In his book Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz argues that globalization has the potential to make poor nations better off, but only if proper policies are used and if each country’s history, culture and economy are taken into account. Poorly designed, one–size-fits-all, policies that do not involve the local population will lead to sociopolitical instability, reduce economic growth, and increase poverty.^[1] Many African writers belong to the pessimistic camp that condemns the process of globalization as a force of destruction. In their eyes, globalization like slavery and colonialism is an oppressive system that denies the African people their right of economic and social independence, indeed, their right to life. While I understand their point of view, I recognize globalization’s potential for good and hope to shed light on ways in which its potential can be actualized.

According to Albert Adu Boahen, colonial masters exploited the region according to their needs. Instead of developing local industries, people in Sub-Sahara-Africa “were made to concentrate on single cash crop or two in each colony... Since so much attention was focused on the production of cash crops, that of foodstuffs was neglected, and food therefore had to be imported”.^[2] Boahen continues by saying that “the political economy of colonialism was characterized by the virtually total neglect of industrialization and manufacturing and the refusal to process locally produced raw materials”.^[3]

What we can observe from the whole history of colonialism in Sub-Sahara-Africa is that “in innumerable ways, colonial subjugation in Africa brought not only political oppression and economic exploitation but also profound psychological humiliation”.^[4] Many average Africans and African intellectuals argue that this psychological humiliation continues to exercise tremendous influence, in spite of the formal recognition of political independence in Sub-Sahara-African countries. Although indirect, and more subtle in form, this influence is an important dimension of Neo-colonialism.

Most countries in Sub-Sahara-Africa belong to the so called LLDC’s (Least developed countries). As such, they are not proportionally integrated in the globalized economic network, capital market, world trade, information technology, or financial investments. Because of this, Sub-Sahara-African-countries have asymmetrical influence on global economic and political decisions; indeed, the region is neglected, marginalized and has literally no meaning to the industrialized world.^[5]  As a result, the region has not been able to successfully and effectively articulate its interests and push for reform in the global economic order. 

The deterioration of the social and economic situation in Sub-Sahara-Africa inclines the average African to perceive globalization not as a chance for social progress and development but as a systematic threat. It is viewed as the expansive conquest of the Western economic system, or a neocolonial form of economic slavery.^[6]

According to Adebayo Adedeji, former director of African Center for Development and Strategic Studies, the word ‘marginality’ is a synonym for “the relative or absolute lack of power to influence a defined social entity while being a recipient of the exercise of power by other parts of that entity”.^[7] Marginalization of Sub-Sahara-Africa is clearly manifested by the region’s absolute lack of power to influence its own destiny. Economically, even though many Western companies are involved in mineral exploitation in Sub-Sahara-Africa, the region is widely considered unimportant to the major actors in the world economy, i.e. multinational corporations, international banks, and the economies of the major Western countries.

It is a great paradox that a region blessed with such abundance and potential finds itself immersed in misery, deprivation, and chaos.^[8] Contrary to what most western media sources try to convey, Sub-Sahara-Africa is not a poor region in terms of resources. Poverty in Sub-Sahara-Africa is due to combinations of external exploitation of resources and internal mismanagement. The region has the bulk of the world’s diamonds and chromium and possesses tremendous potential as a supplier of hydro-electric power. Given its unrivaled wildlife and scenic grandeur, Sub-Sahara-Africa’s tourism potential is enormous; the region is basically blessed with such abundance.

The effect of this Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) is disastrous. Ignoring the basic necessities, the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) requires cutting back on health while the epidemic of AIDS is a huge problem, and cutting back on education and public services.^[9] People who cannot even afford one meal a day and are totally dependent on international aid and donations are made to grow cash crops and extract minerals primarily for export. Affected by this Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) are the poorest and most vulnerable people; consequently, they will not be able to visit a hospital and attend schools.^[10] All this causes political unrest and violence. Again, this shows that poverty and political instability are in a dynamic and mutually reinforcing relationship.

