For Bread and Roses. Q&A on (Anti)Globalisation.

Ever since the now famous Battle of Seattle the antiglobalist movement has been on many peoples lips, both as hope vindicated and political chimera. These last years they’ve marched and demonstrated all over the planet, held Social Forums, created a global network, set up thousands of sites on the internet, and time and again their actions made front page headlines. But still things remain very much unclear. Evidence of that abound in many questions as to who they are, which other world do they want, what is this globalisation, what are their chances and opportunities and so forth – questions sometimes surprising traditional social science, often challenging a journalist’s point of view. Here I try to provide a first entry. I left out references and matters relevant only to scientists dug in deep in this subject, taking the most important questions head on. The only thing to note, setting this here opinion apart, is its founding on world-systems analysis .

- What is ‘globalisation’?

To the questions why is there an economic crisis and why is neoliberalism so very popular many have, since the seventies, answered mentioning globalisation. Both scientifically informed globalisation theories and flat out folk opinion come down to this: ‘Companies now have to compete far more often with companies abroad, have to be globally active, transfer production and other activities to different countries, restructure. And there, if we’re not the first we shall be last and lost. An epoch has gone. We no longer live in national economies, instead we live in a global world wherein economic, political and cultural processes interconnect us all.’ Now, although many companies operate transnationally in a fired up arena of global competition, although yes, processes of cultural unification can be evidenced and although yes again, the brake-down of nation-states is ongoing, this picture is flat out false. The crisis is no new phenomenon, capitalism never was national and globalisation has been with us for centuries. Bringing history and geography back in changes the picture completely.

- So, how and what then?

Between 1500 or so and 1950 or so capitalism was able to achieve something no other historical system has ever been able to do. Originating in Europe it would absorb the whole globe in a single social division of labor.

This division was and still is very unequal. One can, to make things simple, divide it into three interdependent geographical zones. In the periphery one finds low wages often in systems of forced labor and low technology. The core comprises high wages, free labor, high profits, advanced technology. In between is the semi-periphery combining features of both. In this division the ‘South’ is poor because the ‘North’ is rich. So, for example, one will remember the sixteenth century plantations and mines in South America producing raw materials with forced labor and slavery for the powerful colonial states in Europe.

This system, historical capitalism or the capitalist world-economy, to set it apart from other systems, has no one political centre (as did redistributive empires). Instead it has many states in an interstate system. The states compete among themselves to house the most competitive companies and most profitable activities. One of these states may reach hegemony (economic, political and cultural leadership in the ‘world’ – UP in the 18th GB in the 19th and US in the 20th century) to rule out this system going too far from equilibrium - but no global and central government, so allowing competition in a world-market to go on as ‘free’ and ‘internationally’ as needed. In the core you will find strong states, politically very stable, often promoting free trade since their companies, products, currency are the strongest. In the periphery you will find weak states with quasi no control over national development. And in the semi-periphery authoritarian regimes try to get population behind the interests of national industry to have some development – always costing other countries. Position and power may change through time but the structure (itself developing through time, beginning and end) is there giving the system its historical and social identity.

Now, globalisation is nothing other than this system incorporating the whole world.

- How does that work?

Capitalism means minority power, the power of capitalists. They own the means of production to put it simple and rather crudely. And they compete for profit. In this competition states get involved as means to facilitate gain for some capitalists, meaning manipulating wage levels, union power, education, social rules, state involvement … to fight of the competition. This competition causes stagnation of the world-economy every fifty years or so (overproduction, Kondratieff cycle principle).

To solve the ‘crisis’ (stagnation) capitalists have a lot of strategies at their disposal. Adapting prices, restructure, taking over companies, putting others out of business. Those will help some but won’t save the day. Move production to lower wage countries, innovate at the spot, cut wages, are others. But they reduce demand because of caused unemployment and poverty. So there is labor protest. To stop that capitalists sooner or later will have to allow for a sharing of profit. To gain what goes lost they will eventually search for new cheap labor in areas not yet incorporated in the system. The whole cycle will repeat itself more or less the same way so protest remains on the far horizon and capitalists will have to search again, this way incorporating the whole globe which took them about five centuries. Another somewhat different but supporting explanation is for capitalism to work you need a world-market, local small markets simply don’t allow for an endless search for profit. This way one can explain globalisation, or incorporation in the capitalist system defined loosely.

