"De-globalization"?
Discussions of globalization on the left
begin with the understanding that capitalism has always been international and
often getting more international. So what's new? Economist Bruno Jetin summed
up our Fellows' consensus at the seminar: there are new aspects compared with
earlier periods of internationalization (e.g. 1896-1914); but globalization is
not a completed process that has made national markets and states irrelevant. A
new book by IIRE Fellow Robert Went (author of the IIRE Notebook Globalization:
Neoliberal Challenge, Radical Responses) argues that the current wave of
globalization goes beyond any previous one inasmuch as all three circuits of
capital described by Marx in Das Kapital - not only trading capital and finance
capital but also productive capital - are being internationalized. In a whole
series of industries (high-speed trains, pharmaceuticals, etc.) the only market
on which research and development costs can be recouped is the world market.
But everyone agreed that no multinational today is truly "footloose",
truly autonomous of any single national market. Jetin raised the question of
whether the process of internationalization and concentration of capital will
continue until there are only two or three companies dominating any given
sector of the economy (given that the
Jetin suggested that there is a limit to the
international unification of markets set by national differences in consumer
tastes. Other Fellows were sceptical. In many cases consumer tastes (e.g. the
demand for artificial sweeteners instead of natural sugar) are created by
corporate strategies rather than vice versa. McDonald's provides evidence that
global multinationals can take account of local variations without much
difficulty.
If today's globalization is unprecedented
and even irreversible, then that undermines some of the radical strategies put
forward in the global justice movement. Prominent figures like Walden Bello and
Martin Khorr for example advocate strategies of "de-globalization".
Their arguments are that the nation-state is still the privileged site for
democracy, so that a strategy for economic democracy has to be nationally based
and require a high degree of national economic self-sufficiency; and secondly
that diversity is a good in itself, so that more uniformity across the world is
necessarily a bad thing. Jetin criticized these arguments as being blind to
class and gender dynamics, treating national "communities" as
monolithic, and exaggerating the progressive character of the nation state. All
our Fellows seem to agree with his critique. Strategies for social
transformation must move more quickly than ever before from the national level
to the regional or the international and global level.
On other issues there was less of a
consensus. When Jetin argued against the demand to open imperialist countries'
markets to dependent countries' products (e.g. agricultural), for example, that
raised some doubts. Is it possible to reject the orientation of
"everything for export" and at the same time defend the perspective
of "asymmetrical protectionism", defending dependent countries'
protectionist measures while rejecting imperialist countries' protectionism? Is
the vision of returning to small farm production flatly reactionary, as one
Fellow maintained? Is the perspective of some kind of neo-Keynesian exit from
the crisis ruled out?
Who will transform society?
Labour remains a key actor in the scenarios
for social transformation discussed at the IIRE; that makes updating our analysis
of labour crucial. IIRE Co-Director
Fellow Claude Jacquin introduced a
discussion of how changes in capitalist production and corporate restructuring
have drastically changed the face of the working class. Corporate restructuring
has led to a process of industrial deconcentration and segmentation of the
proletariat, with workers in different categories and regions having
increasingly different situations and even to some extent different interests.
This raised questions in some participants' minds - beyond our already existing
consensus (formulated by
There is no unifying identity common to all
the forces joining in the global justice movement today. That does not detract
from the central analytical importance of class. Socialist feminists have
always made a key distinction: the autonomy of the women's movement from class
and political organizations doesnot mean its autonomy from class struggle. But
that does not automatically resolve the issue of whether a new unifying
identity will emerge for today's movements, unifying class, gender,
"civic" and "human" identities, and if so how and what form
it could take. Fellow Livio Maitan reported that the Italian Party of Communist
Refoundation calls for building a "new workers' movement"; is that
ultimately the answer?
The lack of a unifying identity in the
global justice movement also complicates the question of democratic
organization. Former IIRE Director
What then is the role of the party in all
this, Rousset asked? One answer was that political organizations embody the
choices that movements need to make. As Fellow Penelope Duggan pointed out,
this does not necessarily mean that the party is the privileged place where
programme is developed. We have certainly been aware since the rise of the
women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s that we must take on board the
programmatic and analytical developments made within such movements but the
party consciously strives to develop a programme that defends the interests of
the majority of society. This leaves the question open whether the party must
still ultimately be the "keystone in the seizure of power".
The problem is, participants agreed, that
this discussion is not happening in the global justice movement today. The
movement is not discussing issues of political power; or, as Rousset put it, it
has no "strategic horizon". The question was raised: how can these
crucial issues be raised inside the global justice movement?
A different kind of politics
IIRE Co-Director
Peter Drucker defined a further series of political challenges that the radical
left is facing, particularly in light of experiences like theargentinazo
(Argentinean revolt of December 2001) and Lula's presidency in
Among Fellows' contributions to this
discussion: The evolution of the Brazilian PT need not be a surprise, given
that ten years ago the South African ANC was also co-opted by the neoliberal
state inside six months. Nor should we underestimate the crisis of politics:
look at the immigrants in the
Debates will go on
Discussion on the purpose of the IIRE
concluded that its primary purpose is to help train leaders for national
organizations who can also be leaders of an international movement. A corollary
purpose is that through this process they develop a political analysis that
allows them to intervene in the global political debate. For the IIRE, the key
question is how to integrate the lectures and lecturers into an ongoing
discussion, so that sessions have an overall coherence and the conscious links
are made among the reports.
The first test of the insights gained from
the Fellows' Seminar will be the Global Justice School 2003. The programme is
being finalized and additional students are still applying as we write. But we
can already see how the July discussions will reshape the session's curriculum.
The economic discussions will tackle issues that were unresolved in July.
Lectures on gender, peasantry and ethnicity will be brought together in a bloc
on "globalization and social recomposition", which will have a new,
stronger focus on developments in the global working class. The section of the
new world imperial order will link the discussion of US wars and world
domination more clearly to the world's economic architecture, international
institutions and regional blocs, and be followed by a section on
"globalization and political representation: movements, parties and
rethinking democracy". The already existing section on "confronting
neoliberal globalization, the globalization of resistance", finally, will
be linked to more concrete discussions of alternative trade and financial
policies and strategies against neoliberal globalization.