The theory and practice of the Socialist Workers Party - a critical assessment - Part I
"Callinicos essentially replaces the class struggle of capital and labour with that of political struggle between the nation state against the people. This formulation suggests that the nation state can be "pressured" and transformed into meeting the objectives of the mass struggles of the people"
Critique by Phil Sharpe
For Alex Callinicos, globalisation does not primarily represent the present structure of world capitalism based upon the domination of the transnational corporations (TNCs), but is rather a policy and ideology. In his An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto ( Polity Press. Cambridge, 2003) these policies are labelled the Washington Consensus, or a neo-liberal agenda that includes trade liberalisation, competitive exchange rates, privatisation deregulation, and fiscal discipline. (p2)
Neo-liberalism became the ideological orthodoxy of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, and this approach has been administered by the IMF and World Bank in the Third World, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Neo-liberalism has represented a "conscious strategy" carried out by the American administration, the US Treasury, IMF and World Bank. (p3)
This approach has also been accepted by the left-wing of the bourgeoisie and by reformist politicians. Callinicos tends to suggest that globalisation is exaggerated as an economic development, and that it does not represent an irreversible tendency towards greater economic integration. Hence globalisation is considered as tenuous and something that could "break-down". In other words, it is a "contingent" and "reversible process". (p145)
Callinicos argues that the anti-capitalist movement has posed a challenge to the neo-liberal agenda, in particular by the 1999 Seattle demonstration which represented a new level of anti-capitalist militancy. This shows it is possible to challenge, modify and even change the present agenda of world capitalism, he claims. For if globalisation is conceived as basically a policy of governments then it is possible to alter this policy without the need for transforming structural change: "If the neo-liberal hegemony began with the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9th 1989, then it lasted barely ten years, to the first great demonstration in Seattle on 30th November 1999. The Washington Consensus continues to provide the framework for policy-making in virtually every state, but it is now intensely contested." (p6)
This view represents a naive optimism that plays up the success of the anti-capitalist movement and correspondingly downplays the resources of capital, in order to propagate the illusion that all that is necessary to overthrow the neo-liberal agenda is the adoption of new policies, via pressure on pro-capitalist governments. It is undoubtedly important to show the historical importance of struggles against the neo-liberal agenda, such as the Zapitistas rebellion in Mexico against the NAFTA treaty, and protests in Nigeria against the role of the TNCs, and campaigns against Third World debt, strikes in France against privatisation, mass upheaval in Argentina, plus the ongoing momentum of international anti-capitalist demonstrations.
However, Callinicos equates the advent of the anti-capitalist movement with a development of ideas which challenge the domination of bourgeois ideology. For example, he argues that the movement represents the ascendancy of a new intellectual paradigm. In this, the philosophical standpoint of materialism is once again triumphant against idealism and the postmodernism view that we can only understand things at the level of image and so not recognise objective material reality.
"And so the great debate over capitalism has resumed, two hundred years after it began in the aftermath of the Great French Revolution. Postmodernism is now history... Nevertheless, the debate has moved on, less because of some decisive theoretical refutation of postmodernism (the most damaging philosophical critiques were produced during its heyday and seemed to have little effect on its influence) than because the world-wide rebellion against capitalist globalisation has changed the intellectual agenda." (p13)
In other words, the question of the development of a consciousness that can acquire the dynamic of opposing capitalism is primarily located by Callinicos at the level of struggle and practice. Theory is considered as having only a secondary and additional role, and which is not decisive and is more of a supplemental character. Hence theory is not considered as a guide to practice, but is more of a passive expression of the spontaneous dynamics of "anti-capitalism", which is providing its own criteria and justification of movement towards more advanced forms of struggle.
This approach means that postmodernism is not challenged in terms of establishing a real theoretical dialogue which prepares the intellectual conditions to engage with it. A type of intellectual theoretical complacency about the supposedly inherent progressive dynamic of struggle is substituted. But this does not facilitate the development of a viable answer to the question of how to transcend the alienated imperatives of capital as a structure.