- Does this help understanding antiglobalisation?

There’s a lot more to be said to show exactly how much .. But, ok, lets take this for now. For instance, the Belgian prime minister Mr. Guy Verhofstadt was the very first high placed politician in any office anywhere who went into public debate with the movement. There he wrote an open letter stressing fighting globalisation makes no sense, for we’re all interconnected, we even lack more globalisation, this time meaning more integration of politics and economics in the capitalist system (‘open those markets, let in products from the South’). Yet antiglobalists are not, should not be, against globalisation in any simple connection sense nor are they, or should they be against world-wide trade, let alone, as the prime minister seems to think, against some form of global governance, quite the contrary. If anything they may very well be the first real world citizens. They simply are (should be) against capitalist globalisation and its slithery ideology of neoliberalism. They are against a competition for profit which commodifies everything, education and research, water and air, even our own bodies to take history’s very last examples. They are against this system most of us never really wanted.

- Hold your horses, what are you saying?

Lets take commodification of everything – defining feature of the system – first. For example antiglobalists in the third world movement are very much against multinationals buying and owning lakes in India or holding the exclusive rights to produce local raw materials or patenting ‘scientifically important’ local resources to make a (often very high) profit. Since that way local population has to pay for drinking water which used to be common property with money they don’t posses. Since it constantly needs new means to make a profit capitalism makes everything into a commodity for sale and forces people to adapt. Antiglobalists also are very much against privatisation of public goods like education. Education is a public good serving mankind and not just economics. People should be educated in the most general way possible, which is something entirely different from gathering facts and acquiring capacities or ‘lifelong learning’ in the service of labor markets or the interests of companies. Antiglobalists don’t approve of this opinion stating school is a company and pupils or students are customers buying a useful product.

Now take living and working in a system most didn’t want. Antiglobalists are against the so-called active welfare state , blaming the unemployed for not being up to date or being lazy, obliging everybody to learn what is useful to obtain a job or to boost the economy in specific sectors. Antiglobalists demand that the economy services the people and not the other way round. To go into this somewhat, take Mr. P. Janssens, the then president of the SPA (Belgian socialist party) in his published Over de grenzen. Everyone should have the same chances to be economically active, ‘to participate’ goes his bottom line argument. Antiglobalists immediately respond and demand what kind of work, what kind of economy? Why should ‘work, work, work’ or ‘growth, growth, growth’ be so evident a goal? What about quality of life, quality of work, what about free time or the right to be lazy? Discussions on types of work are filled with envy, that’s the point, but antiglobalists demand why the envy, why not solidarity against privatisations, why not a speed up of demands touching profits?

- That’s against the will of your prime minister?

That’s exactly his fear. He expects nothing but good from further globalisation. For instance, he thinks when countries open their economic borders by 1% income pro capita rises equally. Now that’s simply hilarious. To take another example. Africa is the most globalised continent on the planet, more than 45% of African income comes from foreign trade. According to the prime minister Africa should be the most prosperous place on earth. No doubt you have seen images of Africa no? This also means, by the way, that most IMF and WB development programs following more or less the same neoliberal reasoning (privatisation and free markets) are far more a hazard than a blessing for the poor countries.

Let me go into numbers just this once, to illustrate if I may. On this earth 1.3 billion people live in absolute poverty, more than half of which are African. More than 3 billion people earn less than 2 Euro/day. The ten richest people of the world by themselves own more than 600 million people in developing countries do. 400 multibillionaires are as rich as 45% of world population. In the US 39% of national wealth is owned or held by just one percent of population. In 1960, the 20% richest countries had 30 times the income of the 20% poorest, now this figure is more like 82. More than 80 countries today have an income lower than 20 years ago. These numbers are consequences of world capitalism. And it gets worse. According to world economic and political leaders (gathering in 1995 in the Fairmont Hotel San Francisco) the future will be one in which 20% of world population lives quite luxurious while 80% will be poor and miserable. They will be kept in check with what they cynically called ‘titty-tainment’. That’s the future where capitalism globalised rules the day. Now how you can be in favour of that? Either way antiglobalists refuse this and fight this.

