Ellen Meiksins Wood - Labor_the_State_and_Class_Struggle__Monthly_Review.pdf

8/10/2019 Ellen Meiksins Wood - Labor_the_State_and_Class_Struggle__Monthly_Review.pdf

1/9

monthlyreview.org http://monthlyreview.org/1997/07/01/labor-the-state-and-class-struggle

Labor, the State, and Class Struggle :: Monthly ReviewEllen Meiksins Wood mo re on Labor, Social Movements

4

Ellen Meiksins Wood is co-edito r of Monthly Review .

Af ter a lo ng perio d of sust ained at tack by governments of various st ripes , a steady det eriorat ion of working and living st andards, and declines in membership and militancy, there are encouraging s igns thatorganized labor is moving again. This may come as a surprise to many, not least on t he left , who havelong since written of f the l abor m ovement as an oppositional force; and it may begin to challenge so meof the most widespread assumptions about the nature and direction of contemporary capitalism,assumptions o f ten shared by activist s and intellectuals on the lef t as well as the right.

Altho ugh it is, o f course, too early to make big claims about this t rend, it does seem to be a go odmoment t o take a close look not only at these new signs of activism but also at t he nature of labor to day and at the environment in which the labor movement no w has to navigate. It is a goo d moment t ochallenge some of the assumptions abo ut labor that have become the common sense of our histo ricalmoment assumptions about various so cial, econo mic and technological changes t hat supposedly makelabor o rganizat ion and class politics impossible and/or irrelevant in t odays "global" economy.

With this special issue, we hope to open a discussion, inside and outs ide the pages of MR , about t heconditions and prospects of the labor movement. What I want t o do in this introduction is to s ituate thatdiscussion in the context o f some more general considerations about the st ructural conditions af f ectingclass struggle today. I want to consider, in very broad terms, the ways in which todays "global" and

"f lexible" capitalism aff ects t he pros pects of working class politics, the kind of politics that t akes classst ruggle beyond the workplace to the centers o f class and st ate power.

Questions Facing the Labor Movement

When the editors o f this special issue wrot e to po tent ial cont ributo rs, we suggested that articles mightbe dist ributed among four broad themes:

1. A survey of the new activism: e.g., the French and Canadian prot est st rikes; recent apparentlyprogress ive trends in the AFL-CIO (and the South Korean general st rike which broke out so onaf ter wed written our lett er).

2. Analysis o f the st ructure of the working class: the changing composit ion of the working class,what has changed and what hasnt in the age of "f lexible" capitalism racial and gender divisions,occupational structures, new patterns of work (e.g., part-t ime and contractual jobs), new patt ernsof unemployment and underemployment, etc.

3. The political econo my of labor, how it is situated in todays econo my: the myths and realities of globalization, the real extent of internationalized production; the real extent and effects of newtechnologies; the extent and ef f ects o f capital mobility.

4. Organizat ional and political pros pects : e.g., what are the organizat ional implications o f racial andgender division? What limits do current economic conditions impose o n o rganized labor and whatnew poss ibilities do they o pen up? Does "global" capitalism demand international organization,

and/or does it make national and local struggles more import ant t han ever?

In relation t o each of these quest ions, we wanted to look closely and critically at conventional wisdom.We wanted to see just how much the trends that everybody seems to t ake fo r granted are or are notsupport ed by the evidence. Of course, weve only been able to scratch the surf ace, but we hope weve atleast succeeded in opening up questions about the conventional wisdom and in generating further
http://www.aflcio.org/http://www.aflcio.org/http://monthlyreview.org/1997/07/01/labor-the-state-and-class-struggle#http://monthlyreview.org/1997/07/01/labor-the-state-and-class-struggle


2/9

discussion. A critical engagement with some of the do minant assumptions about labor in the age o f "globalization" and "f lexibility" has bo th political and theo retical implications and should be no less usef ulto academics than to labor activists.