Instead, Callinicos maintains in an ambiguous and spontaneous manner that the "logic" of the anti-capitalist movement can resolve these strategic questions because capital is ultimately not a structure. It is rather an expression of a policy that can be challenged and even overcome by the application of "enough" mass pressure. So the role of theory to Callinicos is entirely secondary to the objective momentum and inherent spontaneous logic of practice.
Callinicos contends that any ambiguities within the anti-capitalist movement about understanding and defining globalisation and neo-liberalism can be resolved by going beyond any terminological limitations and defining the movement as anti-capitalist: "Crucially, is the enemy neo-liberalism - that is the policies embodied in the Washington Consensus and the Anglo-American model of capitalism that these policies seek to universalise, or the capitalist mode of production itself? How one answers this question will help to determine the alternative one prefers and strategy required to realise it." (p14)
The structure of capital as globalisation is actually considered as a formal shell and a dispensable outer layer, because it is the policies that are considered as the inner content and essential to the mode of operation of capital. But this is a subjective illusion, in that the structural content of globalisation is based upon the domination of the TNCs. This domination is not strategically challenged in terms of the idealism of Callinicos's approach.
Instead the present policies of neo-liberalism are critiqued and alternatives advocated. But this is still outlined at the level of form and not content, because the real relation between content and form is not established but rather inverted. Hence the actual policy form of capital is considered as the structural content, and the content (the development of the domination of the TNCs) is considered as a secondary form and of strategically secondary importance.
This ideological and idealist inversion between form and content is expressed by a reformist programme that is a substitute for a revolutionary approach. Formally, Callinicos is for the traditional Marxist goals of social ownership, workers control and self-management and socialist planning to replace the anarchic domination of a market economy. But this is the aim of a long-term and "ultimate" strategic programme, because the immediate aim is to challenge the policy aims of capital in order to create the conditions for its transcendence in the future.
For to undermine the policy of capital is to undermine its content, and so a transformation of forms will follow this process of transition at the level of content. Callinicos eclectically accepts that a transformation of form leaves the content essentially unchanged and admits that changing the policy of neo-liberalism means that we are still a "long way" from socialist planning. However, he tentatively "overcomes" this problem by saying that what matters is what is immediate, concrete and practical is to come up with a programme that is essentially a left-wing alternative (reformist!) within the limits of capitalism:
"Socialist planning...is both a feasible and a desirable alternative to capitalism. But we are a long way from it. Indeed, the neo-liberal policies of the Washington Consensus are driving us in the opposite direction, towards a world where everything becomes…. a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. A movement that is seeking to reverse this process must therefore organise mass struggles to demand measures that would both offer immediate remedies and begin to introduce a different social logic." (p132)
Consequently, it is maintained that the logic of spontaneous struggle is towards realising these immediate aims. This is somehow supposed to develop the means and possibilities of advancing beyond capitalism, despite being an expression of an aspiration to just change the policy of capitalism. The strategic question that obviously arises is: how can an actual self-limiting acceptance of the logic of capital make it possible to overcome the integration of these reformist demands, into the structural imperatives of capital.
Callinicos has no objectively valid strategic answer to this problem. Instead he can only outline the moral/ethical criteria of the programme of the new "Left" reformist government. This includes abolition of Third World debt; introduction of a tax of international currency transactions; restoration of capital controls; introduction of a universal basic income; reduction of the working week; defence of public services and renationalisation of privatised industries; progressive taxation to finance public services and redistribute wealth and income; abolition of immigration controls and extension of citizenship rights; a programme to forestall environmental catastrophe; dissolution of the military-industrial complex and a defence of civil liberties.
Callinicos outlines the main aspects of his strategic approach, which is to put mass pressure on nation states in order to create the conditions for implementing these anti-capitalist demands: "First, the demands listed above are generally placed on states acting singly or in concert. This reflects the fact that, whatever the effects of globalisation, states are still the most effective mechanisms in the world as currently constituted for mobilising resources to achieve collectively agreed goals....But, states, because they are at least partially dependent on securing the consent of their subjects, are vulnerable to political pressure from below.
