3071-The political economy of new slavery

Emma Dowling 215
what types of arguments and what kind of language which actors use.
Financial actors are concerned with technical debates of feasibility and
often use language they know any non-economists will have difficulties
understanding. Furthermore, they construct a discourse that emphasizes
the inevitability of the existing system and therefore ridicule those
that disagree. Political actors such as governments and international
institutions mostly side with the economists, which reflects the vast
amount of power business has in the existing system. This also means
that arguments that favour an alternative and ultimately more just
system have a difficult task in bringing about the change that they see
necessary. This is why more must be done to educate the public so that
a greater force can be established to bring about change. The debate
about the Tobin tax throws up questions about what type of society we
wish to live in and in particular draws attention to issues of democracy
and accountability. To conclude, I would like to cite the American economist
Joseph Stiglitz:
Since the end of the Cold War, tremendous power has flowed to the
people entrusted to bring the gospel of the market to the far corners
of the globe...the culture of international economic politics is not
democratic...this is what demonstrators shouting outside of the
IMF...will try to say...not everything they say will be right. But if
the people we entrust to manage the global economy...don’t begin
a dialogue and take their criticisms to heart, things will continue to
go very, very wrong. I’ve seen it happen.
Stiglitz, 2000
It can be argued that there are systemic problems within the present
global economy that foster poverty and exploitation of vulnerable
economies and the people dependent on them. Only by unpacking the
assumptions of the theories that inform policy-making can we understand
how to bring about change for the better by making a concern
for human security our ontological point of reference based upon the
theories of cosmopolitanism, egalitarianism and Critical Theory. From
this perspective, the Tobin tax poses a viable solution to the problems it
sets out to address as well as being able to contribute to a systemic alleviation
of one of the causes of poverty – financial crises – and generate
funds to alleviate poverty directly. The tax also opens up the conceptual
space for debates about regulation and an ideological shift away from
the present, harmful neo-liberal discourse. Poverty alleviation in terms
of a restructuring of the present global economic system can go a long