual human people are reading these posts. Pfft.
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