Globalisation
Origins-History-Analysis-Resistance
(from Do or Die
#8)
Thousands of people take to the streets of the City of London
in
a 'Carnival Against Capital'; 50,000 landless peasants swamp the
streets of Brasilia; in Nigeria a 10,000-strong 'Carnival of the
Oppressed' shuts down Port Harcourt in protest against the oil
companies' exploitation of the Niger delta; 200,000 people take
to the streets of Hyderabad in India, and over thirty street
parties, involving thousands of people, take place simultaneously
across the globe. What links this unprecedented new alliance of
activists from East and West, from North and South? They say they
are united in opposition to something called 'globalisation'.
Every day we hear more about shadowy bodies with acronyms for
titles. The WTO, the IMF, the MAI--we are told their decisions
are irrevocable, that the markets rule. This accelerating process
of enclosure and dispossession is an audacious attempt to
assimilate everyone within the global economy and under the
direct rule of capital.
I. What is Globalisation?
Globalisation has become a bête noire for all sorts of
people--activists and academics, reformists and revolutionaries.
At a time when nationalism is resurgent, we see an
internationalisation of struggle. And yet... confusion
reigns--confusion over our objectives, our ideals, our methods
and goals. A confusion that could be fatal--if we miss our chance
when it is presented to us we might not get another one. We are
living in critical times. Therefore in the following pages we
examine the background to globalisation, the struggle against it
and some of the confusions and misunderstandings that surround
it.
The current trend for opposing globalisation appears to have
fallen for an inverted version of the same illusion that those in
favour of it suffer from--that what is occurring (and has been
for approximately the last 20 years) is something new and
radically different to what has gone before. The things that are
identified as constituting globalisation--free trade, the free
movement of capital, the growth of international regulatory
bodies and institutions, the expansion of multinationals and the
creation of one global 'culture'-- are new in the sense that they
are new forms of organisation and structure but in essence they
are a continuation of what has gone before.
Capital has always been global. The capitalist system is the most
adaptable and voracious in history. From its beginning it has
been driven by the need to constantly expand or die; the changes
that have occurred in recent years are an expression of this
need. Globalisation is 'worse' in the sense that it represents an
attempt at extending and intensifying capital's grip on humanity,
but it is not worse, as some seem to imply, in opposition to a
mythical idealised past when capitalism was nice and local and
the state intervened to protect us against the markets. The logic
is the same now as it always been--to exploit people and nature
to the maximum extent possible. The fact that in some previous
eras this exploitation may have taken place in a way that was
softer or more 'democratic' doesn't change its essential nature.
In order to understand the process that has become known as
globalisation, it is essential to understand the trajectory taken
by post-war capitalism. Looked at in this context, globalisation
can be seen not as a separate phenomenon but rather as the effect
of the crisis caused by the resurgence of European and American
class struggle in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
II. 1945--1968: Restructuring, Integration and Growth
In 1945, with the virtual sole exception of America, the
industrialised and 'developed' world was in a state of massive
economic and physical disarray--a condition mirrored in its
working class. In this period the world began to be divided
between the American and Soviet versions of capitalism.1 Stalin's
Red Army proceeded to subjugate Eastern Europe to a variant of
capitalism involving most of its worst aspects and bringing few
of the fringe benefits that help to make life a bit more bearable
in 'advanced' capitalist society.
Meanwhile, America adopted Western Europe as its sphere of
influence. This developed into the 'cold war', an era of frosty
relations and supposed ideological struggle between the two
superpowers.2 Each vied to collect as many 'satellite' nations
and regions as possible to serve as new markets for the domestic
economy and through which proxy wars could be fought. This was a
de facto new form of colonisation which was preferable for
powerful nations because it largely avoided the hassle of
actually administering territory. Those countries whose
populations proved resistant or had unsympathetic regimes were
forcibly brought into the fold through engineered and assisted
coups or were simply invaded (e.g. Brasil, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, South Vietnam, Chile, Afghanistan etc. etc.) The
decline of the old colonial powers opened up vast swathes of the
world to domination by new masters (both domestic and foreign)
who were at least as brutal as the departing imperialists and
just as keen to use their populations as cheap labour for
capital.
Cold War Economics
In the West, aside from actual physical rebuilding, the task of
restructuring faced by states and capitalist enterprises was
twofold. Firstly, economic growth rested upon the "diplomatic
reconstruction of international trade and payments systems which
would facilitate international exchange and secure the regular
import of essential commodities and raw materials."3 This first
objective was carried out largely at the behest of the US with
Britain acting as its 'junior partner'--an arrangement that has
continued ever since. And secondly, it would be necessary to
contain the class struggle in order to avoid a repeat of the
massive social conflict that occurred in the aftermath of the
First World War.
Having divided up Europe and the rest of the world between itself
and the USSR, "...the US sought to organise Western capitalism
around new international economic and political structures which
would ensure the rapid accumulation of American capital."4
American capital was however dependent upon the re-establishment
of global circuits of accumulation and the restoration of a
degree of equilibrium in terms of production and trade, i.e.
rebuilding those economies that had been shattered by the war,
most importantly West Germany and Japan. In Europe this was
accomplished through financial assistance such as the Marshall
Plan, the purpose of which "was the raising of living standards
'to resist the lure of communism.'"5
The initial result of this need to restore industrial economies
destroyed by the war was the Bretton Woods agreement. This was a
system of currency exchange rates fixed within pre-determined
margins that were defined in relation to the value of the dollar,
which was itself valued in parity to gold (in theory, dollars
were exchangeable for gold). The dollar performed the function of
both international and national currency, and for the system to
work its value had to be maintained. Hence the system was
dependent upon the US maintaining a large trade surplus
(exporting more than it imported) thus allowing the dollar to be
supplied as credit to other countries in order to be a means of
exchange for US-produced commodities.6
As with other aspects of the post-war settlement, this implied a
concrete link between the exploitation of workers (i.e. the
amount of value produced) and the amount of money capital in
circulation. In recent years this linkage has appeared to become
more tenuous as finance capital has grown vastly in proportion to
production (for example, no individual state has the reserves
necessary to compete with currency speculators on the foreign
exchange markets--as Britain discovered when the pound was forced
to leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism [ERM] on 'Black
Wednesday', 16th September 1992) but is in reality no less
essential because capitalism is always intrinsically based upon
wage labour.
The imposition of the Bretton Woods agreement was shortly
followed by the creation of a number of accompanying institutions
and agreements to assist and safeguard its terms. These included
the now notorious International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World
Bank and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). The
IMF was originally set up to insulate the Bretton Woods system
from attacks by speculators or from short-term trade imbalances
by providing governments with emergency loans to support their
currencies on the foreign exchange markets. The World Bank's
purpose was to provide governments with longer term loans
necessary for the development and reconstruction of their
economies so that they had no excuse for not competing in the
world market.
The opening up of all national economies to 'free trade' was also
a major concern of the United States. The world depression of the
1930s followed by the war resulted in the growth of trade
barriers. As the recovery gathered pace, they began to be
dismantled through a series of trade agreements under the overall
heading of GATT. The present growth of trade integration is the
completion of the process of recovering ground previously
lost--regaining previous unity, but of course on a massively
increased scale due to the growth of the global economy relative
to its pre-war size.
Social Democracy and Keynesianism
However the re-establishment of global and national capital
accumulation and the resultant 20 period of economic boom could
not have been accomplished without the imposition of more
fundamental and concrete forms of social and political
organisation to again restore (relative) domestic stability.
These were--in the West at least--social democracy and Keynesian
economic management and planning. It is important to note that
these existed within the context of the global economy and not
just on a separate national basis. These 'social forms' were
dominant within 'advanced' capitalist societies until they began
to founder in the late 1960s. Their retreat and increasing
ineffectiveness as a means of management in the face of massive
class struggle and related 'structural' faults, resulting in the
major crises of the 1970s, is possibly the main reason for the
state that capitalism is in today.
