Independent Online Edition: The Collapse Of Globalism, By John Ralston Saul

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The Collapse Of Globalism, By John Ralston Saul

"A decade ago, there was an assumption that globalisation on its own could lift people out of poverty. That braying enthusiasm has given way to no more than a squeak. Saul is right to guard against the credulity of the globalisation gurus, who tend to believe that two countries whose economies are heavily intertwined will never go to war. He is excellent at conjuring the uncertain atmosphere of the 1970s, in which a resurgent market ideology was to triumph over tired state socialism. The privatisations of the 1980s, he points out, were less about unleashing the market to work miracles than allowing timid big business to cower in safe sectors. Saul has a keen eye for hypocrisy and a pungently dry wit. What a shame, then, that his book should be such a ramshackle structure, a collage of epigrams and aperçus tied together with little more than venom and disdain. Since Saul favours the implacability of culture over the transformations wrought by economics, he also tends towards the worst kind of conservatism."