Transcript From the Vietnam War to Iraq

Shaping Europe in a Globalized
World?
Protest Movements and the Rise of a
Transnational Civil Society?
Universität Zürich, June 23-26, 2009
Stephen Gill
York University, Toronto, Canada
THE GLOBAL ORGANIC CRISIS
& POLITICAL AGENCY IN THE 21ST
CENTURY
Universität Zürich 23 June 2009
Lecture will be posted on:
http://www.stephengill.com/
Outline
Part 1: Two Concepts: Organic Crisis
& The Post-modern Prince
Part 2: Beyond The Crisis of
Accumulation – Elements of Global
Organic Crisis Today
Part 3: Emerging Forms of Political
Agency & the Post-Modern Prince
Part 1
Organic Crisis & Post-modern
Prince
Global organic crisis
1. A wide-ranging combination of economic,
social and ecological crises characterizes
the present global conjuncture
2. Present crisis is more deep-seated than an
economic depression or a cyclical crisis of
capitalist accumulation or economic growth.
3. It involves emerging challenges to the
epistemological and political dominance of
neo-liberal market civilization & capitalist
globalization.
4. One characteristic: “the old is dying and the
new is being born, and in the interregnum
there are many morbid symptoms”
(Gramsci, Prison Notebooks)
The Post-modern Prince
1. This concept is grounded in a reading
of Machiavelli’s & Gramsci’s concepts
of political agency.
2. It seeks to conceptualize some of the
real and imagined aspects of
progressive political agency in the 21st
century.
The Prince (1513)
1.
2.
3.
Machiavelli sought to analyze the
national & global power relations
of his time & place -- weakness of
a divided Renaissance Italy vis à
vis the geopolitical power of
France & Spain
Spoke not to those in the palazzo
but in the piazza – to those “not in
the know”; he demystifies power
Sought to develop a new “art of
the state” and to foster the
political agency that could found a
new form of integrated Italian state
The Modern Prince (1927-36)
1.
2.
3.
The political agency of the workers
could found a new hegemony, a
democratic form of state & new
world order: the revolutionary party
as a solution to 1930s organic crisis.
“The modern prince, the mythprince, cannot be a real person, a
concrete individual”.
“It can only be an organism, a
complex element of society in which
a collective will, which has already
been recognized and has to some
extent asserted itself in action,
begins to take concrete form”
(Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks, my
emphasis).
The Post-modern Prince
1. Embryonic & still developing, part of longue durée of
global progressive movements over centuries +
responses to global organic crisis.
2. An emerging “collective political will” of a new type
that has “begun to assert itself in action” & “begun to
take concrete form”.
3. “Already been recognized” e.g. World Social Forum
4. Multiple in form & processes, not hierarchical.
5. Its political myths: “diversity as a universal project”;
“emancipatory cosmopolitanism”. These go beyond
traditional left politics & internationalism founded on
agency of industrial working classes.
6. Epistemological & political alternative to disciplinary
neo-liberalism and capitalist market civilization
Part 2:
Beyond The Crisis of
Accumulation
Elements of Global Organic Crisis
Today
Crisis of Accumulation: the
orthodox view

Source: Barry Eichengreen & Kevin H.
O’Rourke 4 June 2009

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3421
1. So far the slump of 2008-09 matches the
severity of 1930s collapse & in some
respects it is worse
2. World industrial production tracks closely
the 1930s fall, with no clear signs of “green
shoots”.
3. World stock markets and world trade are
following paths far below those followed in
Great Depression.
A tale of two depressions:
industrial output
Stock markets crash + effects of
bail outs
2008-09 collapse in world trade
much steeper than 1930s
Macroeconomic intervention swifter
& far greater than in 1930s – e.g.
much lower interest rates
Fiscal policy: government budget
surpluses/deficits, now vs. then
Source: Bordo et al. (2001), IMF World Economic Outlook,
January 2009.
A broader view of the crisis
1.
2.
3.
4.
The crisis is much more than a crisis of capitalist
accumulation or a necessary self-correction aided by
macroeconomic intervention and bailouts.
The crisis also reflects contradictions of what I call
market civilization – a consumerist, privatized,
energy-intensive & ecologically myopic pattern of
social development.
