Capitalism in the Age of Globalization: The Management of Contemporary Society
192
Capitalism in the Age of Globalization: The Management of Contemporary Society
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Overview
Amin's innovative analysis charts the rise of ethnicity and fundamentalism as consequences of the failure of ruling classes in the South to counter the exploitative terms of globalization. This has had profound implications and continues to resonate today. Furthermore, his deconstruction of the Bretton Woods institutions as managerial mechanisms which protect the profitability of capital provides an important insight into the continued difficulties in reforming them. Amin's rejection of the apparent inevitability of globalization in its present polarising form is particularly prophetic - instead he asserts the need for each society to negotiate the terms of its inter-dependence with the rest of the global economy.
A landmark work by a key contemporary thinker.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781780329857 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 02/13/2014 |
| Series: | Critique Influence Change |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 486 KB |
About the Author
Samir Amin is Director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal; and a co-founder of the World Forum for Alternatives.
Read an Excerpt
Capitalism in the Age of Globalization
The Management of Contemporary Society
By Samir Amin
Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Samir AminAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78032-985-7
CHAPTER 1
The Future of Global Polarization
Unequal Development and the Historical Forms of Capitalism
History since antiquity has been characterized by the unequal development of regions. But it is only in the modem era that polarization has become the immanent byproduct of the integration of the entire planet into the capitalist system.
Modem (capitalist) polarization has appeared in successive forms during the evolution of the capitalist mode of production:
(1) The mercantilist form (1500–1800) before the industrial revolution which was fashioned by the hegemony of merchant capital in the dominant Atlantic centres, and by the creation of the peripheral zones (the Americas) whose function involved their total compliance with the logic of accumulation of merchant capital.
(2) The so-called classical model which grew out of the industrial revolution and henceforth defined the basic forms of capitalism. In contrast, the peripheries – progressively all of Asia (except for Japan) and Africa, which were added to Latin America – remained rural, non-industrialized, and as a result their participation in the world division of labour took place via agriculture and mineral production. This important characteristic of polarization was accompanied by a second equally important one: the crystallization of core industrial systems as national autocentred systems which parallelled the construction of the national bourgeois states. Taken together, these two characteristics account for the dominant lines of the ideology of national liberation which was the response to the challenge of polarization: (i) the goal of industrialization as a synonym for a liberating progress and as a means of 'catching up'; (ii) the goal of constructing nation-states inspired by the models of those in the core. This is how modernization ideology was conceived. From the industrial revolution (after 1800) up to the end of the Second World War the world system was characterized by this classical form of polarization.
(3) The postwar period (1945–90) witnessed the progressive erosion of the above two characteristics. It was a period of industrialization of the peripheries, unequal and uneven to be sure. It was the dominant factor in Asia and Latin America, with the national liberation movement doing its best to accelerate the process within peripheral states which had recently regained their political autonomy. This period was simultaneously, however, one of the progressive dismantling of autocentric national production systems and their recomposition as constitutive elements of an integrated world production system. This double erosion was the new manifestation of the deepening of globalization.
(4) The most recent period (since 1990) in which the accumulation of these transformations has resulted in the collapse of the equilibria characteristic of the postwar world system.
This evolution is not leading simply to a new world order characterized by new forms of polarization, but to global disorder. The chaos which confronts us today comes from, a triple failure of the system: (i) it has not developed new forms of political and social organization going beyond the nation-state – a new requirement of the globalized system of production; (ii) it has not developed economic and political relationships capable of reconciling the rise of industrialization in the newly competitive peripheral zones of Asia and Latin America with the pursuit of global growth; (iii) it has not developed a relationship, other than an exclusionary one, with the African periphery which is not engaged in competitive industrialization at all. This chaos is visible in all regions of the world and in all facets of the political, social and ideological crisis. It is at the root of the difficulties in the present construction of Europe and that continent's inability to pursue market integration and establish parallel integrative political structures. It is also the cause of the convulsions in all the peripheries in Eastern Europe, in the old semi-industrialized Third World and in the new marginalized Fourth World. Far from sustaining the progression of globalization, the current chaos reveals its extreme vulnerability.
The predominance of this chaos should not keep us from thinking about alternative scenarios for a new 'world order' even if there are many different possible future 'world orders'. What I am trying to do here is to call attention to questions which have been glossed over by the triumphalism of inevitable globalization at the same time as its precariousness is revealed.