With all this in mind, in March of this year Monthly Review organized a roundtable fo r labor activists. Theobject was to provide an occasion and a space f or people on t he lef t in the labor movement to discussissues of common interest , at t his critical historical moment. We saw our o wn role as simply f acilitatorsand observers, and we were more t han happy just t o list en and to learn. The meeting was heartening f or

more than one reason. There seemed to be a general sense that, f or all the dif f iculties f acing labor,which no one was inclined to underestimate, there was both new hope and new energy in the movement,and a new f oundation on which to build.

My purpose here is not to summarize the discuss ion, but it might be usef ul to give a sense o f what theparticipants thought it important to talk about. The meeting was chaired by Bill Fletcher, Jr., EducationDirector o f the AFL-CIO (a signif icant f act in its elf: try to imagine someone in this position even a f ewyears ago entering into dialogue with Monthly Review !), and he circulated a list of questions t hat mightserve as a basis f or discuss ion, which neatly coincided with t he agenda we had set f or this special issue.Ill quote the main questions here:

* Many of of us entered into t he labor movement around the time of the 1973-74 recess ion the deepestrecession since the Depression. Around that t ime organized labor represented about 25 percent of thenon-agricultural working class. Lets divide this question.

A. How have changes in capitalism altered t he t errain in t erms o f the labo r movement .B. What are some of the environmental (economically speaking) changes which you have seen?C. How has the Labor Lef t changed over this period?

* What is commonly described as globalization has led many people, including many on the Lef t, t oconclude that there is litt le which can be done within national borders; that globalizat ion is inevitable; andthat t he only f ield of operation is international. How would you respond to this?

* Over the last several years, there have been numerous articles and books concerning the impact of new technology, i.e. the s o- called electronics revolution, o n the working class . Many of these textsadvance the not ion that jobs are disappearing f orever, and that we f ace a "jobless f uture". Do you agreewith t his line of argument? What are the implications o f this analysis f or t he labor movement? If you donot agree, how to you see the role of the new technology?

* Organized labor has, f or much of its po st Second World War histo ry, been pegged as a "specialinterest". It has been reluctant t o align itself with community-based o rganizat ions and s truggles. Do yousee indications of this changing? What are the examples? What more sho uld organized labor be doing?

* How do you assess the f orces on t he labor Lef t? What role, if any, do f orces on t he labor Lef t have inthe building or reconst ruction of a viable nation- wide Lef t in the United Stat es?

* In relation to f oreign labor movements: the material basis and necessity f or international working classso lidarity is clearer than it has ever been. What does this mean for us? How do we handle the questionof nationalism as we attempt t o build links?

If there is one s ingle theme underlying all these quest ions, it is surely "globalization." The new economicconditions, t he new technologies, the new const raints which are, according to mos t conventional wisdomand expert opinion, set ting the terms o f st ruggle f or labor have all been lumped together under thatrubric. Policies o f "competitiveness" and the deregulation o f labor markets are all pursued in the name of "globalization." Even the f ragmentat ion o f capitalism associated with "f lexible specialization" and"segmented" markets which is suppos ed to be ref lected in the f ragmentat ion of the working class is justanother manifes tat ion of globalizat ion and its new competitive conditions. So "globalization" sums upmos t o f the questions that people have raised about the prospects o f labor in the era of "f lexible"capitalism.


3/9

The conventional conception of globalizat ion is not , of course, universally accepted. Both in MR andelsewhere, people have, for instance, expressed doubts about how much production has really beeninternationalized, about how mobile industrial capital really is, about the very existence of "multinational"corporations. 1 People have pointed out t hat the vast majority of production s till goes o n in nationallybased companies in single locales. They have argued that there is no such thing as a "multinational"corporat ion, there are only national corporations with a t ransnational reach.