Today the crisis involves a de facto state of global
economic emergency which presents dangers and
opportunities for a variety of states and social forces
– and not all are progressive – many are reactionary.
In this situation of global organic crisis old forces are
dying (but not yet dead) & the new are being born.
They have yet to fully emerge as transformative
political agency.
Global priorities: capital comes first
1. EU + US + UK bailouts & macroeconomic
stimulus = US$17 trillion (figures drawn
variously from The Economist, IMF & other
sources).
2. This is over 22 times the total planned funds
for UN’s Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs).
3. MDGs seek to provide minimum & basic
health & education for billions of the world’s
poorest between now and 2020.
4. “Billions for the banks, pennies for the
people” (Juan Somavia ILO Director in
Financial Times April 2009).
Global priorities: capital comes first
18
16
14
Total Committed to Bailout &
Stimulus in the EU, Britain and
US
US$ 17 trillion
12
10
8
6
Cost of Millennium
Development Goals
US$ 750 billion
4
2
0
By Way of Comparison
1
Example: world capitalist markets
increasingly determine food prices & level
of starvation
1.
2.
3.
4.
Increased corporate control
of global agriculture
Decline of local selfsufficiency & energy &
fertilizer intensive exportorientation of agriculture
Crop monocultures &
damage to the biosphere
Global futures trading e.g. in
Chicago & New York linked
to speculation & rapid
turnover time of capital &
high food prices
Capitalism & human progress?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Lower growth, rising unemployment, falling
remittances; high food prices, reverses decline of
past 25 years in % people who are “chronically
hungry” to a record 1 billion.
World population estimated by the US Census
Bureau at 6.784 billion in 2009. Thus 1 in 7 people in
the world is starving.
Numbers rose by 100 million in 2008-09, due to
global financial crisis (UN Food & Agriculture
Organization, 2009).
UN World Food Program needs $6bn (€4.5bn) in 2009
to feed the poorest, up 20 per cent from last year’s
record of $5bn.
Rethinking the concept of organic
crisis today
What are some differences between 1930s & today?
1. Crisis of accumulation is truly global – a second
Great Depression on a wider scale – USSR was
outside world capitalism in 1930s.
2. G8 responses reveal that macroeconomic
interventions are one-sidedly favourable to big
capital and the plutocracy, especially to Wall Street.
3. There are no obvious communist alternatives to the
dominance of global capitalism by neo-liberal forces
since the fall of the USSR in 1989.
4. However some new forms of left-wing political
agency are emerging in the longer context of
national & global struggles, e.g. the Post-Modern
Prince
Global organic crisis today – some
further elements: 1-5
1. Turnover time of capital accelerates, profits boom &
rates of exploitation of people & nature increase.
2. Subordination of states to capital (following some
socialization and nationalization of the means of
production 1917-1989).
3. Governments as market agents: promote market +
privatization + workfare + cut provisions for families,
education, health, leading to privatisation of risk for a
majority; state guarantees (socializes) risks for big
capital, e.g. huge bail-outs, subsidies in 2008-09.
4. Political power of free enterprise & the propertied fully
restored, unprecedented growth of a global
plutocracy.
5. Acceleration of extreme inequality of income, wealth &
life chances.
Global organic crisis: elements 6-10
6.
Expropriation or dispossession of producers of
means to subsistence – parallels early capitalist
enclosures and colonization (ongoing primitive
accumulation).
7. Capitalist markets increasingly govern food supplies,
water and other necessities: global hunger and
starvation mediated by the capitalist market in ways
that resemble 19th century capitalism.
8. This is occurring as threats to the biosphere & the
ecology of livelihoods are increasing
9. The coercive, arbitrary use of coercion & military
force (& torture) – and its use with impunity –
becomes a regulative principle in world affairs,
especially during Bush II administration.
10. Growing contradictions between legality and
legitimacy provoke challenges to global governance
& international organizations & the search for new
and more democratic political and social forums
Part 3:
Emerging Forms of Political
Agency & the Post-Modern
Prince
Global Alternatives: Polanyi’s ‘double
movement’ takes new form in 21st Century
1.
2.