- What’s their alternative?

They propose many different things. But you can try to get a grip on it this way. Liberals, whether they be neoliberal, social-democrat, reactionary, racist, green, say to be in favour of democracy. But that’s at best a half truth. What they mean is political democracy (reactionaries and racists sometimes do not even want that) not economic democracy. All applaud capitalism one way or the other, some with serious qualifications. This means they accept the minority power of capitalists. This is crucial. Not people but profit, the capitalists decide in last instance what is in need of production and how to produce it. Real democracy would turn this table round: the economy produces what people deliberately want. So capitalism also means economy subordinating politics. For instance the EU still is essentially a construction serving the interests of big capital. When the ERT (European Round Table of Industrialists, lobby group for the main companies in Europe) finds education in need of restructuring to better accord the economy, things are done such the EC takes that for holy scripture. This doesn’t mean the EU can never be democratised or set to some better purpose. But everyone refusing to touch capitalist minority power puts democracy on hold, eventually destroying it.

So lets talk principles for a while. What we need is some form of worldwide elected government someday when power has shifted and time has come to make important means of production common property again. Important sectors serving basic needs should be freed from world market rules. To keep our eyes on the ball we are fighting the commodification of everything. Why should everything become some commodity? It may sound somewhat strange but I can find no better maybe even last symbol for fighting this than long-distance hikers and climbers keeping in touch with free camping and free roaming the mountains. Like Joe Simpson (prominent climber and acclaimed writer) many of them simply despise the commodification of their beloved realm. Ever bigger and ever more competitive companies taking ever more tourists up the high slopes of the Andes and the Himalayas, spoiling the sights with their fast easy take away expeditions mocking the sublime, ridiculing all ethics of camping and climbing. ‘They are not for sale!’ they respond and by god they are right for these very last resorts of the commons are mankind’s and in effect are no bourgeois property at all. This most people don’t even grasp anymore. Making this world into a heap of commodities estranges people not only from this planet but from themselves and each other as well. Hard cash is what is needed to have ‘kicks’ and/or a ‘life-style’ which can only be a far cry from what happiness and living well are all about. Lifting things out of the capitalist marketplace means not everything can be sold for profit, means caging the power of corporations and their labelling just about everything, means doing away with life-style to regain a sense of way of living. In short ‘people not profit’.

More specific demands are there too, like the Tobintax on financial speculation, integral federalism, more precedence to local and home markets, global social rules (which to some extent already exist of course) minimum income and maximum income, abolishing third world debt, and so forth. To mention just one other book in need of an English translation, listing these and other concrete objectives on the midterm is D. Barrez (2001): De Antwoorden van het Antiglobalisme (‘the answers …’).

- So this movement is communist or extreme left?

Well yes and no. It’s broader, different, more open and diversified a movement, in some respects it’s more radical. In fact communism or socialism is a very nice ideal meaning political as well as economic democracy. To say communism and the politics of the old USSR and other countries having communist parties in office are the same thing is quite understandable (remembering the Cold War) but actually is false. Communist parties there thought themselves to be the vanguard party and representative of the majority (to be). But that (considering state and mode of production) never really was the case and had many sad repercussions. Lenin and his followers’ censorship and violent suppression of anarchism had nothing to do with democracy. Stalin’s deportation camps and suppression of many socialist and anarchist groups in the Spanish civil war and elsewhere can never be anywhere near the socialist heart. To be in favour of socialism doesn’t mean one has to agree with the principles of a hierarchical and rigid vanguard party – which by itself will result in very undemocratic social realities. Nor should socialism be the same thing as a planned economy trying to control literally everything (how does one plan knowledge an creativity in this computer age?). Antiglobalists simply are more radical. They not only want democracy in the output, they also want to be democratic in organising and being politically active. They want to be anarchist as well (abiding by the principle of no central rule). Next to that they don’t think themselves to be the vanguard of the classic (industrial) labor class (as the old marxists would have it). Landless peasants, civil servants, forced laborers, all have their culturally specific say. All this doesn’t mean old left no longer is welcome, to prove it. But unless they no longer hold onto the mistakes of history (discipline as well as the reality) they will become marginal. The antiglobalist movement is far more pluralist than the old Maoist, Leninist, Stalinist parties.

