Movement for a Socialist Future

Corporate-led globalisation has reached a generalised, unsustainable, systemic crisis. The global economy is in recession. The irresistible inner drive for growth has produced a wide range of damaging effects. It has accelerated the widening gulf between rich and poor, induced world-wide ecological catastrophe, and given rise to insecurity, violence and war.

The system of parliamentary democracy which had spread to the majority of countries has been overwhelmed, with their elected governments turned into managing agents for corporate capital. Corporations such as Wal-Mart – the largest of the transnationals – have grown so large that their annual turnover now exceeds the gross national product of most countries. Their economic power has surged beyond the limits of the system of nation-states which prevailed during the 20^th century, transforming governments into direct agents of capital.

Opposition and resistance to deepening debt and increasing poverty takes many forms, from protests against injustice, to strikes in defence of working conditions, to actions in the courts against the producers of tobacco and of asbestos, to seizure of unused land by landless peasants, to occupation and operation of closing factories, and to mass open revolt by farmers against the manufacturers of genetically-modified seed. The target of action is most often aimed at one or other of the immediate effects, like the privatisation of public services.

Many of these narrowly focussed campaigns have begun to discover common interests. Mass demonstrations against the global institutions and their policies took place in countries throughout the world in the last years of the 20^th century. In 2001 and 2002, tens of thousands of representatives and individuals from every continent gathered for the annual World Social Forum under the banner “Another World Is Possible”. On February 15^th, 2003, tens of millions world-wide took to the streets in the first ever simultaneous global demonstration against the threat of war against Iraq. Opposition to the effects of capitalist globalisation has begun to coalesce into global consciousness and global action.

Niall Fitzgerald is co-chairman and chief executive of the multi-national Unilever. In the last couple of years he has closed 120 factories, reduced the number of brands from 1,700 to 200, and eliminated 38,000 jobs. “Globalisation has been uneven in its benefits,” he says. “Trade has been the single most important factor in raising living standards, but the big macroeconomic gains have cloaked distributional problems.” He tries to pose as a friend of the oppressed. “Inequalities have to be tackled. There are issues such as child labour. These are legitimate areas for protest and attack.” But he sees the mounting threats to the system he is tied to, and places limits on what others are permitted to think. “Where I get not just bemused but deeply worried is when it is articulated in a non-specific, generalised attack on globalisation.”

Under the guise of “global governance”, and similar phrases, academics propose new sets of world-level institutions to replace those which have become universally discredited, and invent new systems of regulation and taxes which, they say, will enable control of the corporations and make the world a fairer place. They are united from the outset in their intention to repair, reform, restore, or reinvent - but at all cost retain - the existing system of private property, and private profit. And to a man and woman, they are blind to the blindingly obvious. It is the capitalist system itself which depends on expansion, on growth, on takeovers, mergers, acquisitions, on breaking down the barriers to trade. As Niall Fitzgerald says “With trade, you either go forward or you go back. There is no steady state.”

It falls to a small but growing number of independent people - some who have been active in the many movements for justice and against globalisation - to begin to offer ways forward. Through detailed study and, in some cases following painful exposure to police batons, they have begun to formulate proposals to stimulate a broad discussion.

George Monbiot, the noted anti-capitalist globalisation campaigner, wants to “harness the power of globalisation, and pursuing its inexorable development, overthrow its institutions and replace them with our own. In doing so, we will, whether or not this is the intended outcome, bring forward the era in which humankind ceases to be bound by the irrational loyalties of nationhood”.

Monbiot’s concern, expressed in his new book, The Age of Consent*, is to re-establish the democratic process, but globally rather than nationally. In rejecting Marxism, anarchism, consumer democracy, and the localisers whose ranks he has left, Monbiot favours:

Monbiot is critical of the World Social Forum series which he describes as “the dictatorship of those who turn up”, proposing instead that the self-establishing World Parliament would be representative of the whole population, and therefore carry legitimacy and moral authority. It would provide a system which can hold the global and international powers to account and stimulate an accelerated fusion of human interests which will propel us towards a change in the way human beings think. He offers the simplest of all possible models in which every adult on earth possesses one vote with - at current population levels – each representative being elected by 10 million people. The Parliament would constitute a revolutionary assembly, which, with no connection to existing national governments would be truly global rather than international. In opposition to proposals made by the academics who make up the World Constitution and Parliament Association, Monbiot’s Parliament would have no army, no police force, no courts and no departments of government.

In what sense would the parliament be revolutionary?

Monbiot understands that the underlying problem is capitalism. His intention is that “through the deployment of a modified species of capitalism to create the conditions in which capitalism can be destroyed”.

