One (capitalist) world (2004)

From the March 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Globalisation - the increased integration of the world economy — reveals itself in various ways. One is the prominence of multinational companies, with goods being produced in various parts of the world, often by companies mainly based in Europe or the US. Supra-national organisations such as the World Trade Organisation and the North American Free Trade Association are other reflections of these developments.

Jobs being switched to other countries, where labour is cheaper and/or more pliant, is a further aspect. One result is a world where a few obscenely rich individuals are wealthier than the poorest countries. Along with all this, though not necessarily an intrinsic part of it, are extensions of privatisation and the undermining of state welfare, both part of what is often referred to as the neo-liberal or Washington consensus.

Improvements in transport and communications are sometimes seen as the driving force behind these changes. Clearly, if contact with another country implies time-consuming travel, expensive phone calls and use of an unreliable postal service, then it will be difficult for a multinational company to function. But faster plane travel, e-mail and faxes make it all so much easier. Such factors, though, are best seen as facilitating globalisation rather than causing it. For the simple fact is that capitalism has always looked for markets, materials and cheap labour wherever it can find them. When the Korean company Samsung decides, as it did recently, to transfer a factory making microwave ovens and computer monitors from Teesside to Slovakia, it is motivated by the prospects of lower wages (£1 an hour, compared to the princely £5.70 paid in Billingham). And many ready meals sold in UK supermarkets contain chicken from Thailand or Brazil, where intensive factory farming has driven costs down (but has greatly increased the problems of controlling disease).

The spread of global products and brands is sometimes summarised by the term “McWorld” - a world built on the model of McDonalds, with bland goods, poorly-paid jobs and big profits for a favoured few. Multinational companies often rely on sweatshops, with child labour, temporary jobs, dangerous working conditions and no trade unions but massive profits. At the Formosa factory in El Salvador, for instance, workers have reported how they slaved for twelve hours a day on backless wooden benches, with only one daily visit to the toilet allowed, making clothes for Nike and Adidas. The biggest corporations can dictate to governments and other organisations: for example, the World Health Organisation has been blocked from taking action on obesity because of lobbying from American sugar

producers. But again, there is nothing new about governments and other world bodies doing what capitalists want. Backed up by the threat or reality of US armed force, Western capitalism can usually dictate its own terms for access to oil, cheap labour and so on.

The extension of the cash nexus to practically every aspect of life is a further instance - what Naomi Klein calls the loss of “unmarketed space”. In Bolivia the municipal water supply was privatised, and the new owners ever made it illegal to collect rainwater in roof tanks! In this case, mass protests were able to reverse the privatisation with its drastic increase in costs. When even prisons are run for a profit, it seems that nothing is beyond the evil embrace of capitalism.

World trade came into existence with capitalism, bringing products such as cotton and tobacco to Europe. But the growth of industrial capitalism led to an enormous increase in connections between different parts of the planet as raw materials were sourced from every direction and wars were fought to open up markets in places like China and Korea. Yet companies remained primarily nationally-oriented. Perhaps the first multinational appeared when the US company Singer set up a sewing-machine factory in Glasgow in 1867. By 1914, only 12,000 people in Britain were employed by US companies. So it was the 20th century that was the true era of globalisation, as expansion abroad revealed itself as the best option for companies that had difficulty in increasing their domestic market share.

There had previously been plenty of investment by individuals and institutions in overseas companies, known as foreign portfolio investment (FPI). But the 20th century saw this largely displaced by foreign direct investment (FDI), whereby a company based in one country owner and controlled factories and subsidiaries in another. FDI implies a far greater impact on the economy and population of the “receiving” country, with decisions being taken by people beyond the influence of that country's government.The last couple of decades, though, have seen a comeback of FPI, but this time with a bigger influence given the emphasis on short-term profits and on switching production from one country to another as wage levels and other production costs rise and fall. FPI is often driven by mergers and takeovers, which are designed to cut cost: and have no relation to the needs of workers or consumers.