The disorganisation of the European working class post-1945 meant
that it was forced to enter into the so-called 'class
compromise'. This essentially meant foregoing unity and mass
struggle, at least temporarily, in return for representation
within individual nation states through the medium of social
democracy. Social democracy can be defined as the representation
of the working class as labour, within capital and the
state--politically through social democratic parties and
economically through trades unions. In practice this meant
varying degrees of consultation between trade unions, governments
and employers to allow for economic planning and the
co-ordination of social policy.
The nation state gained a new significance in the post-war era
because it assumed the role of policing, maintaining and
organising the new class compromise. Even though, according to
some, it is now subject to 'corporate rule', the role of the
nation state in policing, maintaining and organising labour power
remains undiminished. All that has changed are the forms that
this takes; for example breaking or 'restructuring' entrenched
sectors of the working class instead of accommodating them,
imposing and encouraging casualisation etc.
Capitalist development was consolidated around distinct national
economies that enjoyed a degree of autonomy in terms of economic
cycles and the extent to which the working class was integrated
within state planning. It was an example of divide and rule in so
far as concessions were made to national working classes as
opposed to the working class as a whole. This allowed the
'defence of the national interest' to be invoked where necessary
as a partial barrier to more internationalist tendencies amongst
some workers; dockers for example have a long tradition of
international solidarity and support as was seen recently during
the Liverpool dockers dispute.7
However the relative disunity of the working class was not shared
by the capitalists. Although different sectors of the capitalist
system have a contradictory relationship at the best of times,
their unity in terms of the common pursuit of profit always
remains undiminished. In fact it could be argued that capitalism
in this period was more global and united than it has been since,
due to the dominant position of the US and the virtual hegemony
of the dollar as the world's currency.
The practical importance of social democracy for the working
class was that it provided a framework through which concessions
could be demanded and won from capital on a national basis. The
price of this set-up was that instead of existing as an
autonomous force against capitalism, "the aspirations and demands
of the working class could be harnessed as the motor for capital
accumulation,"8 i.e. in exchange for improvements in health care,
housing provision, education and social security the working
class surrendered control over production and accepted the
'Fordist deal'.
This meant that production-line type work was introduced,
removing the need for many highly skilled workers or any direct
connection to what was being produced. Productivity and
production were increased by stepping up the exploitation of the
workforce allowing both wages and profits to rise, thus creating
the demand to absorb the increase in production. Fordism was a
system based upon mass production and mass consumption. It was
premised on an implicit trade-off between increased alienation
and boredom at work and increased consumption during 'leisure' or
'free' time--dissatisfaction turned into demand. The ever
increasing rate of exploitation in turn expanded the total amount
of capital in circulation and made possible the growth of finance
capital and the boom in credit and lending.
The Keynesian state was an integral part of this process. It
backed up Fordism through what economists call 'inflationary
demand management', maintaining rising levels of demand through
'deficit financing'--state expenditure based on credit. This was
to be repaid by the returns from future exploitation. On the
national level this took the form of guaranteed full employment,
growth and social welfare spending. Globally, "the centre of
Keynesian demand management was the regulation of the
international flow of capital through the Bretton Woods system of
fixed exchange rates; the regulation of international deficit
financing of demand on the world market on the basis of an
inflationary supply of dollars from the dominant US economy to
the rest of the world."9 It was basically a global system of
'book-keeping' which alternated between inflationary support of
domestic economic growth and deflationary pressure on it.
Mortgaging the future to pay for the present was the essence of
Keynesian demand management, a flaw that was to prove its
undoing.
Decolonisation to the 'Green Revolution'
The situation outside the 'advanced' capitalist countries was
very different. The post-war years were primarily characterised
by bloody national liberation struggles against the old colonial
powers--mainly Britain and France but also Belgium (in the
Belgian Congo) and Portugal (in Angola). Nationalist struggles
against France in Algeria and Vietnam were particularly
ferocious, leading to French withdrawals from both colonies after
a series of costly military and political blunders. In Algeria
and other countries the general disruption opened up space for
more progressive (although mostly not quite revolutionary) social
movements, which existed against both colonial rule and the
'states in waiting' of the nationalists.10
Unfortunately the main and lasting effect of decolonisation was
to open up vast new markets and opportunities for increased and
more efficient exploitation. Even though exploitation had clearly
taken place on a vast scale under colonial rule, the attempt had
not been made to integrate people into the capitalist mode of
production--to make them into wage workers. Extractive industries
such as mining and oil production had operated in the 'Third
World' for many years previously, but such enterprises don't
necessarily require the generalised imposition of a new set of
social relations in order to function.
The process of turning 'Third World' peasants into proletarians
is in some ways very similar to the development of capitalism in
Britain and elsewhere. The capitalisation of agriculture through
the enclosure of common lands, the mechanisation of food
production and the production of food surpluses to feed workers
who are no longer able to produce their own means of subsistence
are the necessary first steps. Urbanisation and the creation of a
'reserve army of labour' from those who have been forced to leave
the land are then the necessary additional steps for further
capitalist development.
Some of the first and most significant capitalist forays into the
'Third World' were made in agriculture--the 'Green Revolution'.
In 1965 the first commercially viable High Yielding Variety (HYV)
rice was released by a laboratory in the Philippines. The aim was
to rapidly increase food production at a time when demand created
by population growth appeared to be outstripping supply in some
areas of the world such as India and the Philippines (although as
is the case with present food shortages, the causes are factors
other than lack of productive capacity; even at the height of its
famine, Ethiopia was still exporting tobacco and coffee to the
West). The 'Green Revolution' was portrayed simply as a
technological fix to the food problem, however, in reality it
worked against the very people it purported to help. As with all
technology developed by capitalism it didn't operate merely on a
technical level; it actively changed the social relations amongst
agricultural producers and opened the way for further
'development' and exploitation.
The new varieties of wheat and rice were not available to all
farmers or even in all areas. They required intensive irrigation
and fertile soil and were only accessible to wealthy and
politically connected farmers within those areas. The additional
inputs required such as fertilisers, pesticides as well as the
seed itself meant that peasant farmers on traditional small
holdings were excluded. This new form of production also favoured
mechanisation and economies of scale, thus enabling landowners to
reduce their workforces and effectively drive large numbers off
the land and away from independent food production into the
cities and the newly forming labour markets. The new varieties
could not be cultivated using traditional methods, and their
success was almost completely dependent upon products supplied by
Western companies.
The 'Green Revolution' was just one instance in a continuing
process of exploitation by Western capital and domestic rulers.
This has added significance at present in the context of the
growth of biotechnology. The arguments and campaigns for and
against are so similar that they could almost be said to be
repeating those which took place 30 years ago.
III. 1968--1979: Class Struggle, Crisis and Debt
Academics, including those who have recently written on the
subject of globalisation such as David Korten or Gerry Mander,11
tend to see the demise of Keynesianism and other institutional
arrangements (and the result which they call globalisation) as
the result of 'structural faults' (such as exchange rate
imbalances) within the capitalist system--a position known as
'objectivism' because it discounts or actively ignores the
pivotal role that human (subjective) and more specifically class
intervention and conflict plays in effecting and changing the
course of history. Their analysis undoubtedly contains moments of
truth but is at best only a very partial view.