3.
4.
Dominant forces that advance disciplinary neoliberalism and market civilization.
Reactionary forces, e.g. far right including neoFascists already in government; pan-European
Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty; religious
fundamentalism in North and South; latter reject
liberal, modernist projects.
Counter-hegemonic forces. Some seek regional
autonomy under state-driven, left-wing models based
on social needs, e.g. Bolivarian Alternative for Latin
America. Others seek greater power & representation
in global governance (e.g. India and China).
Alternative forces, progressive, grass roots and
citizens organizations & movements, e.g. parts of the
World Social Forum, Via Campesina and ATTAC.
Linked to Post-Modern Prince.
After the emergency: return to a
reformulated orthodoxy?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Some progressive initiatives incorporated, e.g. by
Obama: appease anger over bailouts; expand
healthcare insurance + “green investment.” Yet his
program one-sidedly favours Wall Street.
More pressures to privatize to pay for bail outs &
pressure to reduce welfare and public service
provision as a consequence of increasing deficits.
After the bail-outs: reintroduction of mechanisms
to justify & lock in a return of fiscal discipline &
austerity.
Reinforcement of market discipline on individuals,
workers and families e.g. through growing debts
(personal loss of wealth, lower incomes, reduced
pensions).
IMF grows & resumes debt imperialism via donor
country conditionality and stabilization programs.
Authoritarian tendencies in the
emergency?
The Global North
1. Bailouts & stimulus may not work, e.g. in
Japan US & UK interest rates now effectively
zero; huge deficits and even more government
debt on the way -- who will pay the costs?
2. Efforts to manage the crisis – particularly if
they fail – may reinforce tendencies towards a
more reactionary & authoritarian capitalism as
in the 1930s.
3. Note the effects on state apparatuses
associated with the “war on terror” (the option
to suspend civil liberties, impose martial law
etc.) might be used against “revolts” from
below & crush protests.
Authoritarian tendencies in the
emergency? The Global South
1. The organic crisis in the South is a continuing crisis,
mediated by external (imperialist) institutions and
political forces e.g. continues 1980s debt crises.
2. This has produced innumerable Third World riots,
protests and mobilizations over past 30 years, e.g.
against IMF/Washington Consensus/G8 imposed
policies throughout much of the Third World.
3. Broader protests not simply over free elections but
also fiscal austerity, trade & investment, privatization,
export dominated agricultural policies & end of food
sovereignty; repression of free trade unions & of
democratic rights.
4. Western media seems to give these little coverage.
5. Countries driven to IMF & EBRD may be subjected to a
new round of externally imposed conditionality &
austerity, further undermining their sovereignty
State capitalist responses to the
organic crisis in the Global South
1. Rising Third World powers such as China, Brazil
& India seek to create alternative geopolitical and
economic links & more multi-polar world order,
e.g. use aid & economic leverage to challenge
dominance of the US dollar & the G8 consensus.
2. Yet much of this is aimed at reforms within global
governance & within the dominant frameworks of
action configured by global capitalism.
3. Nevertheless some new state actors in Third
World, e.g. Venezuela & Bolivia, are seeking to
produce socially progressive systems &
livelihoods, so far on a regional basis.
Post-Modern Prince as emerging
collective will
1.
2.
3.
4.
The new progressive forces – the “global lefts” (in
the plural) are combining and could combine
further.
Its organic intellectuals – numbering in the millions
– are engaged on the terrain of hegemony in
national and global civil society, including
rethinking the broad conditions of what feminists
call social reproduction and the ecological
integrity and sustainability of the planet
Their strategy is one of war of position – both
addressing immediate needs and longer term
issues, both locally and globally
It involves a new language of politics to address
key issues – in ways that go beyond orthodox leftwing politics & policy agendas.
Critical Theory & Method in the
World Social Forum
1. Negation:


A shared rejection of disciplinary neo-liberalism of the
World Economic Forum, G8, IFIs.
“Davos Man” is patriarchal, self-selecting & for the
wealthy; private power fosters unequal and myopic
globalization whilst seeking to to incorporate
progressives of global civil society
2. Affirmation:


Discourses & practices are forged democratically in
the “open space” in a “world process”, events,
forums, networks, organizations, protests, struggles
Production of new knowledge & epistemological
alternatives to disciplinary neo-liberalism
Lineages of World Social Forum
1.
