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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.
Globalisation has become a bęte 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
