THE MARKET SHALL MAKE YOU FREE

It is fashionable to attack globalisation but, say John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, hamburgers, immigrants and

Hollywood schlock can elevate our culture

IT is hard to think of a more threatening word in the political lexicon than `globalisa- tion'. There are still a few proponents of the Third Way, including both Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, who use the phrase to prove how modern they are. But more often it is a codeword for some unseen dread. For Prince Charles and the less academically modified seedlings of the British aristocracy it is the gateway to an Orwellian future. For the French, it means a torrent of Coca-Cola, hamburgers and Rocky movies. For the Pope and Nelson Mandela — those two

patron saints of our age — it means the enslavement of the poor world by the rich.

For an increasing number of workers, even in managerial jobs, it means the possibility that somebody who lives half the world away will dump you on the dole.

This unpopularity is beginning to take a toll on a process that, though some- times cruel and uneven, has, by most objective measures, enriched the world mightily.

Part of the problem is that producers are much better at making a fuss than con- sumers. The victims of lower trade barriers, such as the workers in Rotherham laid off this week by what used to be British Steel, tend to be concentrated and identifiable; the far greater gains (the cheaper steel that goes into all our cars and houses) are diffuse and hard to spot.

Politicians don't help by championing trade only when it comes in the form of good exports not bad imports. The media, too, is unsympathetic. Globalisation is always illustrated by pictures of the Spice Girls, never the Guggenheim in Bilbao; always a Big Mac, never Chilean Sea Bass with Moroccan couscous and fresh Javan papaya. Worthy television documentaries about the Third World focus on the occa- sional ills perpetrated by Western multi- nationals abroad, rather than the far greater damage done by the rich world's habit of erecting trade barriers against the Third World's goods. One UN study guesses that the poor world could increase its exports by $700 million a year by 2005 if those barriers were removed.

The real damage at last year's disastrous World Trade Conference in Seattle was inflicted not by the bare-breasted vegans and turtle-costumed greens, but by Bill Clin- ton, who suddenly decided to back Ameri- ca's protectionist unions (in the hope that they would back Al Gore). One hundred and fifty years ago, in a supposedly pre- democratic age, Sir Robert Peel took the message of free trade and liberty to every corner of Britain, speaking in factories and fields. Now politicians have `outsourced' the job of defending globalisation to profession- al economists, who spend their time sparring with each other at various secluded interna- tional conferences.

More generally, the harsh truth is that many people feel that they just want a bit of a pause. The world has speeded up too fast — even for the winners. And there remain real concerns about the losers who are apparently being left behind. One does not need to have the outsized conscience of Clare Short to feel a little queasy about the Guardian headline that asked, 'What is the difference between Tanzania and Goldman Sachs? One is an African country that

makes $2.2 billion a year and shares it among 25 million people. The other is an investment bank that makes $2.6 billion and shares it between 161 people.' Recently, Stanley Fischer, the number two honcho at the now reviled IMF, suggested that the organisation simply give up using the term `globalisation'.

The globalists are ceding ground without a fight. The last global age, which began with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, ended in a spectacular bust with the first world war. This time, it seems much more likely to end with a whimper. Indeed, globalisation's weak- ness is not perhaps its out- and-out opponents — be they the Asian prime minis- ters hurling abuse at Anglo- Saxon speculators or Osama bin Laden and his threats of jihad. (For every young Mus- lim flocking to a fundamen- talist cleric there are usually several trying to download pictures of Pamela Anderson from the Internet.) Rather the Achilles' heel of globali- sation is its fainthearted sup- porters: people in the West who support free trade in theory but who often feel queasy about its effect on things they care about, people perhaps like you.

This week's newspapers covered two for- eign arrivals to Britain which in their differ- ent ways epitomise two of the commonly accepted evils of international integration. The first was the tragic case of the 58 Chi- nese illegal immigrants, found dead in a shipping container. Already the main con- clusion being drawn from the tragedy is not that immigration should be made easier but that it should be made infinitely more diffi- cult. After all, those damned Chinese would never have got into the container in the first place if they had not had some hope of mak- ing a new life in Britain.

Indeed, it is notable that many of the most avid supporters of the free movement of capital and goods do not want to accord the same privilege to human beings. Pluck from the City of London even the most doughty defender of what the French call 'le capital- isme sauvage' — the sort of person whose heart leaps with joy at the thought of Pak- istani children being forced to stitch foot- balls together — and he will probably rail against the iniquity of his taxes going to asy- lum-seekers. The Tory party has been quick to indulge this prejudice; Labour has hardly rallied to the immigrants' defence. For anybody who cares about globalisa- tion, this conjures painful historical memo- ries. The hallmark of the first great age of globalisation, from 1840 to 1914, was the ease with which people could move around the planet: nobody needed a passport, let alone the blessing of Jack Straw. And the first sign that things were going wrong was the rising tide of protests about 'aliens' steal- ing people's jobs. By the 1920s, even Ameri- ca, the destination for so many of those in search of a better life, was being mightily selective about what sort of huddled masses it took in.

Ann Widdecombe is still some way from starting to demand skull-size, tests at Dover to determine who should be let in. But it is surely time to revive the old liberal (with a small 'I') tradition, not just of showing toler- ance to dispossessed outsiders, but actually welcoming them. For most of its history, Britain has prospered by being a sort of old- world United States — a haven for refugees and economic migrants. There is hardly an area of commercial British life that has not been enriched by foreign buccaneers from the Huguenots and the Rothschilds to Pakistani shopkeepers and (at least in his Wapping-revolutionary phase) Rupert Mur- doch. There are no figures for how many British Internet companies have been start- ed by foreigners;. in Silicon Valley, Indians and Chinese account for one new company in every five.