The reader will no doubt have discovered that this analysis of world capitalism is not centred on the question of hegemonies. I do not subscribe to the successive hegemonies school of historiography. The concept of hegemony is often sterile, and is unscientific because it has been so loosely defined. It does not seem to me that it should be the centre of the debate. I have, in contrast, developed the idea that hegemony is the exception to the rule. The rule is conflict among partners which puts an end to hegemony. The hegemony of the United States, seemingly unchallenged today, perhaps by default, is as fragile and precarious as the globalization of the structures through which it operates.
The Present World System and the Five Monopolies of the Centre
In my opinion, the debate should start with an in-depth discussion of the new features in the present world system which are produced by the erosion of the previous one. In my opinion there are two new elements:
(1) The erosion of the autocentred nation-state and the subsequent disappearance of the link between the arena of reproduction and accumulation together with the weakening of political and social control which up to now had been defined precisely by the frontiers of this autocentred nation-state;
(2) The erosion of the great divide: industrialized centre/non-industrialized peripheral regions, and the emergence of new dimensions of polarization.
A country's position in the global hierarchy is defined by its capacity to compete in the world market. Recognizing this truism does not in any way imply sharing the bourgeois economist's view that this position is achieved as the result of rational measures – the said rationality being assessed by the yardstick of the so-called 'objective laws of the market'. On the contrary, I think that this competitiveness is a complex product of many economic, political and social factors. In this unequal fight the centres use what I call their 'five monopolies'. These monopolies constitute a challenge to social theory in its totality. They are:
(1) Technological monopoly. This requires huge expenditures that only a large and wealthy state can envisage. Without the support of the state, especially through military spending – something liberal discourse doesn't mention – most of these monopolies would not last.
(2) Financial control of worldwide financial markets. These monopolies have an unprecedented efficacy thanks to the liberalization of the rules governing their establishment. Not so long ago, the greater part of a nation's savings could circulate only within the largely national arena of its financial institutions. Today these savings are handled centrally by the institutions whose operations are worldwide. We are talking of finance capital: capital's most globalized component. Despite this, the logic of this globalization of finance could be called into question by a simple political decision to delink, even if delinking were limited to the domain of financial transfers. Moreover I think that the rules governing the free movement of finance capital have broken down. This system had been based in the past on the free floating of currencies on the market (according to the theory that money is a commodity like any other) with the dollar serving de facto as a universal currency. Regarding money as a commodity, however, is a theory that is unscientific and the pre-eminent position of the dollar is only faute de mieux. A national currency cannot fulfil the functions of an international currency unless there is a surplus of exports in the country whose currency purports to serve as an international currency, thus underwriting structural adjustment in the other countries. This was the case with Great Britain in the late-nineteenth century. This is not the case of the United States today which actually finances its deficit by the borrowing which the rest of the world is forced to accept. Nor indeed is this the case with the competitors of the United States: Japan's surplus (that of Germany disappeared after reunification in 1991) is not sufficient to meet the financial needs occasioned by the structural adjustment of the others. Under these conditions financial globalization, far from being a 'natural' process, is an extremely fragile one. In the short run, it leads only to permanent instability rather than to the stability necessary for the efficient operation of the processes of adjustment.
(3) Monopolistic access to the planet's natural resources. The dangers of the reckless exploitation of these resources are now planet-wide. Capitalism, based on short-term rationality, cannot overcome these dangers posed by this reckless behaviour, and it therefore reinforces the monopolies of already developed countries. The much-vaunted environmental concern of these countries is simply not to let others be equally irresponsible.
(4) Media and communication monopolies. These not only lead to uniformity of culture but also open up new means of political manipulation. The expansion of the modern media market is already one of the major components in the erosion of democratic practices in the West itself.
(5) Monopolies over weapons of mass destruction. Held in check by the postwar bipolarity, this monopoly is again, as in 1945, the sole domain of the United States. While it may be true that nuclear proliferation risks getting out of control, it is still the only way of fighting this unacceptable US monopoly in the absence of democratic international control.
These five monopolies, taken as a whole, define the framework within which the law of globalized value operates. The law of value is the condensed expression of all these conditions, and not the expression of objective, 'pure' economic rationality. The conditioning of all of these processes annuls the impact of industrialization in the peripheries, devalues their productive work and overestimates the supposed value-added resulting from the activities of the new monopolies from which the centres profit. What results is a new hierarchy, more unequal than ever before, in the distribution of income on a world scale, subordinating the industries of the peripheries and reducing them to the role of subcontracting. This is the new foundation of polarization, presaging its future forms.
An Alternative Humanist Project of Globalization
In contrast to the dominant ideological discourse, I maintain that globalization via the market, is a reactionary utopia. We must counter it by developing an alternative humanistic project of globalization consistent with a socialist perspective.