The growth of world trade during the 1960s had brought with it a
rapid expansion in the volume of international money capital
being traded, as well as the development of global capital
markets. The development of the Eurodollar markets in particular,
signalled that the institutional arrangements such as Bretton
Woods, which had linked and constrained the international flow of
money to the national accumulation of productive capital (i.e.
industry, manufacturing etc.), were becoming strained. The
recovery of other capitalist economies led to a relative decline
in US economic superiority. Dollars which had previously been
repatriated in exchange for US-produced commodities were
increasingly transformed into reserves in European banks. These
reserves were then used as a source of credit for both public
authorities and private capital. By 1969 other countries held $40
billion--a figure that far exceeded the US gold reserves. The
basis of Bretton Woods had been severely undermined.12
But it was the struggles of the new generation of post-war
proletarians that led the strain to become a breach.
This new generation, which formed within the context of the
post-war settlement and the Fordist production line, brought with
it new demands and aspirations. These were expressed in two
principle ways; on one hand screwing everything they could get
out of the bosses and the state in wage concessions and increased
public spending--demands that had to be met in order to maintain
the status quo and stave off more radical demands. On the other
hand, the re-emerging class conflict didn't limit itself simply
to questions of degrees of control within the workplace; the
other (interconnected) side expressed at its most radical the
refusal of work and capitalist social relations in general.
Dissatisfaction with factory and office life brought with it a
more generalised contestation which was by no means limited to
workers; other proletarians (such as the unemployed and
housewives), malcontents and students, all seized the opportunity
to exploit the relatively weak position that capitalism was in at
the time.
The Refusal of Work
A global wave of strikes, riots and mass social upheaval, some of
which openly confronted the state and the trade unions, left the
capitalist world reeling under the strain. It had taken a body
blow but by no means a fatal one, as events that followed in the
1970s were to prove. The US was hit by urban insurgencies that
burned Watts, Newark, Detroit and other major cities, as well as
by the student and anti-war movements and other disruptions such
as the civil rights and black power movements. New insurgencies
broke out in Southeast Asia and Latin America, often of dubious
political content but expressions of the times nonetheless.
The best known European example, with which most people are
familiar to some degree, is the near-revolution in France in May
1968, when millions of workers, students and other proletarians
joined together in a brief but intense moment of mass struggle.
However this represents only a small part of the picture; for
example highly significant but lesser known struggles took place
into and throughout the 1970s. The Italian 'Hot Autumn' of 1969
marked the beginning of 10 years of struggle. Many strikers and
other rebels took part in activities which went beyond simply
stopping work or occupying the workplace. In 1971 Polish strikers
took over gas and transport services, whilst in Italy,
"squatting, 'social strikes' by bus drivers, hospital staff and
supermarket cashiers providing (respectively) transport,
healthcare and food free of charge, electricity workers cutting
off supplies to bureaucrats or firms and a thousand other
instances",13 showed the extent to which the dull compulsion and
isolation of capitalist social relations were rejected. Sometimes
this took the form of gestures which grasped towards something
better, but more often it was refusal and rejection--everything
came under attack, but the lack of enough attempts to transform
society gave the impetus back to capital when the revolutionary
wave began to recede. "Radicals had disrupted a social logic, not
shifted into a new one."14
Capital Takes Flight
For the capitalists, the squeeze on profits from ever-increasing
wage demands, strikes and random stoppages meant that solutions
other than Keynesianism and 'demand management' would have to
found. The answer lay in a three-pronged strategy of
restructuring. In the old established industries, management
attempted to limit workers' influence over the production process
through forms of re-organisation such as decentralisation and
outsourcing and the introduction of automation. This was used to
attack the old 'worker fortresses' such as Detroit,
Renault-Billancourt, Alsace, the Ruhr etc. The landmark in this
process was the turn of the balance of power at the Italian car
manufacturers Fiat, which for years had been plagued by continual
stoppages, mass assemblies and absenteeism at its Turin plant.
Secondly, new industries such as electronics, information
technology and the 'service sector' were developed. New work
relations could be established in these industries relatively
easily since the most entrenched sectors of the working class had
been effectively bypassed. Thirdly capital 'took flight' to the
'Third World' where labour and natural resources were (and still
are) plentiful and cheap.
As the crisis and the problems in the industrialised areas
gathered pace, this shift to the 'Third World' was seen as an
increasingly attractive option, largely due to the fact that it
was a relatively immediate solution. Other tactics required for
the most part a long-term commitment to progressively wearing
down resistance before profitability could be increased.
Throughout the 1970s, capital flooded into certain areas of the
'Third World', such as Brasil, Mexico and South Korea, creating
what have become known as the Newly Industrialised Countries
(NICs). This process was greatly accelerated by the quadrupling
of the price of crude oil in 1974 by the world's main producers,
the OPEC15 countries, which "...served to liquidate and then
divert huge sums of capital away from industry which was
committed to various national economies within the Atlantic axis,
into the hands of the banks and the international circuits of
money capital that owed little or no allegiance to any state."16
This liquidity is the ideal form for capital, but it cannot
increase itself without being 'grounded' in a concrete
form--without having wage labourers producing both material and
immaterial things. It can never permanently escape from its own
contradictions; wherever it moves to, it creates workers who have
a tendency to do problematic things like demand higher wages and
go on strike.
It was in this period that the NICs, and to a lesser degree the
'Third World' in general, began to accumulate massive debts. The
influx of capital was mainly in the form of loans or production
facilities (for example, factories, mines etc.) owned by
corporations based in the northern hemisphere. The loans were
mainly used to finance prestige projects which had little
material benefit for the majority of the population--or to line
the pockets of the ruling classes.
However, this attempt by capital to escape from its enemy and
re-engage on more favourable terrain was undermined by the
central contradiction that accumulation in the NICs was dependent
upon continued economic growth in the West (which remained the
most important region). The economies of the West were
simultaneously undermined on two fronts; firstly 'capital flight'
had grown to such an extent that in countries with a 'poor
industrial record' such as Britain it amounted to a virtual
'investment strike' and secondly, capital was still unable to
contain wage demands.
Origins of the Debt Crisis
By the end of the decade the West's ability to sustain general
profitability and economic growth was undermined to the point
where all the economies in the Western world were plunged into
recession, which was inevitably accompanied by a corresponding
slump in world trade. The 'anti-inflationary policies' aimed at
wage control which had been pursued had had little obvious
effect, with the result that by the end of the 1970s, capitalist
planning agencies such as the IMF were calling for urgent
globally co-ordinated measures to attack inflation. These would
include 'tight money' (control over the money supply through high
interest rates which lessened the attractiveness of credit and
caused more generally a reduction in the ratio of debt to gross
domestic product [GDP--roughly speaking the total sum of
'economic activities']) and cuts in social expenditure, as well
as breaking 'structural rigidities' in the labour markets, e.g.
trade unions.17 As is usually the case with economics the
banality of the language bears no relation to the reality that is
actually being referred to.
These were the policies that became known as 'monetarism' (as
well as being loosely described as 'Thatcherism' or
'Reaganomics') which when adopted by the world's largest economy,
the US, resulted in the global recession and sharp interest rate
rises that triggered the debt crisis.
A number of 'Third World' economies had borrowed heavily from
major banks and other lenders including the World Bank, to
finance rapid 'development' and industrialisation, leaving them
with massive debts and interest payments. Consequently when
interest rates rose and the value and volume of the exports which
they used to service the debts fell, they found themselves unable
to pay. In 1981 the Mexican government threatened to default on
its loan repayments and started the 'Third World debt crisis'.
This threatened to provoke the complete collapse of the
international banking system--an outcome that was only narrowly
avoided due to the intervention of the IMF and the World Bank
backed up by co-ordinated efforts on the part of the major
industrial powers.
Although the attempt to out-manoeuvre the working class in
industrial countries through capital flight had been forced to a
halt by its own contradictions, "it did serve to impose the new
economic reality of global finance capital and in doing so laid
the ground for the further development of capital restructuring
against the working class in industrialised economies."18 The
nature of the crisis and recession made it increasingly clear
that economic policy had to be compatible with the demands of
global finance capital.
