Dr. Leslie Sklair, a professor at the London School of Economics who has researched globalisation and mass media extensively, argues that sustainable development and protection of human rights is possible in a global system in his book, “Globalisation Capitalism and its Alternatives,” to be published by Oxford University Press next year. Bulletin Editor Pavel Antonov interviewed Sklair in October. Is it possible to prevent globalisation? In my view globalisation is irreversible. We are not going to go back to the days before the electronic media. There is too much enjoyment, pleasure and genuine information available from the mass media, and that has liberated many people’s cultural lives to the point where there is no realistic possibility that people will just give that up. Also, we are not going to go back to a situation where the state completely controls everyone’s life. However, there are different forms of globalisation. … In my new book I will argue that there is a viable and genuine long term alternative to capitalist globalisation. This derives from the argument that capitalist organisation itself is not viable in the long term because of its two major central crises: the class polarisation crisis and the crisis of ecological sustainability. What alternative to the present form of capitalist globalisation do you recommend? An alternative based on a genuine globalisation of human rights. At the moment the universal human rights movement, particularly in its official form with the United Nations, is based on civil and political rights: freedom from torture, freedom for people to participate in politics, free elections, unrestricted political parties and so on. This is quite compatible with capitalist globalisation as I have analysed it. But there is another sphere of human rights, which is embodied in the UN Declaration on Human Rights and disembodied in many, if not most, other UN and national conventions and charters on human rights. And that sphere is economic and social rights. The right of everyone to a decent standard of living. The idea that children going to bed hungry, that people dying of starvation, or people being denied education or health services — that these are violations of human rights, just as much as denying people the right of voting. Is this where environmental rights belong? I think yes, though the environmental justice movement is yet in its infancy. I would certainly say that the right to a healthy environment is a basic social right. It is a social right, because it is not restricted to individuals. It is a right of the global commons, to protect and to enhance the global commons. And these economic and social rights, including environmental rights, are a direct challenge to the form of capitalist globalisation that we have at the moment. If we take one simple example: We all consider the right to own and drive a motor car if we can afford it as a basic right. Any government that bans the use of cars would be accused of denying basic human rights. How can globalisation be changed to solve the environmental sustainability crisis? I think the anti-globalisation movement maybe falls into a trap of condemning globalisation in general, and therefore condemning many of the things that ordinary people find to be very liberating — for example, access to mass media, most of which is highly positive. In general it can be useful, and in the early days of mass media in the Third World it was widely seen as a tool for education and enlightenment. But of course this has all been overtaken by the cultural ideology of consumerism. Now mass media is completely dependent on advertising revenue from the commercial sector. So the cultural ideology of consumerism is, I think, the key to the crisis of ecological sustainability. Because it is quite clear that, if the whole world is consuming at the rate of the First World then life on this planet will be unsustainable, one of the great challenges for our present century is to work out a way of providing a better standard of living ¡ª and here I am talking about quality of life and not about the ability to consume more. That is why I think the globalisation of economic and social rights may make a significant contribution to solving this crisis of ecological sustainability. Because with more emphasis on the quality of life, and less emphasis on the quantity of consumed goods, we can find a brighter future.

Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Leslie Sklair DR. LESLIE SKLAIR: Globalisation won’t go away.