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Johan Norberg

In Defence of Global Capitalism

recensione di Maurizio Castagno - 24 aprile 2003

Since the term globalization has come INTO being, it has been innundated with negative connotations. It has been weakly defined as the exploiting of poor countries to the benifit of rich countries. The left party instrumentalizd a movement which reduced globalization to an ill- defined "monster"; given one day the face of WTO, another the face of a mutinational company, the next the G8, and so on.

Johan Norberg's book, In Defence of Global Capitalism, courageously poses a simple question: Can globalization, intended to mean open markets, free trade, and scientific and economic progress, impede development for populations of the third world?

In his book, the author recalls his political experience in highschool as an anarchist, and his involvement in the school's anarchist party, when he won the election with the slogan " To be free we need to free ourselves FROM all rules". With age and experience, he learned that rules do not LIMIT freedom, but rather, they affirm and protect freedom. On a more profound level, Norberg answers the cosmic pessimism of many intellectuals who view progress as continuously deteriorating the "world system".

Pondering and carefully analysing many diverse realities, Norberg explains that the progress that helped the first world to become richer, also had advantages for third world countries. Even if developing countries are still far FROM reaching the standards of Western countries, Norberg shows how they have undoubtedly improved their quality of living in respect to the past.

The examples woven throughout Norberg's book are numerous and difficult to dispute FROM any of the diverse perspectives he offers. With his comparative analysis, the author exemplifies that in the last thirty years, habitants in some parts of the developing world, thanks to progress, have reached more acceptable standards of life, and, moreover, that the situation in the developing world is not the fault of global capitalism.

The book,in a very scientific way, faces and deconstructs widely accepted theories that view globalization as devastating the third world populations. He demonstrates that globalization does not always try to exploit the developing world, but rather, that globalization can offer advantages to the third world.

Johan Norberg's book In Defence of Global Capitalism, presents a new and courageous point of view on globalization. By elaborating on theories supported by scientific DATA and facing with rigour economic, historical and cultural aspects involved with the phenomena of globalization, Norberg offers a new approach to understanding this immense and often instrumentalized phenomena.

	Maurizio Castagno