John Scales Avery - Adverse Effects Of Globalization
May 9, 2012 Today, economic globalization aims at increased trade throughout the world. At first sight, this might seem to be a benefit. However, laws preventing the exploitation of labor are not universal. The same unspeakable conditions experienced by workers in factories and mines during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution in Europe can be found today among factory workers in Indonesia or children weaving oriental carpets in Pakistan; and it is estimated that in India alone there are 80,000,000 child laborers.
In many developing countries today, industrialization involves slave-like working conditions. Meanwhile, in the industrialized countries, workers may lose their jobs because they cannot compete with underpaid labor in the Third World. Large multinational corporations are tending to move their operations to regions where salaries and living standards are very low. For free trade to be truly beneficial to all the peoples of the world, universal laws must be established to regulate business and industry globally, and to ensure that multinationals act in a way that is both socially and ecologically responsible.
Adam Smith's followers advocated complete freedom from governmental restraint, but the history of the Industrial Revolution demonstrates the need for regulatory social legislation. The historical perspective makes it clear that laws establishing minimum wage levels and laws prohibiting child labor are needed to avoid horrors such as those described by John Fielden in “The Curse of the Factory System”. Today, birth control is also necessary on a global scale, just as it once was needed in England, to raise workers above the starvation level. Finally, unions must be permitted everywhere in the world. If trade is globalized, the hard-won reforms achieved by Charles Knowlton, Annie Besant the Fabians and others must also be globalized.
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