Critics of conventional ideas of globalizat ion have also pointed out t hat f oreign direct investment has

been overwhelmingly concent rated in advanced capitalist countries, with capital moving f rom one suchcountry to another. There are, of course, dif f erences among the big capitalist econo mies, with somemore exposed than ot hers to international competitive pressures. The United States, f or example, issheltered f rom some fo rms of competition because a relatively small propo rtion o f its econo my isdevoted t o manufacturing; and the propo rtion o f the U.S. labor f orce employed in manufacturing is evensmaller: as o ther cont ributo rs point out in this issue, more than 70 percent of all employment in theUnited States is in the service sector, much of it in industries that cannot s imply be shif ted to ot her economies with a cheap and unorganized labor f orce.

But whatever the propo rtion of manufacturing industry within the U.S. economy (or in o ther advancedcapitalist countries), it is s till and is likely to remain a disproportionately large share of production in the

world as a whole. In this secto r, competition has certainly intensif ied, but that competition typically takesplace among the advanced capitalist countries themselves. The United States in particular has beenprof oundly af f ected by competition f rom Japan and Germany. At the s ame time, the preferred solutionhas no t been s imply to export indust ry to third world countries. Manufacturing industries are much lessmobile than conventions about globalization suggest no t least because large-scale and long-t erm capitalinvestments are hard to abandon. Competitive st rategies in this s ituation are no more likely to t ake thef orm of moving capital elsewhere than reducing labor cost s at home.

At t he very leas t, then, it is dif f icult t o f ormulate any simple proposit ions about the competit ion betweenlow-wage and higher-wage econo mies, or about the dangers of capital f light in response to workingclass organization and s truggle. And more generally, there is no simple correlation between the po litics o r

ideology of "globalization" and the actual exposure of advanced capitalist economies to internationalcompetition, especially competition f rom low-wage economies.

Above all, critics o f the convent ional wisdo m have insis ted that capitalisms expansionary drive is neither the product of so me inevitable natural law, nor a recent technological innovation o f the "informationage." It is a historically specif ic characterist ic of capitalism, which has been part o f the system since itsbeginning. In the process o f expansion, capitalism has become more universal, extending its reach, itsimperatives o f accumulation and competition, to every corner of the globe and penetrating ever deeper into all human practices and t he natural environment. The po int, tho ugh, is that , while the intensif icationof competition has certainly changed the conditions o f prof itability, the pressure to enhance "f lexibility"and "competitiveness" and especially neo- liberal attacks on so cial provision are not the automatic resultof so me inevitable process , as so many conceptions o f "globalization" seem to suggest . They are theproduct o f deliberate policy choices in the interests of capital, which can be challenged in theory andpractice. It simply isnt true that There Is No Alternative. 2

The articles in this iss ue generally proceed f rom a critical view of conventional wisdom, but none of thempretend that not hing has happened. On the cont rary, they explore t he implications f or labor which fo llowf rom the developments that actually have taken place, which we can continue to call "globalizat ion" aslong as we jett ison t he misleading baggage that t ends to accompany that t erm. All of the art icles here, inone way or another, demons trat e that in to days conditions class s truggle is not o nly a viable opt ion buta necessary one maybe in so me respects more, not less, because o f globalizat ion.

Some of the art icles explore t he conditions in which to days class s truggles will have to take place.Others t ell the sto ry of recent s truggles in Mexico, Korea, France, and Canada, struggles that have beendirectly aimed at the economic and political practices associated with globalization. Still others t alk aboutthe po ss ibilities t hat are opening up in the United States. All of them either put in question somewidespread assumptions about current conditions o r show how new conditions have opened new


4/9

avenues f or t he labor movement and new arenas of st ruggle.

One question that repeatedly surf aced at the MR labor roundtable was why the coo perative model of labor relations was so persistent in the labor movement when it had proved itself so ineff ective, whileclass s truggle unionism was clearly more success f ul both in attracting new members and in achievinglabors go als. The art icles here certainly underline the import ance of that question and reinf orce thepremise o n which it is based. I hope and trust t hat peo ple will come away f rom reading this issue with arenewed belief in the pos sibilities of class st ruggle unionism. But I also hope that t hey will extend the

question f rom class unionism to class politics. And thats what Id like to do here: I want to devote t herest of this introduction to making some suggestions about the ways in which globalization, far frommaking class politics irrelevant, may be laying a f oundation f or its renewal.