Many young people in the remote village areas of Sub-Sahara-Africa have no chance to attend schools. Schools are mostly concentrated in the urban areas as they were in the colonial era. Lack of education means less knowledge of how to control epidemic diseases, engage in family planning, improve agricultural production, and participate in political and social change. Because of all these factors, Sub-Sahara-Africa remains exempt from the global technological innovation. There is a mutual relationship between illiteracy and poor health and poor economic performance.  For example, lack of female literacy^[11] is closely associated with increased infant and child mortality and illness in Sub-Sahara-Africa. Poor health undermines people’s ability to be a fully productive participant in developmental activities. The AIDS pandemic that is sweeping the region is cutting life expectancy of young people, who are supposed to be productive work force.

We have previously seen how colonialism negatively affected Sub-Sahara-Africa and how the region is marginalized in the globalization process.  Many African leaders have been hiding themselves behind these excuses. Until recent times the idea that the postcolonial economic and political crises are due to internal problems in the region itself was unacceptable in African standards. Nowadays, despite the lack of freedom of speech,  it is widely believed by Africans and foreign  experts that “Sub-Saharan Africa's endemic poverty should  not be blamed entirely on colonialism or imperialism, as was often  suggested in the past, but also on  corrupt government  officials, political instability, and a lack of basic technologies and infrastructure”.^[12] There can be no economic and political progress when governments are dominated and run by unscrupulous predatory elites in most countries in Sub-Sahara- Africa. Getting into government jobs seems to be the best way to get to money sources.

In many ways Sub-Sahara-African heads of state run their respective countries as though they were their own little kitchen. Decades after independence, most Sub-Sahara-African countries have failed to produce political and economic systems in which development can flourish. Many of Africa’s leaders have been more concerned about retaining power than about long -term development interests for their people.^[13] The undemocratic and unaccountable political structures in Sub-Sahara-Africa are manifested in a way that politicians exercise the politics of exclusion. In fact, George Ayittey argues that “the politics of exclusion has been the source of Africa’s chronic political instability, civil strife, wars and chaos”.^[14]

Poverty and marginalization disregard the basic human rights that are rooted not only in the Holy Scripture but also encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Given the current economic situation, the poor in Sub-Sahara-Africa can only dream of the rights to life, liberty, and security.^[15] In fact, researches show that conditions of living in sub-Sahara-Africa have become worse for many more people in the process of globalization. Millions lives on less than $1 per day and suffer from hunger and malnutrition.^[16] They are, in the words of John A. Coleman S.J., “losers in [the] global gamble” and they “undergo identity dislocation, suffer humiliation and loss of dignity…”^[17] The great irony here is that human rights and democracy are preached in a world marred by marginality and inequality. The prevailing global world order (globalization) is by and large “insensitive to human suffering”^[18] and we are virtually living in a “globalized apartheid”.^[19]

The goods of the earth are meant to serve the whole human community. In his article, Christian Social Ethics in a Global Era, Max L. Stackhouse provides important ethical-biblical principles that can help humanize the current global order. He says: “Central to the Christian ethic is sharing, compassion, and scarifies for others”.^[20]  This basic principle is now endangered by the ethic of “I-centeredness” that is widely spreading in the age of globalization. Christian ethics portrays ideas of brotherhood, common good, and stewardship. In Biblical sense, the human person is created to be not passive but active participant in God’s creation. Consequently, the idea of “participation” is at the core of biblical tradition. The human person is co-creator and is endowed with responsibility to care for the world. And this very fact is contradicted by the reality of extreme poverty and marginalization of billions of the world population most of them to be found in Sub-Sahara-Africa. This poverty and marginalization is not “the inevitable result of the march of history or the intrinsic nature of particular cultures, but of human decisions and human institutions”.^[21]

Global financial institutions press for excessive private property policies. Privatization is one of the main pillars of neo-liberal economy. What is forgotten here is that “property rights ultimately are subordinate to human needs and human dignity”.^[22] Poverty and marginalization around the glob will not be solved until humanity is ready to reexamine the current understanding of privatizing earthly resources. It is hard to think of a principle of fairness that would allow some nations to continue to blindly plunder the resources of the world while others live in marginalization and destitution.