Some people are wholly in favour of globalisation, Jack Straw for one:

“Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, there is no longer a coherent alternative ideology on offer. We could take the advice of the Stop the World campaigners, retreat into our national economies and close our markets. But this would put at risk the real benefits that globalisation, and global capitalism, have brought to millions.” (Guardian, 10 September 2001)

(No doubt the workers of El Salvador could enlighten Straw on the "benefits” of global capitalism.) Even most supporters of globalisation agree that some changes need to be made in global governance, though they accept the general idea. Ranged against them is the world-wide anti-globalisation movement, or "movement of movements". It is common, and not just among socialists, to complain that it is clearer what this movement is against than what it is for.This is sometimes seen as a good thing, on the grounds that it prevents too early a consensus on one single solution when so many are in the air. But in fact this movement has many incompatible goals.

For instance. Walden Bello, of the group Focus on the Global South, advocates deglobalisation (probably the kind of thing Straw was opposing above):

"We are not talking about withdrawing from the international economy. We are speaking about reorienting our economies away from the emphasis on production for export and towards production for the local market."

But production for the local market is still production for profit, and what Bello is suggesting is just a less-centralised verslon of capitalism.

The World Social Forum or WSF (recently held in Mumbai) has become one of the main meeting points of the anti-globalisation protesters. A record of the discussions at the 2002 gathering in Brazil has been published as Another World is Possible, edited by William Fisher and Thomas Ponniah (the above passage from Bello is taken from this source).The editors present one of the poles of disagreement as being revolution vs. reform, with the revolutionaries wanting to do away with organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the reformers wanting to negotiate with them and transform them. But. as this example suggests, all that is really involved here is different versions of reforming capitalism, with nothing revolutionary at stake at all.

However. Another World is Possible should not be simply dismissed. It is free of any nonsense about the USSR or “national liberation movements", which might have disfigured such a collection not so long ago. More positively, there is an emphasis on democracy and on rejecting leaders, and many references to putting people before profit. For instance, a summary of one strand of the discussions in Brazil states:

“The Utopians point out the necessity of understanding that society can no longer be founded on profit and competition, but should be based on the values of equality, equity and social justice.The desired globalization is a human one: profit can no longer be prioritized over human needs.”

It is not clear how widely supported such sentiments are within the WSF. or how many dismiss them as "utopian”. But as a vision of the future this is far more encouraging and inspiring than the blinkered view of Jack Straw.

Socialism will also be a world system, but this does not mean it will involve gigantic centralised organisations. Production will no doubt involve both locally- and remotely-sourced materials, as appropriate, but there will be no incentive to go for the “cheapest" option. Putting the bottom line at the top of priorities is not the way to a healthy and happy world. 

Paul Bennett

A Movement for Real Change? (2004)

From the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The anti-globalisation movement is probably the most widely-supported grassroots campaign in the world today. It is not just a matter of thousands attending demonstrations in cities such as Seattle and Genoa, to protest against increased commercialisation and capitalist clubs like the World Trade Organisation, only to be met with the vicious attacks of riot police. Nor is it just the meetings of the World Social Forum, held for instance in Porto Alegre and Mumbai, where people have come together to discuss what is wrong with the world and how to change it. Rather is it an amorphous grouping which includes movements for land reform in Latin America, independence for West Papua, opposition to the spread of McDonalds and Starbucks, and much more. It includes many who reject the concentration of wealth and power which currently exists, some who want fairly mild reforms of the present world system, and others who see themselves as advocating root and branch change.

   

As the above suggests, it is a movement that is hard to pin down and impossible to characterise in a few words pin down and impossible to characterise in a few words. A common criticism that is made, however, is that it is clearer what it opposes than what it stands for. Expressions such as ‘anti-globalisation’ and ‘anti-capitalist’ are all very well, but they clearly prompt the question: pro-what? A recent attempt to confront this issue head-on is Paul Kingsnorth’s book One No, Many Yeses (published by the Free Press). Kingsnorth spent nine months travelling (to South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, West Papua, United States, Italy), participating in protests and talking to others involved in them, trying to find out the reality of the anti-globalisation movement.