Labor, Class, and State in Global Capitalism

Altho ugh there may be changes on the way, the U.S. labor movement has never really had a po liticalorganization of its o wn, whether a st rong so cialist party, a social democratic one, or a British- style labor party; and the Democratic Party has even less to of f er the labor movement now than it did in the past .But the American case to day seems less unique than it once did, as t he most well established workingclass part ies communist , socialist , social democratic, and "labourist " especially in Europe have ef f ectivelycut themselves of f f rom their class root s. European communist and socialist parties, f or instance, havegenerally retreated f rom the po litics and language of class st ruggle, while the recent election in Britainbrought t o po wer a "new" Labour Party or at least a party leadership bent o n cutting its historic ties withthe t rade union movement, leaving Britain, at least f or the moment, with s omething clos e to the U.S.model of a one-party st ate o r, as Gore Vidal recently put it, one party with two right wings.

It is po ss ible that more victories f or o st ensibly lef t part ies, even of this ambiguous kind, will open up newpolitical prospects . But f or t he moment, many people seem to t ake it f or granted that t he disappearanceof working class politics is o nly natural, that the po litical terrain on which working class parties, whether revolutionary or electo ral, traditionally operated simply no longer exists . Even thos e who do nt acceptthat there is no alternative, or t hat globalization is inevitable, are likely to say that the t errain of st ruggle

has irrevocably shift ed.

Probably the mos t import ant ass umption about t he political implications o f globalizat ion have to do withits ef f ects on the state. We are repeatedly to ld that globalization has made the nation-st ate irrelevant.For s ome, this means that not hing can be done at all. For o thers, it means that st ruggle has to moveimmediately to the international plane. In either case, a working class politics in any recognizable senseseems to be ruled out.

That, then, is the assumption I want t o challenge here not the ass umption t hat t here is such a thing as"globalization" but rather that "globalization" cuts t he ground f rom under class politics. I want to arguethat globalizat ion has made class politics a politics directed at the state, and at class power

concentrated in the stat e more rather than less import ant, more rather than less po ss ible.

Marxist s used to emphasize the ways in which the growth o f capitalism encourages the development o f class consciousness and class o rganizat ion. The socialization of production and the homogenization of work, the national, supra-national, even global interdependence of its const ituent parts all this wassuppos ed to create the conditions f or working class consciousness and organizat ion on a mass scale,and even for internatio nal solidarity. But developments in the twentieth century have increasingly, andso me would say f atally, undermined that conviction.

The f ailure of the working class t o f ulf ill the expectations of traditional Marxism is typically cited by lef tintellectuals as t he main reaso n f or abandoning so cialism, or at least loo king f or alternative agencies. In

recent decades, "Western Marxism," then post -Marxism and post modernism, have, one af ter t he ot her,assigned histo rical agency (if they believe in histo ry or agency at all) to intellectuals, to students, t o "newsocial movements" to anyone but the working class. Today, the labor movement has all but disappearedf rom the mos t f ashionable types of lef tist theory and politics. And "globalization" seems to have struckthe f inal blow.


5/9

Mos t people who t alk about globalizat ion, f or inst ance, are likely to say that in the age of globalcapitalism, the working class , if it exists at all, is more f ragmented than ever bef ore. And if they are onthe lef t, t hey are likely to say that there is no alternat ive, that t he best we can do is liberate a litt le morespace in the interst ices o f capitalism, by means of many particular and separate st ruggles t he kind of st ruggles that so metimes go under the name of identity politics.

Now there are many reasons f or this tendency to reject class po litics in f avor of political f ragmentationand the politics o f identity. But surely one major reaso n has to do with the assumption that the more

global capitalism becomes, the more global the s truggle against would have to be. Af ter all, the argumentgoes, isnt it true that globalization has shif ted power away f rom the nation- stat e to transnationalinstitut ions and f orces? And doesnt this o bvious ly mean that any struggle against capitalism would haveto operate on that transnational level?