"Mass movements can therefore extract reforms from them. It is, however, crucial to understand that any such concessions will be won, not through negotiations with ostensibly sympathetic governments, but through mass struggles. The reforms outlined above go against the logic of capital. They can only be won by a movement that maintains its political independence and has the power, thanks to the central role played within it by the organised working class, to wrest concessions from the system." (p139-140)
This stance shows the political significance of Callinicos's view of globalisation as a collection of policies rather than a phenomenon with a cohesive structural content. As a result, the importance of globalisation is considered as secondary in relation to the continuing significance of nation states. Hence if nation states are the "essential" political content this means that a "national" reformist political strategy retains its validity despite globalisation.
Callinicos's strategic conception contains nothing on the importance of overcoming the TNCs in relation to realising the structural, practical and strategic aims of labour in the struggle with capital. Indeed, Callinicos has essentially replaced the class struggle of capital and labour with that of political struggle between the nation state against the people, because this latter formulation suggests that the nation state can be "pressured" and transformed into meeting the objectives of the mass struggles of the people.
The class objectives of the working class are effectively dissolved into the mass abstract democracy of the people. This also means that revolution, as the expression of the victory of labour over capital, can be downgraded into a distant and secondary issue. Instead reforms won by the people from the nation state are considered as what is of "real, "concrete" and "practical" significance.
What is the strategic alternative to this approach? Firstly, it is necessary to recognise that globalisation is the primary basis for the actions of nation states. This does not mean that the state is unimportant and not of strategic and political significance. But it does establish the context and content of the nation state which is increasingly to facilitate the interests of global capital. Hence the crucial political question is not to adhere to an illusory view of trying to win the existing nation state to act against global capital, but rather to act to transform the state through the revolutionary actions of labour.
Secondly, it will be necessary to develop measures which structurally undermine the power of the TNCs, which are an integral aspect of the power of global capital. This question of the smashing of the bourgeois state by revolutionary working class activity is so important, because at present the nation state generally acts as the upholder of the interests of the TNCs. So reformist type pressure on the nation state will not modify this situation in terms of undermining the structural power of the TNCs.
Only social ownership of the TNCs through the co-operative and collective role of the producers by means of democratic planning, can start to convincingly undermine the global power of the TNCs. But because Callinicos does not recognise the structural relation between TNCs and globalisation he has no real programmatic and strategic demands for tackling the power of the TNCs. Instead, he is effectively prepared to leave the power of the TNCs intact, because the "real" political issue is to put reformist pressure on the nation state to implement measures of an "anti-capitalist character".
For these measures are generally of a redistributive content, and not about the structural economic character of globalisation and its integral relation to the role of the TNCs. In other words, Callinicos is reducing Marxism to that of the political economy of utopian socialism, such as the redistributionist approach of Proudhon. For this standpoint ideologically assumes that it is possible to redistribute economic resources (Tax the Rich, etc) without structurally transforming the social relations of the relations of economic productive activity. Callinicos is adopting the utopian and reformist programme of sections of the anti-capitalist movement and dressing it up with formal Marxist terminology.
In the present context, human needs are often inadequately realised in terms of the increasingly globalised economy based upon the primacy of the TNCs, which represents the latest expression of the alienating domination of capital over labour. Hence any possible redistribution - tax the rich and the Tobin Tax - are unlikely to be effective, because they are directed at the level of effects and not the causes of economic inequality. These are located in the character of productive activity, in which the TNCs predominate.
Any reliance on supporting the "good capitalists" against the "bad capitalists", or calling on the nation state to act "beneficially" and "benevolently", is an illusion. What is not being addressed is the important role of the TNCs, who are the most reactionary opponents of anti-capitalism. Only real revolutionary measures by labour against capital can start to undermine the power of the TNCs, and practically implement an anti-capitalist and alternative global agenda.