The Fair Trade Organisation would be a licensing body. It would “prescribe and enforce the standards to which corporations wishing to trade internationally must conform”. Fair trade would become mandatory and universal. Corporations will be obliged to consider environmental and other concerns in their profit calculations through the use of full cost accounting. Transgressors would be referred to the International Criminal Court. Through the enforcement of these standards, “corporations are slowly turned into our slaves, instead of driving down standards, they are forced to raise them. Instead of draining wealth from the poor, they are forced to return it. Many, perhaps most, will go under in the attempt, and we should delight to see them drown. Those which will survive are the companies which, like the fair trade companies today, deliver benefits commensurate with those they receive. By these means, in other words we can transform the ethics of global trade: only the nice guys survive.”

Monbiot proposes that these changes could be brought about by the collective threat of action by the poor countries – if these conditions are not met, all the heavily indebted countries should default on their repayments. So, in summary, to achieve his revolutionary aims Monbiot offers a package of political, organisational and regulatory measures intended to turn the bad guy system of capitalist corporations into an ethical system of “nice guy” fair traders subject to the will of the people expressed through the “moral authority” of the world parliament.

Can it be made to work?

The major merit of Monbiot’s book is that it is looking beyond capitalism. Unlike most he sees that, like everything else, capitalism too has its limits. “The dictatorship of vested interests is succumbing to entropy. We can hasten its collapse, but only if we are to turn our intermittent campaigns into a sustained revolt.” He acknowledges that capitalist-led globalisation “has created the means of its own destruction.”

“Simultaneously, it has placed within our hands the weapons we require to overthrow the people who have engineered it and assert our common interest. By crushing the grand ideologies which divided the world, it has evacuated the political space in which a new, global politics can grow. By forcing governments to operate in the interests of capital, it has manufactured the disenchantment upon which all new politics must feed. Through the issue of endless debt, it has handed to the poor, if they but knew it, effective control of the world’s financial systems. By expanding its own empire through new communication and transport networks, it has granted the world’s people the means by which they can gather and co-ordinate their attack.

“The global dictatorship of vested interests has created the means of its own destruction. But it has done more than that; it has begun to force a transformation of the scale on which we think, obliging us to recognise the planetary issues which bear on our parochial concerns. It impels us, moreover, to act upon that recognition. It has granted us the power to change the course of history.”

Whilst Monbiot proposes a package of regulation for corporations, he recognises that their effective application would lead to the demise of most. He sees the need for political change to make this possible, adding in a vision of a world parliament, and a challenge to the heavily indebted countries to invoke the power of their collective debt. But, even though he rejects the ideas of consumer-led democracy and shareholding, he can’t see beyond the current system of ownership. For that we can look to the International Forum on Globalisation. Although virtually ignoring the political process, the IFG’s proposals [i] deal in great detail with the economic aspects of the effects of globalisation and equally detailed proposals for the future including breaking up giant corporations and introducing new kinds of democratic ownership and control of companies.

Having left the camp of “the dictatorship of those who turn up”, and rejected anarchist “anti-power”, Monbiot is opting for “a global democratic revolution”. But, and this is a clear weakness, he has little or nothing to say about the need to confront and defeat the brutal application of force wielded by the defenders of capital. Will Bush and Blair, or their successors, simply melt away in the face of a world government, even a revolutionary assembly, with “moral authority” but no forces of its own?

How does his proposal for a one adult-one vote system of election to a world parliament involve the growing number of people who are active in the struggle? Monbiot nods his head in their direction and, in passing acknowledges the need for conscious revolutionary action, “it requires the active engagement of a network of insurrectionists who are prepared to risk their lives to change the world”, but fails to follow up, replacing the confrontation for power with a kind of parliamentary leapfrog. Monbiot sees the potential within the existing campaigns “That network already exists. It forms part of the biggest global movement in history, whose members, most of whom inhabit the poor world, can now be counted in the tens of millions. The people of this sub-formation are perhaps not wholly aware of the project in which they are participating. They must seize this moment and become the catalyst for the new mutation.” But he prefers to call on the governments of the heavily indebted countries to act collectively in threatening default. He acknowledges the impact of the World Social Forum, but declares its process of self-selection unrepresentative and undemocratic.

Monbiot’s detailed, and costed proposals for the organisation of the election to the world parliament take no account of the massive sums of money spent by the capitalist corporations in controlling the democratic process, manipulating opinion and corrupting politicians. Monbiot ignores the monopolisation of the media world-wide by Murdoch’s News Corporation and other media empires. He says nothing about the vast industry of political lobbyists through which the corporations wield influence, “democratically” forcing through pro-corporate legislation.

In effectively rejecting the involvement of the existing movement, Monbiot is left replacing both with a system of election and regulation of corporations, which without a new system of ownership based on need rather than profit, cannot achieve his stated objectives.

The merit of Monbiot’s contribution is that he looks beyond the status quo; the weakness of his analysis is that ignores, avoids or sidesteps a series of fundamental issues. These centre around the nature of the capitalist state and the driving forces that compel globalised capitalism to act the way it does. Without an understanding of these related phenomenon, Monbiot’s proposals for world government by the people for the people have absolutely no possibility of becoming a reality.