So s ince most people reasonably enough have trouble believing in that degree of internationalism, and inthe very poss ibility o f organizing on that level, they naturally conclude that the game is up. Capitalism ishere for good. But more than that , there is no longer any point in trying to const ruct a mass po liticalmovement, an inclusive and wide-ranging political force o f the kind that old working class parties aspiredto be. Class as a po litical force, in other words, has disappeared together with socialism as a politicalobjective. If we cant o rganize on a global level, all we can do is go to t he ot her extreme. All we can do,

apparently, is turn inward, toward our own very local and particular oppressions.

There do s till exist so cialist s who will insist that we must s hif t our attent ion to the international arena,that the so cialist st ruggle can st ill go on but t hat we can only conf ront capitalist globalization by meansof a so cialist globalizat ion. Some people talk about an "international civil society" as the new arena of st ruggle, or about "global citizenship" as the basis o f a new solidarity. But I cant help thinking that peoplewho talk in these terms are just whistling in the dark, that they dont really believe in it at least as an anti-capitalist s trat egy. When someone t ells me that t he international arena is the only one f or socialist s, Iinterpret them to be saying, no less s urely than the advocates of identity politics, that t he struggleagainst capitalism is ef f ectively over.

My own conclusion is a dif f erent one, because I st art f rom dif f erent premises. Let me say f irst o f all thatI have always had reservations about the direct relationship between the growth o f capitalism and theunity of the working class . About s ixteen years ago , in an article called "The Separation o f the Economicand the Political in Capitalism," I talked about the centrif ugal force of capitalism, the ways in which,cont rary to conventional Marxist wisdom, the very structure of production and exploitat ion in a fullydeveloped capitalism tends to fragment class s truggle and to domesticate it, to turn class struggleinward, to make it very local and part icularist ic. 3 Capitalism certainly has homogenizing ef f ects, and theintegration of the capitalist economy certainly provides a material f oundation f or working class solidaritybeyond the walls o f the individual enterprise and even across national f ront iers. But the more immediateef f ect of capitalism is to enclose class conf lict within individual units o f production, to decentralize andlocalize class s truggle. This is not , it must be emphasized, a f ailure of working class consciousness. It isa response to a material reality, to the way the social world is really organized by capitalism.

This also means, I suggested, that in capitalism political issues are in a sense "privatized." The conf lictsover authority and domination, which in pre-capitalist so cieties would be directly aimed at theurisdictional or po litical powers o f lords and s tat es, in capitalism have shif ted t o the individual capitalistenterprise. Altho ugh capital certainly depends on the power of the st ate to sustain the system of classpower and to maintain social order, it is not in the s tat e but in the process o f production, and in itshierarchical organizat ion, that capital exerts its power over workers most directly.

I also thought t his had something to do with the f act that modern revolutions have tended to t ake placewhere capitalism was less , rather t han more, developed. Where, f or example, the st ate it self is a primaryexploiter where, say, the s tat e exploit s peasant s by means o f taxation economic and political strugglesare hard to separate, and in cases like that , the st ate can readily become a focus o f mass st ruggles. Itis, af ter all, a much more visible and centralized class enemy than capital by its elf could ever be. Whenpeople conf ront capital directly, it is generally only in the f orm of individual, separate capitals, o r individual employers. So even proletarian revolut ions have tended to occur where working class conf licts


6/9

with capital have merged with ot her, pre-capitalist st ruggles, no tably peasant st ruggles against landlordsand exploitative states.

But while I was arguing that capitalism has a tendency to f ragment and t o privatize s truggle, it alsoseemed to me that t here now existed s ome new countervailing tendencies: the increasing internationalintegration of the capitalist market was shif ting the problems o f capitalist accumulation f rom theindividual enterprise to the macroeconomic sphere, and capital was being forced to rely more and moreon the stat e to create the right conditions f or accumulation. So I suggest ed that the st ates growing

complicity in capitals anti-social purposes might mean that the state would increasingly become a primetarget o f resistance in advanced capitalist countries and might begin to counteract some of thecentrifugal ef f ects of capitalism, its t endency to f ragment and domesticate class st ruggle.

