In Defense of Globalization
By Jagdish Bhagwati
Oxford University Press, 308 pp, $28

There are many books out there on economic globalization, but this is one to own and to keep on the shelf for frequent reference. It is solid, well organized, clearly written, and wickedly witty. As a younger man, Bhagwati was enamored of socialism, and in this book he sometimes quotes his old self to make a new point. His main reason for defending globalization is that he believes that it leads toward the goals that motivated him then and motivate him still: he wants to support a system that raises up the poor, succors the environment, and gives the fullest possible opportunity to all levels of society.

Since he remembers the arguments that once fooled him, he can explain better than anyone I have read what works and why. Knowing India and Asia well, Bhagwati packs this book with examples taken from the poorest parts of the world. In 1970 11 percent of the world's poor were in Africa and 76 percent were in Asia; but by 1998 Africa had 66 percent of the world's poor and Asia only 15 percent. Bhagwati explains that Asia made such immense progress in reducing poverty through economic growth, growth promoted by those means that socialists hated and that anticapitalists still hate. After the fall of socialism in the break-up of the Soviet Union, where does today's anticapitalism come from? Bhagwati goes frequently to antiglobalization demonstrations and asks the young participants to talk about their reasons and arguments. He reports that most of these protesters are remarkably ignorant of economics, and that they come from English, comparative literature, and sociology courses in which they have imbibed, via Derrida and Foucault, the main principles of Marx and Lenin on capitalism, imperialism, and business.

Bhagwati also discusses the ironic effect of a new technology, international TV news. For the inexperienced young, it reverses the usual pattern of sympathies, inducing greater empathy for distant individuals, shown dramatically as victims, than for one's own countrymen and kin, who are part of a great gray band of "oppressors." Children, women, culture, ecology, corporations, immigration, coping with downsides, managing transitions--Bhagwati has chapters on all of these and on many other issues that must be a part of any responsible defense of globalization. Bhagwati, author of many books and founder of the Journal of International Economics, is already internationally renowned. I hope that through this superbly argued book he w'dl become familiar to many more Americans.

Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar at AEI.