nathan wrote:
> Multinational Organizations like the World Bank, IMF and WTO are of
> absolutely recent origin, yet global capitalism has been able to florish
> for centuries.
they are recent because they institutionalised a recent strategy viz capital accumulation (or, what is the same thing, the guarantor of exploitation. previous state forms proved to be either insufficient (in themselves) or downright failures in enacting such a role _for reasons which have to do with the configuration of struggles_.
crudely, the WTO etc presuppose a shift toward the integration of 'third world governments', they presuppose the establishment of a system of debt which guarantees the futurity of capitalist exploitation in the 'third world' and indeed 'second', and so forth -- ie., they presuppose a history of struggles within and by something that was for a time configured as 'the third world'. the WTO is a consequence of decades of struggle, which forced a shift to a new kind of organisation of and for capitalist strategising; but the framework was put in place and operates as a limit to those struggles. what are IMF structural adjustment packages other than a heightening of the disciplinary role of credit -- not just on workers and the poor with consequences we are all too familiar with, but also -- on capitalists themselves. without this kind of discipline, capitalists would not appear and act as capital viz workers. to put it another way, what the WTO has tried to acheive is the final act in the decomposition of 'the third world' (specifically as a figure of global struggle) by including 'representatives' of that 'world' at the table of a trading regime only on condition that they take responsibility for policing their own domestic exploitation with greater intensity.
it's in that context that the debate over 'fix it' or 'nix it' becomes important. not because the abolition of the WTO will weaken global capitalism (though i wouldn't for a moment underesteminate the extent to which capitalist strategising has been disoriented for the moment); but because what has crudely been called the 'nix it' position is the emergence of a figure that is not tempted by the invitations to participation in some 'we'll take your concerns on board' forum. more importantly, perhaps, and even though it presents itself as a sheer kind of negativity, it is for the first time in a long time a figure that is (to borrow a phrase) a globalisation from below. for all the neat dialectical side-stepping, i have no idea how one would go about distinguishing nathan's 'neither/nor' position from the 'fix it' one. what i do read instead, is an impassioned plea for maintaining some mythical coalition upon which to advance a programme of reforms in time for the next US elections.
> We have to build anew, create the institutions of the new
> world in the cradle of the old, fight for a global democratic structure
> of peoples forces to overturn the power of global capitalist power.
"Just
> say no" to global capitalism doesn't cut it.
this 'no' already presuppose something: a 'we' that says 'no'. this _is_ the basis of a global democratic structure. without this 'no', it's tied to the terrain of domestic elections and the conference set. without this implacable 'no', capitalist strategising will not be compelled to promote any kind of settlement. the real question is not whether we should find a way to justify a reformist practice in the high tones of a soft dialectics, but what kind of strategy capitalists will reach for. i think nathan has already offered us a glimpse of such a strategy: policy conferences and workshops for various NGO and labour reps attached to the WTO (we might enoble this by calling it 'the coalition' creatively setting forth the basis of a new society); and the exclusion of those darned negative types who refuse to play by the rules we have all agreed to at such conferences because, after all, we are represented (oh, let's call them 'anarchists').
> In fact, the United States example is a good example of how economic
> institutions thrive in political units smaller than that of their
> economic scope.
when i think of the US in the context of a discussion of the role of the state in policing capitalist relations, and when i think of these capitalist relations as a transnational process, i think of the special role of the US in the world. far from being an example of how much 'the state' is not a part of capitalist production or the 'units' of exploitation can be 'sub-national' (???), the US has been the figure of the international state for most of this century: international credit in the form of the US$ and the US military, the coercion of money and bombs... even if we want to be weberian about it and define 'the state' as the monopolisation of force, is there a better sense of what played this role on an international level in the 20th than the US?
Angela _________