Now I had never heard of globalizat ion back then, and I didnt know that people would so on be taking itf or granted that t he international integration of the capitalist market would weaken the nation- st ate andshif t t he focus o f capitalist power away f rom the state. Lately, when globalization is on everyones lips, Ihave f ound myself arguing against the popular assumption that globalizat ion is making the nation-st ateincreasingly irrelevant. I have been arguing that , whatever functions the st ate may be los ing, its gainingnew ones as the main conduit between capital and the global market. Now I want t o suggest that thisdevelopment may be starting to have the consequences f or class st ruggle that , back in 1981, I tho ught

might be a prospect f or t he future.

We can debate about how much "globalizat ion" has actually taken place, about what has and what hasntbeen truly internationalized. But one thing is clear: in the global market, capital needs the s tat e. It needsthe s tat e to maintain the conditions o f accumulation, to preserve labor discipline, to enhance the mobilityof capital while suppressing the mobility of labor. Behind every transnational corporation is a nationalbase, which depends on its local stat e to sust ain its viability and on ot her stat es to give it access toot her markets and other labor f orces. In a way, the whole point o f "globalization" is t hat competition isnot just o r even mainly between individual f irms but between whole natio nal economies. And as aconsequence, the nation- st ate has acquired new functions as an inst rument of competition.

If anything, the nation-s tate is the main agent o f globalizat ion. U.S. capital, in its quest f or "competitiveness," demands a state that will keep social costs to a minimum, while keeping in check theso cial conf lict and diso rder generated by the absence of so cial provision. In the European Union, whichis supposed to be the model of trans national organizat ion, each European st ate is the principal agent,f or instance, in the creation o f conditions f or monetary union. Each st ate is the main agent f orcing on itscitizens the aust erities and hardships needed to comply with t he st ringent requirements o f the s inglecurrency, and each stat e is t he main inst rument f or containing the conf licts engendered by these po licies,the main agent f or maintaining order and labor discipline. It is not inconceivable that the s tro ngly nationalimpulses in various European countries might end up halting integration. But even so, it is more thanlikely that t hese nation- st ates will, in the f oreseeable f uture, continue to play a central role as capitalschannel into the global market, as t he creato rs o f the right environment f or capital accumulation, and ascapitals main line of def ence against internal diso rder. And, of course, in keeping with the cont radictorylogic of capitalism, the same stat es that act as the agents o f capitalist integration, designed to promotethe competitiveness o f European capital in the global economy, are also the principal agents of competition within Europe, among its individual and separate national economies.

The st ate in various countries plays ot her roles to o: in particular, again, it keeps labor immobilized whilecapital moves across national boundaries, or in less developed capitalisms, it may act as a transmissionbelt f or o ther, more powerf ul capitalist s tat es. In every case, the state is, and for the foreseeable futureis likely to remain, central to capitalism, in one f orm or anot her. It is, o f course, pos sible that the statewill change its f orm and that the t raditional nation-s tat e will gradually give way, on t he one hand, to morenarrowly local states and, on the o ther, to larger, regional political authorities. But the s tat e in whatever f orm will cont inue to be crucial; and, I suspect, f or a long t ime to come, the o ld nation-s tat e will cont inueto play its do minant ro le.

So what has been the ef f ect of the st ates new f unctions? What have been the consequences f or classst ruggle? Has it proved to be true, as I suggested might happen, that t he new f unctions o f the st ate in a


7/9

"globalized," "f lexible" capitalism are making it a t arget o f class st ruggle and a new fo cus of workingclass unity? Its s till to o early to judge, but at t he very least we can take note of a spate o f massprotests and st reet demonst rations in various places: France, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Poland,

Argent ina, Mexico, etc. some of which are discussed in this is sue. I dont want to make to o much of themor their likely ef f ects. But its wort h cons idering their common denominato r.