IV. The '80s--Defeat, Misery and Monetarism
The results of the debt crisis were twofold. Firstly, debtor
nations in the 'Third World' were forced by the IMF to adopt
Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) as means of 'saving'
their economies and enabling them to attempt to keep up
repayments on their loans. Secondly, in the industrialised
countries, governments began to change their economic policies
away from Keynesianism towards monetarism in an attempt to
attract international money capital with increasing interest
rates and disinflationary economic policies. In reality the
pursuit of disinflationary economic policy meant mounting a
concerted attack on the gains won by the working class in the
preceding decades--the imposition of austerity. All governments
whether conservative or socialist were forced to do this in order
to keep wages down and slash public spending on the social wage
(e.g. welfare, free healthcare, services etc.) At the same time
they exchanged the strategy of 'tight money' for an expansion of
credit--a socialisation of debt as opposed to its eradication.
This "helped to decompose the homogeneity of resistance to
austerity on a global scale" by integrating parts of the working
class through a credit-sustained boom. The boom acted as a
neutralising agent by helping to co-opt parts of the working
class into the project of prosperity (for some).19
The strategy of using the unions to accommodate the working class
was swiftly replaced by one of outright confrontation. Thatcher
and Reagan were initially the major exponents of this policy
because they were in the best position to use it. In both Britain
and the US the unions had largely contained and defused working
class militancy but had therefore simultaneously undermined their
own raison d'être as mediators of this militancy and been left
weakened. In Britain, the relationship between the Labour
governments of the '70s and the unions has been caricatured as
'beer and sandwiches at No. 10' indicating its cosy nature.
However, due to their need to maintain their role as mediators
(and moderators) the unions didn't have the foresight to
anticipate the loss of political and policy influence that they
suffered when James Callaghan was ejected from office in 1979 and
the previously friendly ear was replaced by an implacable foe.
Though of course it wasn't the union bureaucracy that bore the
brunt of the attempts to impose unemployment and austerity.
The attack on the most entrenched sectors of the working class
rapidly gathered pace; protracted, bitter, losing battles were
fought first by steel workers, then miners and printers. The 1984
miners' strike was a turning point in the sense that the miners
had traditionally been the strongest sector of the working class
in the UK--their '74 mass strike brought about the downfall of
the Conservative government. Although governments in other
industrialised countries attempted to an extent to follow suit,
they didn't have the same degree of success. They lacked the
vigour of Thatcherism because they couldn't afford to sacrifice
industry to the same extent Britain had been able to due to the
strength and significance of its financial sector. This can be
seen for example in the comparative lack of collective class
struggle in this country at present as opposed to France.
Monetarist ideology promised to "roll back the frontiers of the
state" (in Thatcher's words) and to bring freedom and prosperity
for all. The reality however was very different. De-regulation in
some sectors of the economy was not matched by a generalised
retreat in other areas of life controlled by the state--in fact
the reverse was true. A 'free' economy necessitates a
strengthening of the state, as a defence against the unrest
provoked by impoverishment and the (re-) imposition of work. In
the US, restructuring, massive welfare cuts and the imposition of
workfare on a national basis have been accompanied by a huge rise
in the prison population, the 'three strikes' law20 and 100,000
new cops. This is an aspect of globalisation that some of its
critics appear to have overlooked when they bemoan an apparent
loss of state power to corporations.
Structural Adjustment: Global Chile
Two major perspectives exist on the debt crisis, both of which
share the assumption that it is a threat or obstacle to
capitalist development. For the Right the crisis has been viewed
as potentially threatening the international banking system and
'stable growth' of the creditor economies through default by
major debtor countries; hence the need for harsh IMF programmes
to make them 'pay up'. For the Left the crisis and the Right's
'solutions' to it are seen as the main obstacle to the
'development' of 'Third World' economies.21 A choice between hard
or soft versions of capitalism would be no choice at all even if
it was possible to choose. The fact that existence in some parts
of the world is less harsh than in others does not mean that it
is possible to reorient capitalist development in a 'better'
direction through more 'democracy' or well-intentioned liberal
proposals or campaigns.22 The debt crisis is the result of what
capitalism has been forced to do in response to proletarian
resistance in order to sustain its constant need for growth,
expansion and accumulation; it has been used as a "key
instrument" in "shifting the balance of class forces to its side
on both poles of the debt relation."23
Although workers in the West have suffered repression and
hardship, the fate of the working class in the 'Third World' has
been considerably worse. The result of the debt crisis was the
(still ongoing) imposition of SAPs, initially in those countries
such as Mexico which had threatened to default on their loan
repayments and gradually extending to cover almost every country
in South and Central America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.
SAPs were devised by the IMF and the World Bank as a means of
reducing inflation, leading to a favourable balance of payments,
reducing government debt, and making national industries more
efficient and workers more productive. This, it was claimed,
would inevitably lead to a reduction in international debt, and
acceptance of SAPs was required as a prerequisite for future
loans or payment rescheduling.
The concrete measures that SAPs consist of are essentially
modelled on monetarist economist Milton Friedman's formula for
post-Allende Chile, after Pinochet's 1973 coup. These include the
liberalisation of trade; the end of capital controls and the
promotion of 'free enterprise zones' or 'export processing zones'
(e.g. the 'maquiladoras' in northern Mexico), which guarantee
favourable financial terms, the use of local infrastructures and
large amounts of cheap labour power. SAPs also enforce the free
convertibility of national currency, the reduction of government
budgets and employment, the end of subsidies for education,
health and subsistence goods and the privatisation of state
industries.24
Third World governments are not helpless to resist the demands of
global financial capital, rather they depend on its help to be
able to resist their own populations.
Structural adjustment (and to a lesser extent economic
'development' in general) requires internal repression. In Chile
it cost the lives of 30,000 workers. Measures such as banning
student organisations, intimidating unions and expanding internal
security forces have become ubiquitous. In Nigeria the penalty
for sabotaging oil production is death.
Of course this situation has not just been accepted--resistance
has been constant and ongoing. Massive uprisings, rioting and
insurrections have become endemic but go largely unreported in
the West. In May and June 1989 at the same time as Chinese
students and army mutineers were being massacred as a result of
the Tiananmen Square protests to the 'horror' of the Western
world, a comparable number of anti-SAP rioters were killed by
Nigerian security forces during a wave of uprisings in the main
southern cities of Lagos, Bendel and Port Harcourt. "Crowds of
students, women and the unemployed jointly confronted the police
and burned many government buildings to the ground. In Bendel the
prison was ransacked, hundreds of prisoners were set free and
food was confiscated from the prison pantry and later distributed
to the hospitals where patients notoriously starve unless they
can provide their own food."25
The general effect of SAPs on proletarians has been nothing short
of devastating, whilst those in positions of power have in
general continued to directly or indirectly benefit in a variety
of ways. For this reason it is as implausible to talk of 'India'
or 'Brasil' being exploited as countries as it is to consider
'Britain' for example as an exploiter, since it is quite clear
that in any given nation state the population do not simply exist
as equal citizens with common unifying interests. To talk of rich
and poor nations obscures the reality that the rich and poor
exist within nations. Such formulations implicitly assume that
everyone in the industrialised countries is rich and everyone in
the 'Third World' poor. The ruling classes in the 'Third World'
obviously don't bear an equal amount of the burden of debt as
peasants or workers (if they bear any at all--Mobuto the
ex-president of Zaire siphoned off an estimated $8 billion,
Suharto, ex-dictator of Indonesia, $16 billion), and are as rich
as the rich in the West; conversely proletarians in the West
cannot be equated with the bosses and the state.
