The Other Side of Silence

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

George Eliot

Whilst speechmaking on the campaign trail may garner much eyebrow-raising via its treacly promises and invocations to "traditions" or "family values", "morality" by and large is no longer the essential reference point it was once was for political incumbents once they attain office. That this is so perhaps reflects a greater sophistication amongst a world-weary but sharp-eyed populace who no longer focus on the supposed rights and wrongs of a given political quandary but rather the economic net cost benefits of policymaking. It is increasingly rare nowadays, in the parliamentary democracies of the West at least, to hear politicians at any stage invoke the dictats of a given moral system whether it be orthodox Christianity, secular humanism or even the once admired and formerly much commented upon principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The implicit understanding which governs political choicemaking instead revolves around such bottom line criteria as jobs and taxes whilst the economy's health is measured in raw GDP terms with the occasional glance thrown at inflation - the traditional flaring point for the grievance of the masses. These are the set parameters from which the health of the nation are determined and moral arguments quickly run adrift when bludgeoned by the hard wall of economic data.

Let us take for instance the moral assertion that society and indeed the distribution of wealth around the globe is becoming increasingly unequal. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the seeming triumph of exclusively market led economic growth there has been a drunken excess in boardrooms all over the planet. The plan has been to integrate the globe in a vast deregulated market which favours foreign direct investment (FDI) and the lowering of protectionist tariff barriers with the promised levelling of incomes emerging either through an invisible beneficial hand ala Adam Smith, or an equally benevolent "trickle-down effect" which will "raise all boats". This is how the central powerbrokers - the IMF, World Bank, US Treasury, the G8 - convey the tides of international change to those in a position to question their policies. It's important here to recognise that of the myriad critiques of how the international economic agenda is being shaped; many of these critiques are emerging most powerfully from non-governmental activist groupings within the former colonial states. Yet it is these precise voices - against all the principles of our founding democratic documents - which are being activally excluded from having their testaments heard within the corridors of power and by and large by our own media outlets. This may not appear much of an issue at first since they are after all citizens of another jurisdiction - members of the so-called developing block of countries - and therefore, theoretically at least, outside the ambit of our concerns.

The argument has been that this new post Cold War mode of organising economic relations - that is to say, "neoliberalism", or the new laissez faire - has unfairly unleashed the energies of a predatory capital on vulnerable indigenous throughout what was once referred to as the third world. There is much to commend this argument; vital indicators such as GDP per capita used by the central development nexus of the IMF and World Bank, point in Africa's case, to declining rates of real income over the past twenty years. When you use "pro-poor" datasets such as the Human Poverty Index which the UN are accustomed to using the numbers are considerably worse. The response of the international financial institutions (IFI's) has been to point the finger at the lack of 'good governance' - euphemistic code for 'corruption' and not to any inherent flaws in their principles of unregulated free trade. Within India we are consistently greeted with headlines of impressive economic growth (8% per annum) yet here too the data referring to endemic poverty; rates of malnutrition, mortality, literacy, access to proper sanitation and so on remain rooted at the same levels seen at independence.

Here is not the place to weigh up the various arguments against the neoliberal raft of policies that are shaping so much of the development agenda in the developing world. Instead, what needs to be recognised is that regardless of their strengths and weaknesses we are simply not being given media access to the forums in which they are taking place. Nor, moreover, in an increasingly globalised and integrated world marketplace do we have dedicated media channels which focus on the deliberations of those transnational institutions which are determining the rules by which our increasingly integrated trade is taking place. It cannot have escaped people's notice that domestic policies in Europe and the United States are being increasingly straitened by this new mobilisation of capital. Tax laws have had to be revised to prevent capital from outsourcing their labour needs and corporate entities have had little difficulty convincing Western politicians that their continued presence is conditional upon receiving favourable investment regimes.

Thus, it can be seen immediately that the new environment presented by globalization necessitates at the very least a modicum of understanding on behalf of the world's citizenry of what conditions are like in these other arenas to which we are all intimately linked. Yet, no attempt has been by our democratically elected governments either in their capacity as legislators within the EU or as members of the United Nations to provide the voting public with any means to make an assessment of the desirability or otherwise of the policies being debated within the chambers of the transnational bodies. In an increasingly globalised world the world's citizenry are being increasingly marginalised as the policies framed by their national governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant in tackling the root difficulties within their economies; if the World Trade Organisation for example determines a domestic trade barrier deployed to protect a local industry is inimical to the principles of free trade or contrary to the laws of its charter that national government will have no option but to cede priority to the ruling of this international body. Yet the rules of this organisation and how they impact on international trade and the question of national sovereignty have been largely developed behind closed doors by corporate lobbyists and G8 trade ministers.

When the effective political arena has shifted elsewhere and the voting populace are left chasing their tails on tangential issues unrelated to their real long-term interests its almost academic to debate whether moral values are absent or otherwise. A clue may be found in the level of noise being made by our representatives to have the deliberations of these bodies become more widely represented and accountable.

All I can hear is silence.