Globalization as Ideology - Clive Hamilton

At its heart, globalization is not so much about the deepening of global economic and financial networks or the extension of the international reach of corporations; it is about the restless spread of the ideology of growth and consumer capitalism. The instrumental processes of globalization—the opening up of trade, the emergent power of financial markets, the transnationalisation of corporations, and international economic coordination—are the mechanisms by which a historically and culturally specific ideology, constituted as an independent force, has spread and colonised the world, including the “communist” world. While the motive force is the accumulation of wealth through profit seeking, the ideology draws its legitimacy from the core belief that human well beign is advanced above all else by increasing the quantity and quality of goods and services consumed by individuals.

Paralell with this formal set of beliefs are cultural forms of behaviour that place enormous emphasis on consumption as the foundation of lifestyle. This is why there has been so little resistance to globalisation: people from Beijing to Berlin, Boston to Beirut, have been persuaded by the ideology of consumer capitalism, that economic growth is the path to happiness and that unfettered markets will maximise that growth.

In other words, globalisation has succeded because people are besotted by consumption.

Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish, Pluto Press, 2004, p. 119