Although the population of the 'Third World' had suffered the
effects of economic 'development' for some time previously, the
onslaught precipitated by the imposition of austerity measures in
the 1980s was much worse. The need to increase exports and cut
spending meant a corresponding decrease in living standards.
In countries such as Mexico and Brasil wages have been cut in
real terms (i.e. wages have stayed the same or risen less than
the rate of inflation, so the amount that can be bought with them
gets progressively less) by between a third and a half since the
debt crisis began, whilst malnutrition has become endemic as food
prices have soared. In Africa the situation is far worse with
many areas on the verge of mass starvation.
For those reliant on subsistence farming the picture is also
bleak--the need to grow cash crops to exchange for hard currency
(i.e. dollars) has massively accelerated an ongoing process of
forcing peasant farmers off the most fertile lands and either
into urban poverty or on to poor quality land that provides
increasingly marginal returns. The greatest example of this is
the practice of dumping landless peasants in rainforest areas
where once the trees are cleared the soil quickly becomes
infertile. This has happened, for example, in the western
provinces of Brasil such as Rondonia and in the Indonesian
province of West Papua. (See "Rumble in the Jungle, this issue of
DoD.)
Rapidly increased environmental destruction such as
deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, mining and oil extraction
is a further consequence of the debt crisis. The drive to
maximise exports at all costs has not had the desired effect--the
prices of primary commodities have plummeted as the world market
has been saturated by the produce of 'Third World' economies in
competition with each other.
Even those countries which didn't accrue massive debts have been
badly effected as they are also dependent upon the export of
primary products and are then of course subjected to the IMF's
own special remedy.
It has been estimated that between 1982 and 1990 an incredible
$1,345 billion has been transferred from the 'South' into the
coffers of states, banks and financial institutions in the
'North'.
V. 1990--? Global Finance Capital, Crisis and Yet More Struggles
So despite having both numbers and organisation, workers were
unable to win against a constantly mobile opponent from their
defensive position. Not even the most entrenched and militant
sectors of the class could hold out indefinitely as they became
surplus to requirements. Labour is only as strong as it is
necessary--"they lost because the economy deprived them of their
function which is their social weapon. Nothing will force capital
to hire labour which is not useful to it."26 Nothing is immune to
the pressures of world trade as the collapse of state capitalism
in the former Soviet Union showed. The same market forces that
were making thousands redundant in Liverpool or Detroit were busy
smashing the 'Chinese walls' that blocked the flow of money and
commodities into Moscow.
If the '80s showed the power and autonomy of deregulated global
finance capital, what new developments have occurred since and
how should we understand them? Although in the light of the
recent crises it would seem that capitalist triumphalism and
proclamations of a 'New World Order' were somewhat premature, it
is certainly true that global finance capital and its ideology of
neo-liberalism are currently growing in self-assurance and
audacity, although now with a degree of trepidation. This is
reflected in a variety of ways, one of which is the preoccupation
in oppositional (and mainstream) politics with globalisation,
neo-liberalism, free trade and an almost bewildering array of
acronyms representing supra-national organisations such as the
WTO (World Trade Organisation) and the IMF (International
Monetary Fund), or trade agreements like GATT (the General
Agreement on Trade and Tariffs), NAFTA (the North American Free
Trade Agreement) or the (now defunct) MAI (Multilateral Agreement
on Investment).
In mainstream politics globalisation is talked of in terms of
accepting irreversible new economic realities and constraints and
is a scapegoat for unpopular policies. In oppositional and
grassroots politics, resistance to globalisation has been adopted
as a central campaigning issue. So it would seem to be quite
important to try to understand the changes and strategies that
lie behind the acronyms and capitalist propaganda. In order to be
able to resist we have to acknowledge and develop an
understanding of the new lines of attack being taken against us
and of the ways in which the relationships between states,
capital and class have changed. We have to go beyond the
banalities offered by 'off the peg' analyses from left/liberal
academics who use the same categories and assumptions as the
capitalists from a negative perspective--they understand the
world in the same way, merely believing it needs a bit of
tinkering with to set it right.
The anti-globalisation orthodoxy holds that recent changes in the
global economy constitute a significant and possibly definitive
break with the structures and forms that have until recently
characterised capitalist society. They argue that although the
world market for commodities, capital and money has been in
existence for several centuries, since the early 1970s the
framework for the production, consumption and exchange of
commodities and money has undergone a fundamental change.
Previously this took place on a national or national-imperial
basis, but now transnational corporations, banks and
supranational agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF and the
WTO are 'de-linking' themselves from political attachments to
their nation-state 'homes'. They have 'deterritorialised' and
'globalised' themselves and as a consequence have the capacity to
move capital, money and expertise at will to the places which
offer the highest returns. In tandem the "legal and financial
framework for this global capacity for movement and integration
has been slowly but definitively put into place." And
"consequently nation states, provincial governments,
municipalities, local officials and labour unions are now
increasingly helpless in controlling the movement of capital,
money and jobs" to the extent that workers and citizens can no
longer rely on an increasingly powerless 'democratic government'
to fight their corner.27 "Corporations Rule the World", as David
Korten put it.
Although this interpretation of our present situation is premised
on a number of deeply flawed and naive assumptions, which obscure
more than they reveal, we shouldn't in response be tempted to
downplay the significance of change in recent years. To do so
would be to fail to recognise the importance of globalisation as
a strategy attempting to fully integrate as much of the world's
population as possible into the capitalist mode of production.
For those already integrated, it "naturalises the market and the
economy to such an extent that it presents the latter as an
autonomous force to which we must bow." This is however only an
apparent autonomy because the economy can only be autonomous to
the extent that humans give up their autonomy and their freedom
to create their own conditions of life.28 Globalisation is not an
unstoppable objective process but a strategy which could in
principle be halted.
Finance Capital and the Speculators
The exponential growth of monetary and financial markets is
undeniable; estimates of the daily value of transactions on the
foreign exchange markets in New York, London and Tokyo alone vary
from $650 billion up to a trillion dollars. The transactions are
largely composed of currency speculation aimed at making a profit
from the movement of exchange rates. Given the sums involved,
even small deviations in the rate of interest or other factors
can cause huge flows of money which in turn affect exchange rates
and cause economic difficulties for the 'victim' government,
problems passed on in the form of hardship, spending cuts etc.
This growth of money being made from trading in money has
sometimes been wrongly called a 'casino economy', or as in the
June 18th publicity, a 'game'. Even the most abstract and
seemingly savagely pointless capitalist activities exist in a
material and social context. It is not sufficient to merely point
out the effects of currency speculation--the question of who or
what is the target also has to be asked. Speculation is directed
at those countries whose domestic policies are in some way
incompatible with global competitivity requirements, i.e. those
who have not made sufficient attempts to subjugate or co-opt
workers or who display any weakness by bowing to pressure over
controlling public finance and social expenditure.
Those countries which have begun a 'healthy restructuring'
program are rewarded with currency stability and the loyalty of
the speculators. For proletarians, however, the choice between
the two financial regimes is a false one; what is not lost
through austerity measures is lost through unemployment and
income-eroding inflation. Most people experience the economy
(whether global, national or local) not as a source of
opportunity but of constraint.
The Globalisation of Production
The process of restructuring in the West which led to the
movement of production facilities to the 'Third World' where
lower wages and a greater intensity of work can be imposed has
already been described. 'Free-export zones' created by 'Third
World' governments continue to increase in size; total employment
in Mexico's 'maquiladoras' has grown from 110,000 in 1980 to 500,
000 in 1992. In Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia etc.) about
700,000 are employed in similar 'zones'.
