BY MIKE MOORE

FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND

FORMER DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION.

In early October I will launch of my new book "Saving Globalisation" in Wellington. Globalisation is not a policy but a process and has been going on ever since man stood upright. More wealth has been created in the past 60 years than all of history beforehand. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty over the past few decades, their new purchasing power; especially in India and China are making us all more prosperous. To argue this is wrong and dangerous would mean it would have been better for the world if Germany and Japan had lain in ruins after the war. Our challenge is to bring the 2 billion people who live in the shadows into the global economy as our partners and consumers. Their hunger for a better life is our opportunity.

The opposite of globalisation is deglobalisation and that’s what a depression and a recession means. This process cannot be stopped any more than we can stop man thinking but it can be slowed, it was in August 1914 and by the disastrous Fascist and Marxist detours that cost millions of lives and set back continents for several generations.

The book examines why some countries do well and others fail. I argue that the big ideas in history; democracy, freedom of and freedom from religion, separation of church and state, the rule of law, independent courts, a professional public service, an active civil society, the genius of the limited liability company, social mobility, equality and tolerance as economic virtues and property rights are the key determiners of success. It’s a remarkable story from pre Greeks to post Geeks.

The forces of reaction have been emboldened by the current global economic crisis. New and old, unpleasant and ultimately destructive forces have gained confidence. They are nationalistic, tribal and protectionist; they see foreigners, immigrants, free trade, investment and money lenders as enemies. Sometimes they claim to be Green and sometimes they have names like Zimbabwe First, Ukraine First and America first.

If we are to save Globalisation, Nations need to adopt policies that give workers confidence, provide progressive adjustment strategies for the inevitable, never ending challenges of change. Social confidence and social cohesion are not small issues.

Education is the key. If all we have to sell is the sweat of our brows and the strength of our arms then we will all be poor. Not to become qualified and skilled all but guarantees poverty for citizens in our age.

Perhaps the chapters that will cause the most controversy cover the enemies of reason, the ever present forces of anti enlightenment and evidence. They come from the left and the right. The right instinctively oppose stem cell research. The new left rejects GM foods and won’t even consider the evidence. It’s the stuff of car stickers and TV bites.

It’s not such a big stretch to place the mind numbing stupidity and arrogance of social engineers in the west alongside fundamentalists elsewhere, who reject modernity. George Orwell who warned us in his novel ‘1984’ of totalitarianism in the 1930s, wrote of ‘Catastrophic Gradualism’ and "the dangers of intellectuals in whom acceptance of power politics has killed first the moral sense and then the sense of reality....allowing people to be stripped of their language and their right to be trivial and sentimental, taking away their rich language and replacing it with an ugly, utilitarian one, denying them the ordinary pleasures of life." That’s how a seminar on Maori underachievement fails even to discuss the issues because using the word ‘underachievement’ was unacceptable and racist. Control the language and you control the outcomes. Process trumps substance.

Khrushchev invented the phrase political correctness to describe Stalin’s terror tactics when he created enemies of the people, rendering it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man engaged in a controversy be proven. We fell on the floor laughing with anger when the Commissar of Children suggested we had to balance the property rights of fence owners and the rights of the young to express themselves through graffiti. Just as insidious was the stern recommendation of a Commission that Maori ought to have representatives in the ‘state Government’ of Auckland appointed by traditional Maori means. No election or vote, nothing learnt from the age of enlightenment. Even the British have abolished hereditary seats in the House of Lords. These independent, read unaccountable, bureaucrats miss the point that Government exists to protect us from each other not from ourselves.

Alas my party has more than its share of these busy bodies. Norman Kirk in his last speech to the Labour party conference warned us that the permissive society was a prison for the poor.

This is treason of the ‘intellectuals’ who throughout history have known whats best for us. Enraged, that while we are all equal but not the same; some have changed the progressive instinct from equality of opportunity to the equality of outcomes which takes us down another dark road.

Cultural relativity, moral equivalence; the argument that all values are equal denies the human journey. Sure, all cultures should be respected and cherished but there’s a difference between accepting female genital mutilation and celebrating the language, songs and poems of others.

Fundamentalism in all its forms is the enemy of reason. Right wing religious leaders claimed that 9/11 was God’s wrath for secularization and tolerance of homosexuality and one serious elected US politician claimed that the kids were massacred in Columbine because schools taught evolution.

Extreme Muslims protest against cartoons in newspapers and carry ‘Kill Rushdie’ and ‘Death to Democracy ‘placards and go unpunished by dangerous ‘hate laws’ which were used against a football fan who displayed the English flag, the cross of St. George. How we manage people born into societies that they despise is a challenge for a tolerant world.

My book warns against those who appease the fickle Gods of opinion polls and refuse to stand up for the values and virtues that have given us such wealth, prosperity and freedoms. We must stand with certain moral clarity for these progressive principles or we will surly falter, stall, go stale and fall. I kick all shins equally and I apologise in advance, if I’ve missed anyone out.