No doubt mos t people would accept t hat it has s omething to do with globalizat ion. Even if we have our doubts about certain aspects o f "globalization," lets just cons ider those aspects we can all agree on:

the restructuring of capitalism taking place in every advanced capitalist country and, as a major part o f this restructuring, the efforts to eliminate various kinds of social provision in the interests of "competitiveness." This is exactly the kind of complicity between the s tat e and capital I was t alking about:not just the retreat o f the st ate f rom its ameliorat ive functions but also it s increasingly active role inrest ructuring the economy, in the interests o f capital and to t he detriment of everyone else. The actionsof the st ate have driven people into the streets , in oppos ition to st ate policies, in countries as diverseas Canada and Sout h Korea.

Recently, to o, t here was what appeared to be a very dif f erent kind of mass demonst ration, a kind of multinational workers protes t in France, by Renault workers f rom various countries against thedownsizing of one Renault plant near Brussels. On the face of it, this was not a protest against the

st ate but a multinational labor conf lict with transnational capital. But even here, the motivating force o f what the British newspaper, The Guardian , called the f irst "Euro-demo" was not just the actions of acommon, t ransnational employer but t he role played by each of the relevant European states France,Belgium, Spain, etc. in restructuring capital, in creating the conditio ns f or monetary union, in manipulatingsubsidies to indust ry. Even here, in this example of working class so lidarity acros s nat ional boundaries,the unifying principle was not just exploitation by a transnational corporat ion but also t he actions of particular nation-st ates in sustaining the conditions of capital accumulation. In this case o f working classinternationalism, protes t was directed at exactly the same kinds o f national policies which haveelsewhere driven very specifically domest ic protes ts against national governments. For inst ance, atabout the same time as the Renault prot est , German miners demonst rated against t heir government inBonn, which was withdrawing state subsidies to coal mines; so in both the French and German cases,government subsidies t o indust ry were a central issue. Again, t hese s pecif ically European pressures areust a particular example of the more general restructuring of which the American or South Korean s tat e,no less than the German, the French, or the Spanish, is the principal agent.

In this iss ue, Sam Gindin suggests that globalizat ion has actually created new opport unities f or s truggle.With "national and international economic restructuring comes a higher degree of integration o f components and services, specializat ion, lean invento ries", and this makes corporations more vulnerableto certain kinds of local, regional, and national s truggles. What I am saying here is that precisely this kindof integration has made the st ate in many ways more import ant t o capital than ever. In this and o ther ways, the symbiosis between capital and the state is in many ways closer than ever; and that is makingeach individual st ate a pot ential fo cus of conf lict and class s truggle, not less but more than has beentrue bef ore, in advanced capitalist economies.

So now is hardly the time f or t he lef t t o be abandoning this political terrain, in f avor of f ragmentedpolitics at o ne extreme, or a completely abstract internationalism at t he ot her. If the s tat e is the principalagent o f globalizat ion, by the same token the st ate, especially in advanced capitalist countries, s till hasthe mos t powerf ul weapons f or blocking globalizat ion. Ive said this elsewhere, but I might as well say itagain: if the state is the channel through which capital moves in the globalized economy, then its equallythe means by which an ant i-capitalist f orce could sever capitals lif eline. 4 Old f orms of "Keynesian"intervention may be even less ef f ective now than they were bef ore, but this s imply means that po liticalaction can no longer simply take the f orm of intervening in the capitalist economy. Its now more a

question of detaching material lif e f rom the logic of capitalism. And in the short term, this means thatpolitical action cant just be directed at o f f ering capital incentives to do socially productive things, or atcompensat ing fo r the ravages of capital by means of "saf ety nets ." Politics must be increasingly aboutusing state power to contro l the movements o f capital and to bring the allocation of capital and thedispos ition o f economic surpluses increasingly within the reach of democratic accountability, in


8/9

accordance with a so cial logic dif f erent f rom the logic of capitalist competition and prof itability. 5