Social conflict and struggle also continue to increase (between
1989 and 1993 Malaysia saw a 350% increase in the number of
working days lost through official strikes alone), with some
enterprises already being forced to relocate within the 'Third
World', for example from South Korea to Indonesia. For the Asian
textile industries this is particularly easy as "the clothing
industry uses little capital and is very mobile. All you need is
a shed, some sewing machines, and lots of cheap nimble
fingers."29 The strategy for creating an international division
of labour, globally subdivided according to comparative costs is
ongoing. Labour-intensive production which requires relatively
little capital is destined for low-wage areas, whilst production
which requires sophisticated technologies and services is located
in those areas which offer a suitable structure and environment
(most often the West). The factory becomes the global factory.
Consequentially, to the extent that production is still based in
transnational enterprises' 'home countries', the bargaining power
of better paid domestic workers becomes threatened and
disciplined. It is worth considering in this context the extent
to which transnational corporations are actually global. They may
have operations in a number of different countries and regions of
the world, but the vast majority remain firmly based in their
countries of origin in terms of the control of operations.
Executive boards and management styles remain firmly national, as
does the control of research and development. It is still
completely possible to talk of 'national capital' or 'British
capital' etc.
Capital and Nation States
One of the most common themes running throughout
anti-globalisation politics is the idea that the state and the
market are two opposed forms of social organisation, with
globalisation giving the market, multinationals and
supra-national bodies 'power over' the state with a resulting
loss of 'sovereignty' and 'national autonomy'.30 State and
capital are not opposed to each other. If anything, the opposite
is true--they exist in a contradictory unity--they are
differentiated forms of domination within the relations that
constitute the social order: states oppress their populations as
much as managements exploit their workers. Capitalism lives and
thrives on tensions and antagonisms; the central one being
between capital and labour--it constantly tries to escape from
insubordinate workers but needs them to be able to expand.
Another tension is that between the needs of national states and
the needs of global capital. The fact that a particular state
will sometimes act against some capitalist enterprise or other
does nothing to disprove the central point that there are no
states or national governments which don't "ultimately derive
their revenue and power from capital."31
As the importance of money capital has grown, the relationship
between territorially fixed states and globally mobile capital
has changed correspondingly. It is essential for nation states to
be able to attract and retain capital within their borders. Hence
national policy, through a combination of economic and social
policy, co-option and enforcement is aimed at increasing their
chances. The success of these policies is dependent upon
establishing the conditions for expanded growth on a world scale.
However participation in the financial summits and trade
agreements that facilitate this growth carries the risk of
economic disadvantage for particular nation states. This is where
the conflict between 'global' and 'national' economic interests
lies, not in an opposition between finance capital and
corporations (or even more dubiously 'foreign' capital) on the
one side and national or local economies on the other.
The increase in the numbers and scope of trade agreements (GATT,
NAFTA, Maastricht etc.) and international regulatory bodies (the
WTO, IMF, World Bank) is not something that has happened against
the will of national states but in fact is in many ways a
"state-led initiative whose primary aim is to restructure
capital/labour relations."32 The present global re-composition
(as opposed to de-composition) of national states tends to
enhance state power. Although their room for manoeuvre over
monetary and financial policies has been limited, their role in
the policing and planning of labour power has become ever more
important. Far from being outmoded or by-passed, in the global
order nation states are as important as they ever have been. A
central theme of this state re-organisation is a generalised
shift of responsibility on to international regimes and
'independent', 'politically neutral' organisations (in the sense
of left/right party politics), which amounts to an apparent
de-politicisation of some areas of decision making. The first
thing that Gordon Brown did after becoming Chancellor of the
Exchequer was to hand over responsibility for monetary policy to
the Bank of England. Similarly, membership of the WTO or the ERM
(European Exchange Rate Mechanism) allows governments to plead
helplessness in the face of 'external commitments', and to divert
the blame for unpopular policies.33
Trade Agreements and Supra-national Organisations
There are a large number of international agreements and bodies
in existence; the best known in terms of globalisation are the
WTO, the IMF/World Bank, GATT, NAFTA and the indefinitely
postponed MAI.
NAFTA was implemented on January 1st 1994, a date also marked by
the start of the Zapatista uprising in Mexico. Its provisions are
very similar to those which were to have been contained in the
MAI, which would have applied globally and included all major
economies as few if any would have taken the risk of being
rendered comparatively uncompetitive. NAFTA effectively creates a
borderless economic zone in North America encompassing Canada,
the US and Mexico. As well as being an agreement on the free
trade of goods and services it also gives incentives to companies
wishing to operate within the three countries and removes
barriers to foreign investment. The Mayan Indians in Chiapas
describe it as a "death sentence" because it means further
exploitation and poverty on top of their already dire situation.
The WTO was created at the 'Uruguay Round' (1986-'94) of GATT
negotiations in order to regulate international trade and settle
disputes. One of the main (and most reviled) requirements for
membership of the WTO (or being a signatory to NAFTA), is that
any national laws or regulations (environmental and labour
legislation, for example, or the banning of certain toxic
products) which obstruct 'free trade' are open to legal challenge
by the disadvantaged party through the WTO and the possibility of
sanctions or fines being imposed as punishment if they are not
removed. Whilst this horrifies those who naively cling to the
belief that control by national governments is preferable because
it is 'accountable' as opposed to control by the faceless
unelected (Shock! Horror!) bureaucrats at the WTO, the reactions
of those in power are particularly telling and oddly enough they
don't seem to share this concern. During the recent banana
dispute the US government, acting on behalf of US corporations
who account for over 80% of banana imports into Europe, requested
that the WTO force the European Union (EU) to revoke favourable
terms granted to producers in former Caribbean colonies.
Simultaneously the US imposed huge tariffs on a range of
economically marginal products such as Scottish cashmere, whilst
waiting for the WTO to carry out its role as adjudicator in trade
disputes. The WTO panel decided that the EU's protectionism was a
barrier to competition and imposed a fine. The British
government, despite being the target of US sanctions seemed
generally unconcerned (although it did make a show of 'defending'
the insignificant parts of British industry that had been
affected), pointing out that what was lost in some areas would be
gained in others by using the process in reverse. The state will
always protect the interests of capitalists, a function it will
fulfil either democratically or dictatorially.
Too much of the time anti-globalisation amounts to an appeal to
the state to take account of the wishes of some of its 'citizens'
and return to the good old days of social democracy and national
sovereignty when the nation state protected us against the worst
excesses of the corporations. Aside from being a grotesque
distortion of reality, these sort of calls and complaints are
quite simply reactionary and should be challenged at all possible
opportunities.34 States and governments are complicit in the
process of globalisation. We should be understand this and act
accordingly.
Corporate Rule?
Fifty-one of the hundred largest economies in the world are
transnational corporations. The combined sales of Ford and
General Motors are bigger than the combined GDP of all
Sub-Saharan Africa.35 Statistics such as these are said to
'prove' that corporations rule over us, as opposed to capital and
the state. (Although it should be pointed out that liberals
probably would not see the state as being against us but rather
corporations as being against the state which is supposed to
represent us as free and equal citizens.) Corporations and
capitalism do not amount to the same thing. Whilst it is
undoubtedly true that corporations are capitalist, capitalism is
not necessarily corporate.
Corporations are the dominant form in which capitalism exists at
present, but capitalism is not a thing or a legal entity--it is a
social relation between people, whereby the vast majority are
forced to sell their labour-power in order to live. Small
businesses are as capitalist as the largest transnational
corporation. The fact that it would be strategically nonsensical
to direct our efforts against small businesses which wield
relatively little power and influence shouldn't mean that we see
them as better or as an alternative to 'corporate power'. Capital
always seeks to expand whatever form it is in. All large
enterprises started off as small ones; Sainsbury's, for example,
started out as a single grocer's shop.