Poverty and marginalization are happening partly due to the attitudes of global financial institutions that put too much emphasis on economic growth. Their economic decisions seem to concentrate solely on profit maximization even when huge number of the world population is not catching any drops from the profits.^[23]  U.S catholic Bishops in their pastoral letter Economic Justice for all criticized an economic system that is not participative. Their criticism can be applied to the current profit-only (the winner-takes-all) mentality of the current world economic system. The pastoral letter underlines an important ethical principle that should guide a fair and participative economic system. According to the pastoral letter “every economic decision and institution must be judged in the light of whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person… We judge any economic system by what it does for and to people and by how it permits all to participate in it. The economy should serve people, not the other way round.”^[24]

Christian ethics demands basic justice to strengthen the moral bonds among all people in an interdependent world and to break the vicious cycle of poverty and marginalization. “Basic justice implies that all people are entitled to participate in the increasingly interdependent global economy in a way that ensures their freedom and human dignity. When whole communities are effectively left out or excluded from equitable participation in the international order, basic justice is violated.”^[25] James E. Hug S. J. in his article Economic Justice and Globalization highlights the meaning of economic justice form the Christian biblical and social traditions. According to him economic justice “requires that each person also have adequate resources, insofar as they are available in the community, to survive, to develop and thrive, and to give back in service to community. This Christian understanding of economic justice looks for fairness and adequacy in the outcomes of economic activity as well as in its competitive process. It defines a minimum acceptable quality of life for each person”.^[26]

The concept of participatory justice has been a key category in the economic reflections of Christian ethics. There is a foundation for this participatory justice in philosophical, anthropological and creation theology,  namely in that man as Zoon politikon^[27]  – as a social and communal creature – is also capable of forming communities that function on the basis of cooperation and solidarity. Natural and humanistic sciences in our modern era confirm this conception. It is only thanks to cooperation and solidarity that man has a chance of survival – a view that is also recognizable in creation theology (Gn 2:20-23). Man is dependent on support from his fellow man (the principle of reciprocity) and remains truly human only if open to a communal society and contributing to the society’s survival.^[28] 

The Biblical view of justice shows us the human person as a social being who has an obligation to fellow human beings, and especially to the socially disadvantaged: orphans, widows, and the alien (Deut 10:18; 24:17). Jesus singles out the weak and the disadvantaged (Mt 25:35-36) in commanding his followers to love others, even clearly making salvation for every person dependent on how that individual treats the disadvantaged. When He emphasizes that the way they treat those persons equates with their treatment of Himself, the Son of God and Judge of the World, the radical significance of this social aspect for man becomes obvious.^[29] 

The statement by the legal scholar Ulpian and the later definition of justice accepted by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas proceeds from the firm and constant will to give each person his due. Starting with the view of man (from the viewpoint of creation theology) this presumes the conviction that “...people are in principle and in spite of all other differences to be recognized as equals and as such, in spite of all the possible inequalities, should at least have the same opportunities for self development.”^[30]  In other words, the rationale for the church’s demand for participatory justice is based on the viewpoint that all of mankind are created equal, and on the dignity of all men that is the will of the Creator God. This demand is part of the message of salvation and thus the mission of the church that proclaims the message of salvation to men and thus has “…the right, indeed the duty, to proclaim justice on the social, national and international level, and to denounce instances of injustice, when the fundamental rights of people and their very salvation demand it.”^[31] 