Conclusion

One of the main problems in o rganizing anti-capitalist st ruggles has always been that capital presents nosingle, visible t arget. And the f ormal separation o f "economic" and "political" spheres which ischaracteristic of capitalism where exploitation takes place by means o f an apparently "f ree" exchangebetween juridical "equals," in a contract between capital and labor, and where the relationship betweenthem is mediated by an impersonal "market" has created what loo ks, on the surf ace, like a "neutral" stat e,which doesnt visibly intervene in the daily conf rontations between capital and labor. But as the neo -liberal state adopts the po licies o f "f lexibility," "competitiveness ," and "globalizat ion," the power of capitalin an import ant s ense becomes more concentrated in the st ate, and its collusion with capital becomesincreasingly transparent.

This is one major reason why we need to be so careful about how we use the t erm "globalization." Wehave to guard against treat ing the trends that go under that name as if they were natural, inevitableprocesses, inst ead of histo rically specif ic capitalist processes , the capitalist exploitat ion of humanbeings and natural reso urces, aided and abetted by a direct collaboration between the s tat e and capital.In f act, Im tempted to say that the concept o f globalizat ion to day plays such a prominent role incapitalist ideology precisely because po werful ideological weapons are now needed to disguise andmystif y this increasingly direct and o bvious collusion.

If the s tat e can now more than ever serve as a target in an anti-capitalist s truggle, it can also, as thef ocus o f local and national class st ruggles, be a unifying force bot h within the working class, against itsinternal f ragmentatio n, and also between the labor movement and its allies in the community. At the sametime, when just about every st ate is f ollowing the same destructive logic, domestic struggles against thatcommon logic can also be the basis in f act, the st rongest basis of a new internationalism. Thisinternationalism would be f ounded not on some unrealist ic and abstract no tion of an "international civilso ciety" or "global citizenship," nor o n the illusion that we can make things better by increasing the lef tsrepresentation in transnational organizat ions o f capital like the IMF, but rather on mutual support among

various local and national movements in their respective st ruggles against their own domest ic capitalist sand states, and on t he prolif eration o f such national struggles t hroughout the world.

This does not mean that there is no place fo r common, transnat ional struggles, or that the labor movement should neglect transnat ional organizations where it can make a dif f erence like the EU. Butcooperative st ruggles o f this kind ultimately depend on a s tro ng and well-o rganized domest ic labor movement. So if there is a motto that sums up this kind of internationalism, it might be this: "Workers o f all countries unite but unity begins at home."

At any rat e, the moral of the story is that , at the very moment when many people on the lef t are jo iningneo- liberals in conceding the inevitability o f globalizat ion and the growing irrelevance of the s tat e, and at

the very moment when traditional working class parties have disappeared or ef f ectively cut their classties, po litical organizat ion o f the working class may have become more important and pot entiallyef f ective than ever.

Notes

1. See, for example, Greg Albo, "The World Economy, Market Imperatives, and Alternat ives", Monthly Review vol. 48, no.7; Doug Henwood, "Post what?" Monthly Review vol. 48, no. 4; Harry Magdof f ,"Globalization to What End?", Monthly Review pamphlet , 1992; L. Panitch, "Globalisat ion and t heState," in R. Miliband and L. Panitch, eds., Socialist Register 1994: Between Globalism and Nationalism (London: Merlin, 1994); Bill Tabb, "Globalism is an Issue, The Power of Capital is the

Issue," Monthly Review vol. 49, no . 2.2. For a critique of the view that t here is no alternative, see Albo, "The World Econo my."

3. That art icle, published in 1981 in New Left Review , has more recently appeared in my book,Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995), pp. 19-48.


9/9

4. I make this po int in "Globalization and Epochal Shifts : An Exchange," Monthly Review vol. 48, no . 9.

5. On these themes, see Albo, "The World Econo my."

Ellen Meiksins Wood - Labor_the_State_and_Class_Struggle__Monthly_Review.pdf

Documents

Transcript of Ellen Meiksins Wood - Labor_the_State_and_Class_Struggle__Monthly_Review.pdf