THE TRAP RESUME

In the extremely select group of billionaires on this planet, Sir James (Jimmy) Goldsmith is certainly one of the most reflective, intelligent, and decent-minded. In a hostile but informative article on the newly emerging communitarian tendency, Goldsmith was described as a 'plutopundit, Euro-politician' (The Economist, December 24, 1994-January 6, 1995, 'The Politics of Restoration', pp. 33-36). Goldsmith withdrew from active business in 1990, and has dedicated himself to public endeavors instead. He is, along with the French aristocrat Philippe de Villiers, the co-founder of a new political movement, L'Autre Europe (which campaigned in France under the name 'Struggle for Values') and is a Member of the European Parliament as well as leader of the new parliamentary group, L'Europe des Nations.

The Trap, although a profound work, is quite accessible to the average intelligent reader. It is printed up in a comparatively large-sized font and there are rather unobtrusive endnotes, which do not disrupt the flow and tempo of the text. The book became a runaway bestseller when it was originally published in France in 1993. However it has not, as far as the reviewer is aware, done nearly as well in the United States.

'Nations ... cannot allow themselves

to be overwhelmed by immigration

otherwise they will lose their identity

and cease to be nations.'

The first section of the book, 'Measuring or Understanding?' is a straightforward critique of looking at the world (and at the success of society) strictly in terms of the Gross National Product (or economics alone). Goldsmith points out, for example, that the very critical activity of a mother bringing up her children is worthless measured in terms of GNP.

The second section, 'The New Utopia GATT and Global Free Trade' is a powerful attack on these two latter-day liberal/capitalist dogmas. Goldsmith pointedly states '...forty-seven Vietnamese or forty-seven Filipinos can be employed for the cost of one person in a developed country like France' (p. 26). The adoption of global free trade would therefore be utterly disastrous for the middle- and working-classes of the West, as the transnational corpo-rations simply move their production operations offshore. But the poor of the less-developed world would not benefit much, either

...one of the characteristics of developing countries is that a small handful of people con-trols the overwhelming majority of the nation's resources. It is these people ... who assemble the cheap labour which is used to manufacture products for the developed world. Thus, it is the poor in the rich countries who will subsidize the rich in the poor countries (p. 37).

The GATT's effect on agriculture in the Third World will be even more disastrous, according to Goldsmith

It is estimated that there are still 3.1 billion people in the world who live from the land. If GATT manages to impose worldwide the sort of productivity achieved by the intensive agri-culture of nations such as Australia, then it is easy to calculate that about 2 billion of these people will become redundant. Some of these GATT refugees will move to urban slums. But a large number of them will be forced into mass migration (p. 39).

The alternative Goldsmith proposes is regional free trade blocs, between countries that are roughly equivalent in development. He also endorses a variant of the free movement of capital (but not of products), e.g. that Japanese firms that want to sell products to Europe would be required to establish their businesses in Europe, thus benefitting European workers. However, he also warns about the dangers of countries having excessive foreign debt-obligations, citing The Economist and a Washington Post editorial.

In section 3, 'Nations, Artificial States and Populated Spaces,' Goldsmith discusses the worldwide issue of nationalism. He restates the often-made point that the nineteenth-century European partition of Africa along arbitrary geopolitical lines, unreflective of ethnic realities, has resulted in incredible post-colonial dislocations. Goldsmith defines a nation as 'a land whose citizens, in their overwhelming majority, share a common culture, sense of identity, heritage and traditional roots' (p. 55).

Asked whether a nation can integrate foreigners, Goldsmith answers

...nations need new blood and new ideas. But they can only absorb a limited amount at a time. They cannot allow themselves to be overwhelmed by immigration otherwise they will lose their identity and cease to be nations. Newcomers who are welcomed into a nation should want to honour and respect the customs of their new home. They must not step on shore or over the border and reject the national culture. If they do, the inevitable results are hostility, intolerance and conflict (p. 59).

Goldsmith perspicaciously turns the argument of 'diversity' against Western liberals

The West cannot understand a democratic rejection of its ideas. For the West such a rejection is a sign of either dementia or evil... The West believes that its destiny is to guide or coerce diverse human cultures into a single global civilization. It cannot tolerate the coexistence in the world of different cultures... This acute form of cultural imperialism is reinforced by international business, which considers that it would benefit from the destruction of social diversity and its replacement by a global monoculture hungry for western-type products (pp. 61-62).

Goldsmith expresses profound scepticism about latter-day America. First, he discusses James Madison's surprisingly prophetic views of black-white relations. Madison had understood that such relations would invariably be very difficult. The attempted solution of re-migration to Africa (suggested by Madison) failed to catch on. (The establishment of Liberia, Goldsmith points out, also coincidentally resulted in the displacement of the native population by a tiny immigrant elite, which although itself black, behaved

...