The demand for participatory justice as seen in the social encyclicals and the various pastoral letters considers the economic and social inequality and the increasing cleft between rich and poor that is further aggravated in the age of globalization. Paul VI demands that Christians and all men of good will should not be indifferent to a cleft that divides the poor and disadvantaged from the wealthy. He sees that grave social and economic differences on the national and international levels are harmful to both rich and poor. The ideas of Paul VI are expressed in the pastoral constitution of the second Vatican Council (Gaudium et spes): “The joy and hope, grief and fear of people today, especially the poor and those suffering distress of all kinds, are also the joy and hope, grief and fear of Christ’s apostles.”^[32]  John XXIII also makes clear that the church cares for human welfare and well-being in all the many different cultural areas extant in different historical periods.^[33] Gaudium et spes likewise demands an economic order that can only be called just when it also helps the poor.^[34] 

In its demands for participatory justice (economic justice) Christian ethics presumes that the economy is not a machine that functions according to its own inexorable laws and that men are not only objects that are tugged back and forth by economic constraints. Even the misery and plight of millions of people in the developing countries is not the unavoidable result of historical development or cultural cycles, but the product of human decisions and human institutions.^[35] 

The framework of this demand for participatory justice also covers the socio-ethical rationale of the economy. The actual meaning of the economy for Christian ethics – which can also be used as a measure and criterion for economic justice – is not found in “mere increase of products nor profit or control but rather the service of man, and indeed of the whole man with regard for the full range of his material needs and the demands of his intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious life”.^[36] 

It seems appropriate here first to look more closely at the semantics of the solidarity concept. According to Arno Anzenbacher, the concept of solidarity in general usage means “the mutual obligation or readiness to stand up for one another”.^[37]  Anzenbacher distinguishes various aspects within the concept of solidarity – solidarity as a legally binding obligation, and as free will or charitable readiness to help others. “In the context of justice, solidarity is strictly a legal obligation, i.e., a debt to be shouldered where the principle of solidarity has to do with obligations toward the members of the legal community and their social cooperation which derive from the individual’s human rights status and demands. Thus, it is the duty of legislative politics not only to affirm the human rights status, but at the same time to adequately affirm and assert the correlated obligations of solidarity. A solidarity which lacks the character of the obligatory and legally binding duty in association with justice advocates on the completely different level of unobliged and voluntary charitable and meritorious aid to the benefit of fellow man.”^[38] 

The solidarity principle is a necessity, considering the interconnected economic relationships between industrialized countries and developing countries in the process of globalization. In his analysis of the solidarity principle, von Nell-Breuning brought forth an important aspect of solidarity in Christian ethics. In his solidarity concept he stresses human connectiveness and the common fate of all men and thus the worldwide interdependence, the oneness of the family of man and the universal dedication of the goods of this world for the benefit of all persons. Von Nell-Breuning’s findings seem to be quite useful for establishing global solidarity. “The popular expression is, ‘We are all sitting in the same boat.’ This means that the destinies of society as a whole and its members are closely connected. If the whole thrives, then all its members must, as well; and if the members thrive, then the whole must be well. This states exactly what has already been established under the heading of individual prosperity and the common good: Individual prosperity and the common good are mutually dependent; their destinies are inextricably linked ....”^[39] 

As we have already established, the basic positive value of competition has been recognized within the framework of participatory justice, but at the same time the social teaching of the church insists that competition alone must not become the overriding principle. The solidarity principle (in Quadragesimo anno the solidarity principle is contained in the concepts of social justice and love of man) must rank above the competitive principle: “free competition, while justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within certain limits, clearly cannot direct economic life - a truth which the outcome of the application in practice of the tenets of this evil individualistic spirit has more than sufficiently demonstrated. Therefore, it is most necessary that economic life be again subjected to and governed by a true and effective directing principle. This function is one that the economic dictatorship which has recently displaced free competition can still less perform, since it is a headstrong power and a violent energy that, to benefit people, needs to be strongly curbed and wisely ruled. But it cannot curb and rule itself. Loftier and nobler principles - social justice and social charity - must, therefore, be sought whereby this dictatorship may be governed firmly and fully.”^[40] 