   

His report on his visit to South Africa will be a revelation to any who thought that the end of apartheid would automatically mean a much better deal for black South Africans. Instead, under the African National Congress government, electricity cut-offs, rent hikes and evictions have all increased, and the poor have been getting poorer. Since 1996, the ANC has adopted a ‘neo-liberal’ economic policy, involving large-scale privatisation and opening of the doors to the effects of globalisation.  Kingsnorth’s conclusion is that ‘political freedom without economic freedom is meaningless’. It is certainly true that just having the vote and an end to racist laws do not make people free, even if ‘meaningless’ is an overstatement.

   

The book’s title refers to the idea that there is no single answer to the problems confronting people: ‘no one system can integrate the needs of all the different people in the world, who all want different kinds of things.’ So a landless person in Brazil wants land, an opponent of corporate power in the US may want to stop the building of yet another Wal-Mart superstore, a West Papuan wants rid of the Indonesian occupation, a Zapatista in Mexico wants power to be devolved as far as possible to ground level. These demands are not incompatible as long as they apply in different places.

   

As for the view that the anti-globalisation movement is essentially negative, Kingsnorth relates the contribution of Lori Wallach at the 2002 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Wallach, who has been active in exposing the WTO, claims that they are not an ‘anti’-movement, unlike their opponents:

“We’re for democracy, for diversity, for equity, for environmental health. They’re holding on to a failed status quo; they’re the antis. They are anti-democracy and anti-people. We must go forward as a movement for global justice.”

Yet even this is extraordinarily vague as to what being for democracy and equity and so on really involves, what the concrete aims are and how anyone might organise to achieve them.

   

The Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico are often viewed as a model of what can be achieved. While they are definitely a departure from the corruption and toadying of establishment Mexican politics, they do not offer a solution that people throughout the world should look to since their aims remain set within a framework of wage labour and government. The forces of globalisation will undermine any efforts to improve things at a national rather than a world level.

   

In his final chapter, Kingsnorth reflects on the movement he has been investigating, ‘a movement of people who feel cut off’. It is a revolution that is already taking place, he says, one that stands for redistribution and autonomy, one that rejects any model consisting of leaders and followers. Essentially, it is a revolution about power, concerned to wrest it from elites and decentralise it, not hand it over to new rulers. One aspect of this is a very encouraging opposition to leadership, a welcome scepticism towards the ‘old left’ in general and the SWP in particular.

   

The principles that Kingsnorth puts forward include: genuine democracy, as opposed to the dictatorship of markets or governments; cultural etc. diversity, as opposed to the bland forced universality of capitalism; decentralisation of decision-making, rather than its concentration; self-determination and autonomy, not passive consumption; access to common land and resources, not private control. This is promising as an initial list; but then come his proposals (not ‘half-measures’, he claims) for how to bring all this about. Abolish the WTO and IMF; constrain the global financial system; restrict the behaviour of corporations; democratise the United Nations; stop the private monopolisation of public resources such as land and water; start a global conversation about where we want the world to go. It is a time, he says, to be bold, to call for everything we want rather than gather crumbs from the table.

   

Unfortunately, like the movement he chronicles, he is nowhere near bold or imaginative enough. His thinking is stuck very much within the blinkers of capitalism, since plainly in his vision there will still be companies (which means private ownership of the means of production, and production for profit), banks, shares, countries and all the other paraphernalia of property society. Applying some of Kingsnorth’s ideas more consistently, however, would lead to more radical conclusions. Re-think the commons, he says: ‘Everything which provides a common good for people as a whole, should be bound in by strict rules guaranteeing public access and preventing private incursion.’

   

Let’s apply this to all the means of production: let them all be owned in common and used for the good of people by means of production for use. There will be no need for rules to guarantee this in a socialist society based on cooperation and democracy, where decisions are made at the most appropriate level. This is not the kind of ‘one size fits all’ solution that the anti-globalisation movement objects to, since socialism need not be exactly the same everywhere and at all times, though plainly its basic principles will not vary. And when it comes to it, all the various demands made by the movement that Kingsnorth discusses result from a single cause – the existence and spread of global capitalism – so a single solution is to be expected. That solution is socialism, the single ‘yes’ that counts.