Capitalist social relations impose themselves across the whole of
society; there is no escape to be found in any activity local or
global which reproduces wage labour and exchange value. The sad
reality of local businesses is that they're not progressive
'alternatives' and in fact tend to be run by petty-minded
shrivelled little tyrants, who think they're free because they're
"their own boss", content with their island of illusory
dictatorship, where power is reduced to short-changing the
customers. Regardless of their longings for some fantasised
former simplicity and local autonomy, regardless of the fact that
they may call themselves anarchists and may certainly moan about
central government and big business, they identify with their
present means of survival and almost invariably call the cops
when their niche within capitalist society is threatened, for
example by looting .
As Gilles Dauvé has pointed out, the law of profit has nothing
to
with the action of a few big capitalists or multinationals and
getting the world we want does not mean ridding ourselves of fat
cigar smokers wearing top hats at horse races. What matters is
not the individual profits made by capitalists, but the
constraint, the orientation, imposed upon production and society
by this system which dictates how to work and what to consume.
The whole demagogy about rich and poor and 'big' and 'small'
merely confuses the issue.
The abolition of capitalism does not mean taking money from the
rich, nor revolutionaries distributing it to the poor, but the
suppression of the totality of monetary relations.36
VI. The Present Situation
The supposed triumph of the 'global economy' seems to have turned
out to be rather a hollow victory. It seems that struggle is once
again resurgent after at least a decade of relative dormancy.
Behind the talk of 'monetary instability', 'bad loans and trading
practices' and warnings by financiers such as George Soros about
the dangerous fragility of the financial system lies the reality
that the ultimate source of the present crisis is not
transgressions and mistakes by bankers and speculators but the
reduction of profits by class struggle. The Zapatista uprising in
1994 that threw Mexico and NAFTA into crisis, the general strike
in France in December 1995 which blocked planned social welfare
cuts and austerity measures, and the South Korean workers' season
of general strikes from December 1996 to March 1997 that sparked
off the Asian crisis and ended the myth of the 'tiger economies'
and the boundless profits to be made in 'emerging markets' are
just a few examples.
What does this all mean for the future? Has capitalism bitten off
more than it can chew in its attempt to fully subjugate the vast
majority of the world's population to the rule of money?
The virtual collapse of the Russian economy and the financial
meltdown in the Far East have shown how rapidly the system can
plunge into crisis. If the latest resurgence in struggle in
various forms turns into a concerted global offensive, then the
abandonment of social democracy and the subsequent lack of any
means to accommodate working class needs may prove to have been
an error on the part of the ruling class. The contemporary
weakness of the old social democratic forms of mediation such as
the unions opens the possibility for struggle outside and against
their malign influence. In this context it is possible to see a
certain awareness amongst capitalists of a possible future need
to re-incorporate elements of 'social justice' into the system in
order to contain class struggle--a point alluded to by George
Soros when he warned that "the uninhibited pursuit of
self-interest [which is] not tempered by the recognition of
common interest" will spell disaster for the system.37
Set against the background of a rising tide of nationalism and
racism (some of which is directed against globalisation), our
struggles have to be international and internationalist,
recognising both national states and capital--in whatever
form--as our enemy. After the next stock market crash, it is
entirely possible that opportunist politicians will start coming
out against globalisation and de-regulated markets, with the
effect of co-opting and neutralising those radical movements
which also situate themselves against it. What we are struggling
for is not a return to some form of global social democratic
consensus, a redistribution of wealth or a "sustainable and
participatory civil society without borders."38 It is
questionable whether permanent reforms are any longer
possible--let alone desirable. The only option now left available
to us is the complete abolition of capitalist social relations.
Notes
1. The Russian revolution, despite being called 'communist',
turned out to be anything but. Instead of developing in an
anti-capitalist direction, it was defeated by the emergence of a
new set of rulers who preserved all the essential aspects of
capitalist society, e.g. wage labour, money and capital
accumulation (in an inferior form) and ruthlessly crushed any
attempts to do away with them. The Kronstadt mutineers for
example were told by Trotsky that unless they resumed work
immediately they would be "shot down like partridges." They held
out with sadly predictable consequences. The new state was based
on a class compromise of guaranteed employment, not having to
work too hard, but also little in the shops. It could be summed
up as: 'you pretend to pay us--we pretend to work.'
2. "The struggle of powers constituted for the management of the
same socio-economic system is disseminated as the official
contradiction, but it is in fact part of the real unity--on a
world scale as well as within every nation." Debord--Society of
the Spectacle (London, Black and Red, 1983), thesis No. 56
3. Burnham--'Capital, Crisis and the International State
System', in Global Capital, National State and the Politics of
Money, Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway (Eds.) (London, 1996),
p. 106
4. Aufheben No.7, p. 14
5. Burnham--The Political Economy of Post-War Reconstruction
(London, 1990), p. 100. Quoting Gifford, advisor to the US
Department of Commerce.
6. Bonefeld--Monetarism and Crisis, in Bonefeld /Holloway
(1996), p. 35
7. See Do or Die No.6, p. 9-10
8. Aufheben No.7, p. 20
9. Aufheben No.4, p. 25
10. See: Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All
Countries (p. 148) and: The Class Struggles in Algeria (p.160) in
Situationist International Anthology, edited by Ken Knabb
(California, 1981). The SI's view of workers' self-management as
revolutionary is questionable, but they are interesting and
useful texts nonetheless.
11. See Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (Eds.)--The Case
Against the Global Economy (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books,
1996) or David Korten--When Corporations Rule the World (1995)
12. Holloway--The Rise and Fall of Keynesianism, in
Bonefeld/Holloway (1996), p. 31
13. Gilles Dauvé and François Martin--The Eclipse and
Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement (Antagonism Press, 1997),
p. 10
14. Dauvé/Martin (1997), p. 10
15. Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. This was
essentially a cartel of the major oil producers, upon whom many
industrialised countries were (and mostly still are) dependent,
if they don't have domestic oil supplies.
16. Aufheben No.1, p. 22
17. Cleaver--Notes on the Origin of the Debt Crisis, in Midnight
Notes No.10, p. 21
18. Aufheben No.1, p. 22
19. Bonefeld/Holloway--Conclusion, in Bonefeld/Holloway (1996)
20. This was first introduced in California in the mid-1990s. It
means a person's third conviction of any sort carries a mandatory
25 year sentence! Jack Straw's next move?
21. See Susan George--A Fate Worse Than Debt (New York, 1988) for
a leftist analysis.
22. For a brief but good analysis of Agenda 21 in relation to
this see 'Agenda 21 Exposed', a pamphlet published in Brighton in
1995 (?)
23. Federici--The Debt Crisis, Africa and the New Enclosures, in
Midnight Notes No.10, p. 10
24. Midnight Notes No.12, p. 3
25. Federici--Midnight Notes No.10, p. 17. See this article for
further examples of resistance in the 1980s.
26. Dauvé/Martin (1997), p. 11
27. Midnight Notes No.12, p. 2
28. De Angelis--The Autonomy of the Economy and Globalisation, in
Common Sense No.21 (1997), p. 43
29. The Economist (1987: 67), quoted in De Angelis (1997), p. 50
30. Burnham--Globalisation: states, markets and class relations,
in Historical Materialism No.2, (London, 1997), p. 150
31. Burnham--Capital, Crisis and the International State System,
in Bonefeld/Holloway (1996), p. 105
32. Burnham (1997), p. 151
33. This is a long standing strategy of nation states which can
be seen as early as the 1920s with the return to the Gold
Standard with its associated claims of 'automatic regulation'.
34. For examples see any issue of Corporate Watch or the 'Resist
Corporate Rule!' pamphlet produced by A SEED or any number of
SchNEWS issues (e.g. No.141, 161, 187 etc.)