The principle of solidarity in the church's social teaching is not limited to the range of individual governments. The church’s social teaching assumes, in view of the global economy’s increasing international integration, globalization of markets and the global ecological crises, that a globalization of solidarity, i.e., an expansion of the solidarity principle, is the only way to arrive at a livable future for mankind.^[41]  In view of continent-wide and even worldwide economic integration, the principle of competition must take into account the solidarity principle in order to implement appropriate actions on the international level, to orient the functions of the worldwide market toward the common good, and to make it capable of allowing for the participation of all.^[42]

Subsidiarity ~Globalization From Below^[43]

In today’s globalization major international economic institutions (such as International Monetary Funds, World Bank, World Trade organization) have not been inclusive, participatory, and welfare-enhancing,^[44] to poor countries especially Sub-Sahara-Africa. There is such a prevailing culture of secrecy in those institutions; decisions that would affect the lives of millions of poor people in the developing world are often held behind closed doors. In many ways these institutions lack transparency and accountability.^[45]  In the eyes of many Africans these international economic institutions serve the statues quo interests of wealthy and powerful nations. Given the democratic deficit^[46] of the current globalization, there is urgent need today to reform, redesign, and restructure the operative dynamics of the current economic globalization. If International economic institutions are going to help the poor in the developing world they have to be reformed with subsidiarity in mind.  Subsidiarity entails and encourages a process of localization or “glocolization.” Unlike the neoliberal free market ideology that attempts to spread a Western-style global mono-culture^[47]across the world, subsidiarity demands regard for the dignity, expectations, traditions as well as cultures of indigenous people and the poor in particular.

The subsidiarity principle is an essential element in participatory justice. It originates in the conviction that every social activity is by nature subsidiary.^[48]  The objective of the subsidiarity principle is to support members of the society, especially the poor and disadvantaged, in their social and economic endeavors. In Catholic social teaching, the nature of the subsidiarity principle is most clearly expressed in Quadragesimo anno. It tells us: “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.”^[49]  This statement is a clear rejection of a paternalistic state or an economic order that destroys and takes away individual initiative. In order for the subsidiarity principle to be realized, freedom is essential. Wherever freedom is denied, the subsidiarity principle cannot function. Creative development of individual talents depends essentially on freedom.

The social encyclicals Gaudium et spes and Mater et magistra emphasize the aspect of the subsidiarity principle and also the limits of state competence in social and economic matters. According to those writings, the responsibility of the state is to protect the economic and social responsibilities and activity of the individual. The state (public authority) “must intervene more often in social, economic and cultural matters in order to bring about favorable conditions which will give more effective help to citizens and groups in their free pursuit of man's total well-being.”^[50] 

Now the question must be asked whether the subsidiarity principle has a place in the process of globalization. There do not seem to be any international institutions in the network of global economic relationships that are able to coordinate and distribute these tasks. The UN, the World Bank, the IMF and GATT do not have the necessary authority to do this. John XXIII refers to these institutional weaknesses as structural errors in the organization of human society. It is clear that the structures of world order, including the economic structures, are inadequate to advance the common good of all peoples.^[51]

It is important to note that Africa is a huge Continent where very diverse situations are found, and that it is therefore necessary to avoid generalizations both in evaluating problems and suggesting solutions. However, there is, in the terms of the African Synodal Assembly, “One common situation, without any doubt… that Africa is full of problems. In almost all our nations, there is abject poverty, tragic mismanagement of available scarce resources, political instability and social disorientation. The results stare us in the face: misery, wars, despair. In a world controlled by rich and powerful nations, Africa has practically become an irrelevant appendix, often forgotten and neglected”.^[52]

Copyright 2006 - Journal of Globalization for the Common Good - www.commongoodjournal.com