Implied in the realization of such a project is the construction of a global political system which is not in the service of a global market, but one which defines its parameters in the same way as the nation-state represented historically the social framework of the national market and not merely its passive field of deployment. A global political system would thus have major responsibilities in each of the following four areas:
(1) The organization of global disarmament at appropriate levels, thus liberating humanity from the menace of nuclear and other holocausts.
(2) The organization of access to the planet's resources in an equitable manner so that there would be less inequality. There would have to be a global decision-making process with a valuation (tariffication) of resources which would make obligatory waste reduction and the more equitable distribution of the value and income from these resources. This could also be the beginning of a globalized fiscal system.
(3) Negotiation of open, flexible economic relationships between the world's major regions which, currently, are unequally developed. This would reduce progressively the centres' technological and financial monopolies. This means, of course, the liquidation of the institutions presently running the global market (the so-called World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization etc.) and the creation of other systems for managing the global economy.
(4) Starting negotiation for the correct management of the global/national dialectic in the areas of communication, culture and political policy. This implies the creation of political institutions which would represent social interests on a global scale – the beginning of a 'world parliament' going beyond the inter-state mechanisms of the United Nations system that exist now.
Obstacles to the Realization of this Project
It is more than evident that current trends are not going in the direction described above and that humanist objectives are not those being fought for today. I am not surprised. The erosion of the old system of globalization is not able to prepare its own succession and can only lead to chaos. Dominant forces are developing their activities in the framework of these constraints, trying to manoeuvre for short-term gain and thereby aggravating the chaos. Their attempt to legitimate their choices by the stale ideology of the 'self-regulating' market, or by affirming that 'there is no alternative', or by pure and simple cynicism, is not the solution but part of the problem. The people's spontaneous responses to the degradation they experience, however, are not necessarily any more helpful. In a time of disarray, illusory solutions such as fundamentalism or chauvinism can be highly politically mobilizing. It is up to the Left – that is in fact its historic mission – to formulate, in theory and in practice, a humanistic response to the challenge. In its absence and until it is formulated, regressive and outright criminal scenarios will be the most likely order of the day.
The difficulties confronting the EU's European project right now are a good illustration of the impasse created by globalization through market mechanisms. In the first flush of enthusiasm over the European project no one foresaw these difficulties. Yet they were perfectly predictable by people who never believed that the Common Market by itself could create a united Europe. They said that a project as ambitious as this could not be accomplished without a Left capable of making it socially and culturally progressive. In the absence of that, it would remain fragile, and even a minor political accident could prove fatal. It was necessary, therefore, for the various European Lefts to make sure that each step of the integration was accompanied by a double series of measures: on the one hand, ensuring that profits went to the workers, thereby reinforcing their social power and their unity; and on the other, beginning the construction of a political system which would supersede the nation-state and could be the only unit that could effectively manage an enlarged market. This did not happen. The European project, in the hands of the Right, was reduced to purely mercantilist proportions, and the Left sooner or later simply offered its support without imposing any conditions. The result is what we see before us: the economic downturn has put the European partners in an adversarial position. They can only imagine solutions to their problems (notably unemployment) that are at the expense of others, and they don't even have effective tools for achieving those. They are increasingly tempted to retreat behind national barriers. Even the sincere efforts to avoid such action on the part of French and German politicians on both the Right and the Left have resulted only in rhetoric rather than effective pan-European action.
The EU's Europe is experiencing problems at the same time as the wider Europe is giving a new meaning to the challenge facing it. This ought to be an opportunity for the Left to rethink the European project as a whole and to begin the construction of a confederal political and economic 'big' Europe that is anchored on the left by a reconstructed and united European labour force. But it has missed this opportunity and, on the contrary, has backed the forces of the Right which were in a hurry to profit from the collapse of the Soviet Empire by substituting a kind of unrestrained, wildcat capitalism. It is obvious that the present Latin Americanization of Eastern Europe can only weaken the chances of success of a left-leaning pan-European project. That in turn can only accentuate the disequilibrium within the Europe of the EU to the benefit of the only partner able to profit from this evolution: a reunited Germany.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Foreword by John Bellamy FosterPreface to the critique influence change edition
Introduction
1. The Future of Global Polarization
2. The Capitalist Economic Management of the Crisis of Contemporary Society
3. Reforming International Monetary Management of the Crisis
4. The Rise of Ethnicity: A Political Response to Economic Globalization
5. What are the Conditions for Relaunching Development in the South?
6. The Challenges Posed by Economic Globalization: The European Case
7. Ideology and Social Thought: The Intelligentsia and the Development Crisis