With the chain as a metaphor, it is possible to conceive of fairly simple and straightforward ways to escape the reach of the world economy: it is only necessary to break the chain, and start autonomous, non-capitalist development. In various shapes and forms, this was the approach of not only a number of Marxist-Leninist attempts at independent economic development [Stalinist, Maoist, Guevarist, with the Khymer Rouge being the extreme limit example], but also of 'non-aligned' models [India], of pan-Arabism [Nasser and UAR, Algeria], African socialism [Nkrumah, Sekou Torre, Mozambican, Angolan and Guinean socialism] and even forms of Fabian social democracy [Nyerere and Tanzania]. Islamic nationalism is only the latest in a series of these 'de-linking' models. Is it not time to take stock of these efforts, to admit that this 'de-linking' option has universally failed? If China could not manage an independent, autonomous economic development, what nation could? Quite simply, the reach and nature of the world economy is such that notions of 'de-linking,' of breaking a few, simple ties [ie, replacing a resource export economy with a native industrial economy], have been proven, time and time again, entirely inadequate. Moreover, the evolving nature of the world economy makes that option more and more outdated, a relic of a bygone age in which industrial advances was seen as the motor of economic growth and the apex of economic development. Metaphors of the world economy as network or web provide a much fuller, much more realistic portrait of the multi-faceted connections which tie the most remote and most 'underdeveloped' national economies into the world economy. Debates posed between 'linking' and 'de-linking' are debates that miss the essential questions. Precisely because 'de-linking' is so clearly not an option, movements like the ANC in South Africa can declare that there is no alternative to global corporate rule, and forego the very difficult work of constructing the political and economic room for such an alternative to develop. Insisting upon 'de-linking' as an option is, in global economic terms, Luddism. Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains is good poetry, but incoherent, virtually oxymoronic, politics in the international sphere.
This is why I believe that 'Smash the WTO' or 'Abolish the IMF' are completely empty and even counter-productive slogans for a movement against global corporate rule. Where such slogans ever realized, by some miraculous confluence of the heavens, what would that leave us with but global corporate rule in a global laissez-faire market, free of all restraints. Rather, we need to be thinking of what type of international institutions we would want to regulate the global economy, and what international policies -- could it be that Keynesian social democracy is now only possible on a global scale? -- we would want to pursue. The question before us is what type of global economic and political web will be weaved.
But let us admit how little progress we have made in figuring out such simple matters as how to build positive bonds of international solidarity. Seattle proved that a movement was possible, and little else. There remains considerable differences over even such basic questions as China's entry into the WTO -- an entry which, IMHO, would be a disaster for the Chinese people, given the current combination of political authoritarianism and laissez-faire capitalism which is hegemonic there. Our international solidarity tends to be reduced to gestures and expressions of sentiment, membership in international bodies with headquarters in Geneva or the Hague, with an occasional supportive boycott; worthy expressions and actions, to be sure, but so inadequate to the task. When I ask on different listservs how unions would move beyond membership in international union bodies and support, in the form of boycotts and such, of particular struggles in other countries, I am invariably met with silence -- no one has clue. The people who have done the best work here, such as Peter Waterman [see his website, The Global Solidarity Site, http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/] operate at such a high level of abstraction that it is hard to know how any of what they prescribe could be incorporated into the daily lives of unions. And so long as we remain captive to metaphors of chains, we will have moved nowhere on this front.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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