One of the most controversial antidotes is globalisation. The World Bank, IMF and WTO have apparently opened up a wholesale agency to sell this idea to all TW and former Soviet-bloc countries. They are adumbrating its virtuous effects not only on the North but also on the South. On the contrary, many people, including politicians, intellectuals and socially concerned individuals, are vehemently opposing this expert opinion by warning of its potential dire consequences for the global community.

When disagreements over a social issue are so serious and passionate, it ought to be examined philosophically. Yet, much of the debates and discussions on the issue seem superficial. They mostly involve the presentation of economic data on international trade and investment with little considerations of their theoretical implications. And when the issue is analysed theoretically, we seem to totally forget the teachings of our classical and neoclassical masters who have shown, quite clearly, how, and under what circumstances, international and inter-regional trade can befit a sovereign society.

In this confusing and complex situation, this paper makes a modest attempt to examine the expected association between economic globalisation and TW poverty alleviation from the perspectives of moral and political philosophy. To properly understand this association, it should be noted that the term, globalisation, has many meanings and therefore, have different types of expected association. This article is interested only in economic globalisation, which indicates the intensity of economic interactions among people of different independent nations.

Two native qualities, often described as two natural masters, control human conducts- pleasure and pain. In other words, as human beings we always try to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This fundamental philosophical observation can also be applied to understand the expected association between economic globalisation and TW poverty problem.

Poverty is painful and affluence is pleasing, which implies that individuals do not suffer poverty voluntarily. More specifically, individuals suffer poverty because they are prevented from seeking pleasure.

This phenomenon may be described in political vocabularies: Individuals are prevented from pursuing happiness in life by denying them rights and freedoms. In the modern terminology, freedom is understood in two senses -- negative and positive. In the negative sense, freedom means the absence of human-made coercions or restraints that deter individuals from making choices in life. The positive aspect of freedom implies the provision of means or powers to individuals to enable them for making choices. Naturally, it follows that the persistence of poverty in the TW societies is the consequence of poor freedom situation in those countries.

Evidently, the examination of true causes and persistence of poverty in any civil society belongs to the field of political philosophy.

All political systems, which govern sovereign societies, can be divided into two groups based on one single political criterion -- individual's right to own and accumulate property. These dichotomous political systems are communist and non-communist states.

In the communist state, individuals are denied the right to own private property beyond certain level. To compensate for this deprivation, the state guarantees to each and every citizen all basic needs of life. However, the non-communist state protects and promotes individual's right to own and accumulate property. Therefore, the non-communist welfare state does not provide such guarantees, except helping its citizens only when they are unable to take care of themselves.

The economic systems that result from dichotomous political systems are respectively called socialism and capitalism. By definition, most of the resources in socialism are owned by the state and production decisions are carried out through central commands. In capitalism, private individuals, who carry out production decisions according to market commad, own much of the society's economic resources. Thus, for examining the association between globalisation and poverty in the non-communist state, we need to know the fundamental nature of capitalism or market economy.

Our model of market economy is founded on two kinds of fundamental activities -- production and consumption. Problems of production assume greater importance than consumption, because production involves the ownership of private property and the state's welfare depends on the performance of this institution. Production again involves two sorts of activities, which may be called intellectual and business. In advanced capitalist economy, the basic idea of production comes from intellectual activities. Once the intellectual idea of a product is approved, the business people examine its marketability to earn profits. Thus, production is a teamwork accomplished by two kinds of individuals -- intellectuals and business people. In the modern time, the role of intellectual activity has assumed critical importance, because the product improvement and invention are fundamental to stay in the business.

Both economic and intellectual poverty in TW countries is the consequence of the lack of individual freedom, which means that the solution to these problems lies in improving the conditions of individual freedom in those countries. This, in turn, implies pursuing the policy of political globalisation or political openness, which, in other words, is practicing the principles of democracy. Economic globalisation or economic openness is a prescription for practicing the extreme form of capitalism called laissez-faire market economy.

Let's create a scenario -- a reasonably abstract trade model -- to examine the expected association between globalisation and TW poverty. First, we assume that, by nature, all human beings are under the command of two natural masters -- pain and pleasure. Second, the world population is divided into two countries -- A and B. Country A is both economically and politically rich, because it has been able to create a societal environment for its citizens to seek pleasure in life. On the other hand, Country B is poor in terms of both conditions, because it has failed to create such environment. Finally, we assume, following the conventional economic wisdom, that competition and specialisation are the key elements of economic prosperity of sovereign society.

The fundamental difference between this model and the traditional trade model is that this model makes the satisfaction of human selfishness -- the source of all economic progress -- conditional upon the political openness of society.

By assumption, Country A is rich while Country B is poor. What could possibly happen to the levels of economic progress of the two countries if their private citizens are permitted to trade freely? First, the introduction of trade can hardly improve the conditions of competition in Country B, because improving those conditions are the responsibility of its political authority. The economic history of world demonstrates that trade openness (economic globalisation) does not improve the conditions of competition in countries where they do not exist. However, the introduction of trade has potentially beneficial impacts upon country A's competitive condition. Trade creates greater opportunities for expanding markets. Therefore, competition would intensify in Country A, because its public authority has significantly reduced the constraints of competition. In other words, Adam Smith's invisible hand is in charge of determining the levels of production and consumption in this country.

Second, the inevitable effect of international trade on national economies is greater specialisation. This is the age of technology, which suggests that the nature of a country's trade specialisation critically depends upon the sophistication of its knowledge industry. Country A already enjoys superiority in this respect. This superiority would continue unabated, because its citizens are able to enjoy a good deal of freedom in making choices and that would be further accelerated by brains drain from country B. It seems obvious that country B would specialise in products, which require lower levels of intellectual inputs and would turn out to be a technology recipient country.

These expected effects of economic globalisation (trade liberalisation) on competition and specialisation are fairly visible. They are thought to be positive and desirable only if the trading nations pursue a progressive policy of upholding individual freedom. Since the TW countries do not pursue such a progressive political policy, the effects of trade are expectably counter-productive on their economies. In other words, this globalising scheme -- that the World Bank, IMF and WTO are proposing for the TW countries -- would tend to aggravate the poverty situation in those countries in the relative term, and depending upon the nature of the impediments that the political systems of particular countries erect to individual freedom of their citizens, poverty might even inflame in the absolute term.

Khandakar Qudrat-I Elahi, a former Associate Professor of Bangladesh Agricultural University, lives in Guelph, Ontario, Canada