- How different is the movement really you think?

Well, not only because the movement is more pluralist. There’s something else which points us in the direction of strategy. The political strategy of the old anti-systemic movements was this: first achieve state power then change the world you live in (‘Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added onto you’, said Kwame Nkrumah). The first step has been realised to a high degree – we sometimes forget that. Think of social-democracy in Europe thanks to the labor movement or the independence of all third world countries thanks to national liberation movements. Only the second step never really was taken, could not be taken. For there is no way any single state can change the capitalist economy which never was national but is a world-economy. In this system states compete amongst themselves, winners losers all the time. This the antiglobalists want to change. And now note this. This change won’t come round thanks to what world leaders and many intellectuals now propose: the globalisation of the welfare state (which is/remained capitalist) making the world post world war Europe’s clone. This simply won’t happen because the costs within the system would be too high.

Now we return to the vision. I explained how the whole world became capitalist. This also means the system reaches chaos by its own success. Capital is centralised to a very high degree. There’s hardly any cheap labor to be found external to the system waiting to be exploited by the white man. Urbanisation and higher demands on education and social welfare everywhere are putting profits under real pressure now. The battle against racism and sexism is slowly being won which is all but good news to capitalism: paying people of different colour or place of birth less for the same labor is no longer an undisputed option, women want to be paid the same as men. US power, even their military power, is slowly grinding away without any new single hegemonic power to take over. Nation-states after many centuries a defining feature of this system are braking down. And then there are the billions to be paid to nature or the environment. All of these things are reaching asymptotes which can be explained using theories showing the mechanisms at work within historical capitalism - this way showing the antiglobalists’ themes to share a common denominator.

- Will capitalism cease to exist?

It has been declared near dead so often one has to be somewhat brave or foolish to say it again. But yes, I think it will. Those limits to the system will ruin it from within. Now I don’t believe in the predetermination of progress, another important difference with many Marxists and liberal social scientists. When a social system goes far from equilibrium and enters the point of chaos there is no way of telling which future will be next nor whether it will a be better or worse one, only that in this point in time our choices – human freedom so to speak – are real. So we have to make a round up of alternatives which are already presenting themselves to make an informed choice. This is to say the future is always open or multiple but not everything or anything is possible. To make things simple there are three worlds on my horizon of possible futures.

Already the rich capitalists are trying to change the world in order that nothing changes. They are reorganising to keep on to their wealth and are willing to leave everybody else miserable. They’re not about to live more modest or to change their opinion on what living well means. This points us to the first future I see. For instance, take the NIMBY ‘not in my backyard’ phenomenon: super rich suburbs where rich people erect high electric wired fences to separate them from the evil and dirty world outside, sometimes even with private guards and private military of some kind. Global talk of fighting terrorism might serve these purposes pretty well for who’s to define? Global talk of fighting poverty instead of underdevelopment (which is what the IMF and WB are doing right now) might do the same thing for the poor are no class objectively nor subjectively united (we already talked of ‘titty-tainment’ did we not?). Ecofascism is here as well. Overpopulation combined with an anthropology of the homo economicus shows us the picture of a vessel sailing polluted seas with too many people on board (to defuse it realise giving everybody one square meter world population could be living within the Benelux countries – just a dot on the world map ; it’s not overpopulation but the way we’re all living that should be considered).

Another world painting the horizon is fundamentalist. Since nation-states are breaking down people search for protection and safety within ‘groups’. This is the future of back to mini-systems, separate regions and peoples no longer caring for human rights and world citizenship but instead being very much ethnocentric and despising, even hating others.

There sure won’t be any room anymore for liberals (neoliberals, social-democrats, greens, conservatives and what have we had these past centuries – the liberal world welfare trick) as I already explained. So last in my picture is the future antiglobalists want. In my view they’re fighting for radical anarcho-socialism respecting a stronger version of human rights, willing to create a world in which there can be markets but where free market principles don’t rule the day. The things most important such as agriculture, education, energy, natural wealth … will be world common property – ‘we all will belong to the earth instead of the earth belonging to mankind’.

- Sweet talk & Utopia?