Part of the longue durée of progressive movements
over centuries – e.g. E P Thompson & contradictory
“making” of the English Working Class.
2. Draws on progressive traditions, networks, forums,
organizations that overlapped over recent decades:
a) 3rd World anti-colonial & independence movements;
movements against dictatorships
b) Indigenous, labour, environmental, women’s and
anti-racist movements, some reflected NGO countersummits to the UN conferences of the 1990s.
c) Movements & global protests & demonstrations
against neo-liberalism & its key organizations, e.g.
against MAI 1997 & WTO in Seattle 1999 &
subsequently World Bank, IMF, Davos, EU, G8.
World Social Forum: forging a
new “common sense”
1. The WSF has been characterized as “a critical utopia,
an epistemology of the South and an emergent
cosmopolitan politics” (de Sousa Santos 2005:13).
2. It proposes to foster a profound change in how the
world and humanity are conceived – a new “common
sense” that can form the basis for a new world order.
3. WSF negates imperialist assumptions on which “neoliberal totalitarian epistemology” is built as involving
monocultures of the mind, of culture and of nature.
4. The opposite of such epistemological imperialism is
the concept of “ecology of knowledge” where diverse
forms of knowledge are seen to interact and
interrelate like beings in an ecosystem.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos on
“the epistemology of the South”
The “epistemology of the South” -- the
perspective of the progressive forces in
the South transcending the WSF has
two main components:
 The “sociology of absences”
 The “sociology of presences.”
The “sociology of absences”
1. Imperialist “totalitarian” epistemology
asserts that “there is no alternative” to
disciplinary neo-liberalism.
2. This is a strategy that renders much of
what is real “absent”. It therefore
denies the validity of authentic social
experiences which are removed from
the politically possible and held to be
“anachronistic”, “irrational”, or
“unthinkable”.
The “sociology of presences.”
1. Seeks to identify and value differences
between peoples & cultures, key social trends
and advance their social and political
potentialities – especially those marginalized,
denied or ignored from the hegemonic
rationality & culture.
2. Involves a continuous learning process &
synthesis based on the creation of shared
language via debate & recursive translations
of knowledge systems and actions.
3. Creates a transnational literacy on which a
critical cosmopolitan world could be built, a
“progressive utopia” (Caruso 2007 128ff; 13840).
Towards a Post-modern Prince?
1. Gramsci’s proposition concerning one of the
basic purposes of politics:
 “In the formation of leaders, one premise is
fundamental: is it the intention that there
should always be rulers and ruled, or is the
objective to create the conditions in which
this division … of the human race … is no
longer necessary?
2. A new post-modern “myth-prince” may be a
multiple and diverse, ethical & political means
to that end.
3. It involves a cosmopolitan combination of premodern, modern and post-modern
epistemologies & social forces in movement.
Conclusion: six propositions concerning
the future of the progressive movements
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
They go well beyond earlier forms of progressivism.
To understand their potentialities we need to take a long
term view, linking past, present and future.
Avoid fallacy of assuming that all forces of opposition
are or should be unified in a specific response to all
problems or in a traditional political party.
Re-imagine political agency as process & movement.
Difficult if not impossible for established power to fully
contain or decapitate these movements or to constrain
their knowledge, capability and actions.
The new progressive movements are forging credible
policy frameworks and feasible utopias or myths; that is
their alternatives are both real and imagined.
Further Sources
 Reference to my work, e.g. Power & Resistance in the
New World Order (Palgrave 2nd ed 2008) & recent
lectures & presentations can be found on:
http://www.stephengill.com/
 Caruso, Giuseppe 2007. Organizing Global Civil
Society: The World Social Forum 2004. Ph D Thesis,
University of London.
 Santos, B. d.-S. 2005. O Forum Social Mundial. Manual
de Uso. Sao Paulo, Cortez.
 Santos, B. d.-S. 2005b. ‘The Future of the World Social
Forum. The work of Translation’. In Development, 48-2,
pp. 15-22.