Immigration has arguably invigorated the British mind even more thoroughly than it has the British wallet. The greatest English historian of the 20th century was an East European Jew, Sir Lewis Namier; the great- est philosopher an Austrian eccentric, Lud- wig Wittgenstein. What would psychology have been without Hans Eysenck or Melanie Klein; or Tudor history without Geoffrey Elton, a refugee from Nazism; or the history of ideas without Sir Isaiah Berlin; or English literature without T.S. Eliot? Even Thatcherism would have been impossi- ble without the work of another immigrant, the great Austrian economist F.A. Hayek. It might seem a little odd to lump togeth- er feted European intellectuals with 58 Chi- nese labourers stuck in a refrigerated truck. But that is the point about immigration. It is remarkably difficult to be choosy about whom you let in. The old saying about immi- grants being a self-defined elite because 'the cowards stayed at home, and the weak ones died on the way' rings a little hollow this week. But there are few better guarantees that somebody is going to contribute to a society than the fact that they have uprooted themselves to come to it. As an ageing coun- try, Britain, like the rest of Europe, needs new, young blood. If only on the grounds of selfish pragmatism, surely it is time to open the gate a little wider, rather than slam it shut.

By contrast, the second arrival on our shores seems, at first sight, trivial. Next month, Mission Impossible 2 alights in Britain, and the hype has already begun. MI2 (as the Tom Cruise vehicle likes to be known) is, to be frank, a pretty awful film. It has virtually no plot, other than to provide a backdrop for ever more spectacular special effects and long, moody pictures of the star's hair. Indeed, conspiracy theorists might argue that, coming so soon after John Tra- volta's even more lamentable Battleship Earth, Cruise's venture marks a two-pronged attack by the Hollywood arm of the Church of Scientology to destroy the cinema as an art form.

Harmless fluff, you might argue. Yet the anti-global prejudice that MI2 fuels is, if anything, even more widespread amongst the chattering classes than worries about immigration: that when it comes to culture, globalisation simply means crass Americani- sation. For the French, this notion might as well be the second line of the Marseillaise. But it is increasingly a middle-class preju- dice everywhere. Witness the howls in old rectories across the shires about Holly- wood 'Americanising' Colditz and the Royal Navy's capture of the Enigma decoding machine; at prep schools chil- dren pray that Warner Bros will let Harry Potter keep his nationality. Even in the United States, Disney is apologised for wherever Chablis is drunk.

Some of these examples may indeed be ghastly. But the basic idea that globalisation is universalising dumb American culture is as far-fetched as the plot of MI2. Look around the entertainment industry, and it soon becomes clear that American domina- tion is limited to one area. In pop music, Britain has long given America more than a run for its money; now Latin America, Ger- many, France and even Iceland are invading the airwaves in the United States. Master Potter rules the bestseller list, just as Andrew Lloyd Webber reigns the global theatre. Wander down the (mainly Euro- pean) fashion emporia of Rodeo Drive or gaze at American children fighting over (Japanese) Pokemon cards, and you might wonder whether Washington not Paris needs a culture ministry.

The exception of course is film and televi- sion. But even here things are exaggerated mercilessly. When Europe deregulated its television industry, the new channels swelled with American pap; now all the top shows across Europe are home-grown ones. British satellite television used to be filled with re- runs of Dallas; now it shows ITV comedies that you did not want to watch first time. Trash to be sure; but British trash.

In feature films, Hollywood does indeed

dominate the box office in almost every country. But how American is Hollywood? This week another studio — Universal fell into foreign hands, when Seagram, a Canadian-American hybrid, was bought by France's Vivendi. Indeed, the whole point about Hollywood is that, unlike its sub- sidised European competitors, it has never particularly cared about the nationality of its talent. Mission Impossible 2 may star Cruise, but it is directed by John Woo from Hong Kong, and it co-stars Thandie Newton and the still surely Welsh Sir Anthony Hopkins.

If globalisation's crimes against culture are often exaggerated, its positive effects are often even more glaringly ignored. To begin with, it not only helps crass blockbusters, but also increasingly much more highbrow `micromarkets'. Musicians, artists, television channels, magazines and even fine wines that would scramble for a market in only one country, can now exploit their niche in every country in the world. (The Spectator Wine Club has been one obvious beneficia- ry.) The Internet's role as a cheap distribu- tion system for many (non-liquid) forms of upmarket art will only increase this trend.

More fundamentally, the basic act of glob- alisation — breaking down barriers — is essential for culture. The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, even modern English fiction have all gained from the promiscuous mix- ing of cultures. It was Sparta, not Athens, that tried to preserve its culture from alien corruption. Milton called cities the 'mansion houses of liberty' precisely because they were the places where ideas and people mixed. Globalisation simply helps that hap- pen on a, well, global scale.

It might seem a little pretentious to bandy around the word 'liberty' in a debate nor- mally dominated by the dry, etiolated lan- guage of economics — by charts showing exports as a proportion of GDP and cur- rent-account deficits. That in itself is a sign of how far the idea of globalisation has slipped. At one time arguments about free trade, free expression and the free move- ment of people marched hand in hand. In the battle against the Corn Laws, opponents invoked not just liberal economists, such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, but liberal philosophers such as Mill and Locke. It is time to give that some air again. Globalisation is not a perfect process. It throws up awkward problems — be they desperate immigrants, ridiculous films or those greedy people at Goldman Sachs. It subjects us all to perhaps unwelcome com- petition. But compare it with its alternative — culture ministries subsidising films on Morris Dancing or bigots vilifying people just because they want to come here and work — and you realise that even Mission Impossible 2 is a small price to pay for freedom.

The authors work for the Economist. Their book, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation, is pub- lished on 6 July by William Heinemann.