Paul Bennett

Material World: This Land is Our Land (2011)

The Material World Column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a time when 'land' used to refer to those parts of our habitat that were cultivated for food, grazed by animals for hide, wool, meat, milk and fertilisation, and to forests from which timber, firewood and food were collected and also to where communities lived sharing the common wealth. Now, as with everything else one can imagine, land is just another commodity to be bought and sold at the best possible price and to be acquired whatever the consequences for long-term incumbents. So too is everything it can offer – food, fuel, minerals and water – with the added bonus of investment and speculation.

The phenomenon of 'land-grab', well known now, was originally seen as a way for food insecure and rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and China to gain access to foreign farmland in order to meet the food needs of their own populations. Then came the big push for biofuels following targets agreed by governments at a succession of meetings on climate change. The Worldwatch Institute recently reported that rural populations have been pushed off prime land in 25 sub-Saharan countries for the production of biofuel crops for foreign nations. In other examples, food is grown on an industrial scale solely for export, disenfranchising local populations and turning them into wage labourers if they are lucky, and forcing them into urban areas and likely penury if they are not.

The most exciting opportunity now for big money seeking even bigger money is that of investment and speculation in both food and land. Pension schemes, universities, bankers and large investors are jostling to invest in land for speculation. According to one spokesperson for a large company fund, it doesn't matter if nothing is grown for ten years, you'll still 'turn a good profit.' Pension funds globally run to around $23 trillion. Their investment in land and agriculture is relatively recent but growing fast and admitted by some investment bankers and civil society organisations to be a major cause of rising food prices globally.

At the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, this February an appeal against land-grabbing was launched. By September over 650 organisations had endorsed it. Estimates of land the size of western Europe (227 million hectares) have been sold, leased or licensed in the last decade. One Oxfam case study found at least 22,500 people lost both homes and land in Uganda when they were evicted in favour of a British company, the New Forest Company. There were conflicting versions from the company and from the evicted, but a high court order to restrain evictions was sidestepped and the company put the responsibility onto the Ugandan National Forest Authority. There are numerous accounts of promised benefits to displaced persons and communities not materialising even after several years of waiting. Efforts to draw up and implement regulations for the protection of local populations, even voluntary ones, have been less than robust.

In India government policy is to dispossess its own population. Prime Minister Singh has stated that 70 percent of India's farming population is surplus to requirements and that this surplus must be resettled in urban areas where 1,000 training institutions are being set up to facilitate new employment opportunities. Devinder Sharma, academic and commentator, says that this will be the world's biggest environmental displacement and that what is needed is a production system by the masses not for the masses. He says this policy will add another 95 million to the urban population within a decade, forcing farmers to abandon agriculture, usurping land, water and natural resources in the name of development. In West Bengal, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh fertile land has been taken for industrial development, residential development, businesses and Special Economic Zones whilst big corporations acquire land in other countries, specifically African countries, for development of agribusinesses to cultivate crops for Indian consumption. More than 80 companies have so far acquired land through direct negotiations with host governments but without input from the affected farmers. 1.8 million hectares in Ethiopia alone have changed hands this way to the detriment of small farmers in both countries. 250,000 Indian farmers committed suicide in the last 15 years. In the last decade more than two million hectares of farmland (equal in size to the whole of Kerala state) have been acquired for non-farm purposes, and studies show that India will be a major food importer by 2017-8.

The countries of Africa have been a major target for land-grab with agriculture on an industrial scale reaping substantial profits for investors. Corporate agriculture, however, is not about food production or satisfying the needs of the undernourished or downright starving but about producing profit. How long can it be at this rate before its limits are reached – dispossessed millions starved to death in favour of a tidy accumulation for the few? A lengthy study by the Oakland Institute in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Mozambique, Zambia and South Sudan looked at the viability of industrial-scale farming compared with small family farms. What they found was that where 100,000 hectares of plantations would employ 1,000 workers, traditional agriculture of the same area would sustain 50,000 families, that is between 200-250,000 people.

This land is our land. Reclaiming the commons for the peoples of the world is a vital part of the socialist revolution.

Janet Surman