35. 'Resist Corporate Rule!' (A SEED, 1998), p. 8-9
36. Dauvé/Martin (1997), p. 24-5
37. Quoted in Midnight Notes No.12, p. 1
38. See: Mexico is Not Only Chiapas, Nor is the Rebellion in
Chiapas Merely a Mexican Affair, in Common Sense No.22, p. 33.
This is also a good, if possibly controversial analysis of the
situation in Mexico, including a useful historical background.
39. Leroy Thompson--Ragged War: The Story of Unconventional and
Counter-Revolutionary Warfare (London, Arms and Armour, 1994),
pp. 33-8, 101; Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins--1968: Marching in the
Streets (London, Bloomsbury, 1998), p. 89; Nick Yapp--Camera in
Conflict (Köln, Könemann, 1996), p. 124, 148-150; 'Mau Mau
will
sue Britain for human rights abuses', The Guardian, Thursday
April 29, 1999
40. Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins--1968: Marching in the Streets
(London, Bloomsbury, 1998), pp. 70-71; 'Occupy, Resist, Produce'
in Do or Die no. 7, pp. 88-96
41. Aufheben No.5 (1996)
BOX:
The Mau Mau: Better Dread than Dead
It was in many ways the massive anti-colonial struggles of the
1950s and the immediate post-war period in the 'Third World' that
inspired the more well-known revolts in the West in the 1960s.
For example, the struggle against the French in Algeria was
well-known to the partisans of Paris' 1968 'May events'. The
knowledge of the atrocities committed against the Algerians
during the 8-year war for independence radicalised the students
of Paris and made them realise what the French state was capable
of.
The British experienced a similar African insurgency against
Imperial rule in the 1950s in Kenya. The struggle for land and
freedom in Kenya was led by the Mau Mau--a guerrilla force
composed mainly of members of the Kikuyu tribe who waged a
sometimes very brutal war against the white settlers. As a symbol
of their identity, the Mau Mau grew their hair in dreadlocks
which they never cut. Seven initiation cuts marked the body of
one who had taken the Mau Mau oaths.
Under the British, Kenya operated a strict policy of racial
separation, similar to South African apartheid, utilising a very
strict identity card system. However, as with South Africa,
separation effectively meant domination: native Africans were
forced on to 'tribal trust lands', the British having stolen
their traditional tribal lands. Political agitation around the
issue of stolen lands had been taking place since the 1920s, but
to no avail.
When Kikuyu soldiers returned from World War II, in which they
had fought for the British, they returned radicalised to a
country still run by paternalistic colonial administrators and
plagued by racist missionaries. These ex-servicemen provided the
nucleus for the Mau Mau guerrilla army. The Mau Mau were
dedicated to driving white farmers from the rich heartlands of
Kenya--they were daring and merciless, attacking first isolated
farms and police outposts and later the vast concentration camps
where Mau Mau suspects were imprisoned by the British. During
their 11-year struggle for independence from the British, the Mau
Mau hid out in the large areas of wilderness, forest and
mountains in Kenya. They blended into the forests making it
impossible for the British to find them.
The British responded by pioneering many of the classic
'counter-insurgency' techniques that would later become famous in
Vietnam--for example, the resettlement of the entire indigenous
population in special controlled villages to separate them from
the guerrillas. Ninety thousand people were imprisoned and
tortured in detention camps, ten thousand people had land
confiscated, and a further half a million were forced into
protected villages. Inmates of the detention camps were regularly
beaten and abused, and thousands of innocent people died of
disease and malnutrition. In the years up to 1956 over 10,000 Mau
Mau lost their lives in the struggle against the British--many
hanged on the gallows in mass executions.
John Nottingham, a district officer during the period of
emergency said: "One day six Mau Mau suspects were brought into a
police station in the neighbouring district to mine. The British
police inspector in charge lined them up against a wall and shot
them. There was no trial." Asked if he thought that the actions
of the colonial forces amounted to human rights abuses, Mr
Nottingham said: "If throwing a phosphorous grenade into a
thatched hut with a sleeping family inside isn't a human rights
abuse then I don't know what is."39
BOX
In the '50s, US multinationals invested heavily in Brasil and
there was a vast programme of industrialisation and
'development'. The Wall Street Journal asked: "Is there any other
place in the world where such profits can be obtained?" These
profits were won at the cost of massive social inequality and
poverty in Brasil. However the period was also characterised by
the radical struggles of large groups of peasants such as the
Ligas Campesinas (Peasants League) and Movimento dos Agricultores
Sem Terra (MASTER).
By the early '60s the IMF and the USA had started demanding huge
debt repayment programmes and 'anti-inflationary policies'. This
effectively required the civilian government to crush militant
workers and peasants and bring them to heel. Instead in 1964 the
civilian government, under pressure from the mass struggles of
workers and peasants, promised to nationalise the oil refineries
and authorise peasant's appropriation of unused land. The
response of the army and the multinationals was brutal. In April
1964 there was a US-backed military coup in which thousands were
assassinated as the military police unleashed a reign of terror
and crushed all dissent.
However in 1968 there was an upsurge of resistance to the
military regime. Led largely by students inspired by the
rebellions in France and Mexico and by the Cuban revolution, a
wave of revolt swept cities across the country. The students were
joined by 15,000 striking metal workers. The pro-democracy
movement gained strength throughout the 1970s (three million
industrial workers went on strike in 1979 alone), there were
struggles against huge hydro-electric schemes and peasant land
occupations. This fruit of this today is the Movimento Sem
Terra--Brasil's movement of landless peasants--one of the main
threats to the Brasilian capitalists' project of
neo-liberalism.40
BOX
Kicking it off in Korea
It was primarily the South Korean strike wave of '96-'97 that
sparked off the Asian crisis of 1997. Millions of workers went on
strike to oppose neo-liberalism before the grim gaze of a
nuclear-armed US occupation army. In June '95 President Kim
Young-sam warned that a planned strike at a state-owned telephone
company would be akin to "an attempt to overthrow the state". But
that was merely the beginning... December and January 1996-'97
saw the largest series of strikes and walkout in South Korean
history, involving hundreds of thousands of workers protesting
against the new labour legislation introducing casualisation and
allowing companies to lay off and fire workers more easily. A
general strike was called on January 15th 1997--600,000 workers
downed tools. Over the following three weeks, the wave of strikes
'cost' South Korean corporations over $3 billion in lost
production.
Source: Midnight Notes No. 12 (1997), pp. 41-44
BOX:
France 1995
A CGT delegation leads a march during the general strike.
Two million people on the streets burning Roman candles, waving
red and black banners, and singing the Internationale... A
strike, spreading like wildfire from one sector to another
through rank and file delegations... The switching of electricity
on to cheap-rate by striking workers... Rioting coal miners...
Shock waves reverberating throughout Europe, echoes in Germany
and Belgium... And a feeling that anything is possible...
In May '95, the French government, under pressure from the
foreign exchange markets, had announced a package of welfare
cuts--the so-called 'Juppé plan'--but the markets were not going
to have it all their own way...
In December 1995 over a million people throughout France
demonstrated against Juppé's austerity measures. This was a
clear
attack on the new post-Maastricht Europe of austerity and
cutbacks. The movement of winter '95 turned back the proposed
neo-liberal reforms and seemed to offer the possibility of real
social change. This was the biggest challenge to date against
European capital's attempts to destroy the post-war settlement
and to undo all the hard-won gains of the earlier decades of
struggle.
"Will the Law of Economics condemn us to this? Let's smash the
laws! So that we can struggle, speak to each other, and imagine
other ways of living together. We must take back the time that
wage slavery has stolen from us. Long live the GENERAL STRIKE! A
country which is entirely on strike is a new world shaping
itself!"--French strikers, 1995.41