The state is not some neutral body that capitalism has taken over and corrupted, making it less democratic in the process. In its modern form the state evolved as the political expression of capitalist rule. It assumed functions that 19^th century corporations could not carry out. Capitalism needs, for example, succeeding generations of workers to exploit. Ensuring the existence of an educated, trained, housed and relatively healthy workforce is primarily the responsibility of the state, however and not private companies. Thus when it became clear that capitalism could not advance with a workforce that was illiterate, unhealthy and prone to an early death the state stepped in.

The legal sanctioning of private property is another function of the state. Joint stock companies based on shareholders have the force of law and can raise capital as a result. The right to exploit another person’s labour for the purposes of profit is enshrined in law. The protection of private property falls to state bodies like the police and army. In other words, the state has an essential class character. A body that appears to stand above society - the state - is in practice the expression of the rule of a minority over the majority. Its political leaders extol the virtues of capitalism, declaring as often as they can that there is no possible alternative.

Because society is divided into social classes with conflicting interests and aspirations, the state has also in the past acted as mediator. Under pressure it has made concessions to prevent an outbreak of civil strife. The post-World War II health and education reforms owe more to fear of revolution in Britain than concern for workers’ well-being. Today, the character of the capitalist state has been transformed by the demands of capitalist globalisation. Its mediating role has been discarded in favour of a more open and direct espousal of the needs of the corporations. The primary function of the 21^st century capitalist state is to create conditions that will encourage foreign economic and financial investment to flourish in each country and throughout the world economy. As the state withdraws more and more from public provision of services, so it falls back on forms of authoritarian rule to enforce its power. Countries like Britain and the USA have become effectively one-party states, where dissent is likened to treason. Just look what happened to Dr David Kelly when he voiced doubts about the government’s “dossier” on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The capitalist state, therefore, stands between the mass of the people who are exploited by corporations wherever they happen to live and a future along the lines that Monbiot is suggesting. To ignore the state and its capitalist nature is to court political disaster. Social change is first and foremost about who controls state power and what is done with it. The achieving of state power and the transformation of the state into a real democracy in place of the limited, sham representative system we have now, has to figure as a central objective. State power will enable the mass of the people to exercise control and ownership of economic and financial resources in the society they live in. It is the basis for the development of international co-operation based on socialist, democratic collective power. On this issue, Monbiot has nothing to say, preferring instead to fast forward to world government.

On the economic front, the notion that you can regulate capitalism out of existence is nonsense. Neither the major capitalist governments nor the corporations will ever be restrained by considerations of “fair trade”, which is the demand of church groups, liberals and developing capitalist nations like India and Brazil. The corporations are driven by an imperative to expand markets, sell more goods and increase the return on capital invested. These motivations are not personal but inherent to the nature of the capitalist system of production. Any capitalist who tries to ignore these fundamentals goes out of business pretty rapidly. Globalised capitalism is able to move production and services around the globe in search of lower labour costs. Call centre jobs are now leaving Britain for India, China and Asia. The corporations have no concern for issues of a national character like unemployment. American-based global corporations have, for example, joined the rush to set up production in south China, resulting in the loss of manufacturing jobs in the USA. The movement of capital is, in the last analysis, not bound by the rules and regulations of the World Trade Organisation or any other body. It moves freely around the globe in search of maximum profits. Global capitalism is just that – it has a power and an independent, objective logic which defies regulation. It also has the capacity to adapt to survive. Just look at how some of the oil corporations have become eco-friendly while others have embraced the goals of “sustainable development”. Finally, the idea put forward by Monbiot that the governments of developing capitalist nations can create the conditions for change, takes us nowhere. In essence, it is asking one group of lesser capitalists to join in unequal combat against an economic and financial system that can destroy their economies at will.

Whilst paying tribute to Monbiot’s contribution, the ensuing discussion must explore how the existing, rapidly maturing network of campaigns can be developed and organised into a social movement capable of defeating capitalist interests. As has been seen in Iraq, capitalist globalisation, through the coalition’s “war on terror” is intent on destroying all opposition. Successfully defeating the defenders of capitalist led globalisation requires historical lessons to be learned, and the new situation to be analysed. The rejection of the discredited system of political parties, hasn’t stopped the resistance. Its current form is the development of loosely connected networks of campaigns and organisations. For these to become effective, and to survive attempts at their destruction, requires a better understanding of the networks which underpin the complex, interconnected world. New research [ii] offers proof that various complex systems have a strict architecture, ruled by fundamental laws – laws that appear to apply equally to cells, computers, languages and society. This new research can help with understanding the weaknesses within capitalist networks, how to build others able to withstand attack, and then how to transform the networks in a conscious way to create the world government that Monbiot advocates.

*George Monbiot, 2003.The Age of Consent, A Manifesto for a New World Order, Flamingo, London. www.fireandwater.com