Well yes and no again. Better ask whether one is making it happen, better remember universal suffrage in the nineteenth century being just as much utopian. 2001 there was Porto Allegro welcoming tens of thousands antiglobalists from al over the planet. This movement has already won and lost some, is there to be reckoned with. It’s greatest achievement up till now is putting on world agenda the topics NGO’s, unions and others have been crying for in the desert for so long. This is major you know. Don’t forget there exist international organisations like IMF, WB, UN – if we could only further democratise those institutions, well that would be another huge step forwards. To keep hope going, look at ATTAC and the speed at which it is organising and growing in numbers speaking to the minds of younger generations. We should work out our platforms carefully but fast nonetheless, discuss, spread the word. This is the second phase going along with the first of marching and demonstrating. The third will be founding many more strongholds for the guerrilla fighters everywhere, maybe not (or not yet) parties and real institutions but things very much like Indian war and pow-wow camps upholding really different views on freedom and living well in a decommodified world. As long as our power needs growing we will be marching. We won’t fight for the best of worlds if that’s what you mean, but we will fight for the world of improvement.

- What about violence?

Every social movement trying to change fundamentals has known violence at one time or another. This doesn’t mean I simply approve – but to get something done, to show you really mean it, well sometimes … but, and this is crucial, deliberate premeditated physical violence against persons I very much disapprove of, throwing bricks at the walls of big capital, destroying a McD well that’s another matter no? But look at some of the demonstrations being more like joyful, musical celebrations of life. In almost every demonstration you will find capitalism and socialism no longer being out of date concepts, well now … For instance in Ghent we marched on the city where in its centre world leaders were deciding on how much Afghans they were willing to send to hell or heaven. Outside the fenced off centre antiglobalists were sending their message of freedom and socialism singing, full of joy, offering roses to policemen, while everything was recorded on TV sending pictures all over the world. That’s winning then no matter whether you’re losing now. Eventually we all will have to live together in some future world. So lets radicalise, really internationalise the unions, lets convince traditional politicians, get them all in. This means dialogue and roses, physical violence against persons will never achieve that. An eye for eye as in capitalist competition ‘will eventually make the whole world blind’. To the capitalists and their mongers of violence we will say at future’s gate: ‘You shall not pass – No Pasaran!’

Anybody you mean? Well, as always, understand and change. Everybody should try and search for the causes and reasons of his or her actions so that she or he might gain a greater freedom ; knowing why you are doing something, knowing what you are doing something for helps making you free. Try to place yourself in the historical order of things and try to look beyond your own immediate interests. Freedom and righteousness have to go together, if not democracy will be a sham for ever. Try to read as much as you can, try to understand. Don’t expect, do not want others to think for you, think yourself. And try to change the world wherever you can for there always is some power. Choices are there to be made everyday: will I eat at McD or do I choose not to take part in destroying the rainforest? Will I drive a car or do I choose not to pollute the air we breathe? Shall I buy my coffee at the mall or do I prefer to buy it at the Oxfam shop? Will I support this or that strike, will I march along or stay at home? Will I keep silent once I understand better or will I be Socrates investigating the opinions of my friends?

For this other world to succeed it also is important intellectuals should realise that doing your job well is wisdom but being only a specialist is not enough. In the world of science we should finally leave for good positivistic thought and become critical realists searching for the causal mechanisms in an open universe to resolve the old problem field of the predetermination of nature and voluntarism of man. Social science can be science as well, can aspire to become more than folk opinion. We should revise our old myths of history making it clear there has been a single society growing and incorporating every other for over five centuries now. Only that way can we try and find out which futures the past has in store for us. Political theory should finally try and tip the balance in favour of fraternity instead of clinging on to the old antagonisms between liberty and equality, trying to unite them from another angle that is. That could renew ethical debate taking it beyond liberal horizons. It might do justice to the multiplicity of alterity, upholding the importance of personality and identity. Then we come round again to our conscious intentionality, our humanity and our philosophies which make it all so very precious… Lets just try, lets go find some bread and roses, not to sell in any sense, but to eat well, and be tender with somebody else…

References can be provided. Further elaboration on specific topics can follow on a good theme question. Here or by mail: Saey M., Aalststraat 247 9700 Oudenaarde.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)