lecture 4, "A Nation? Peasants, Language, and French Identity"
john merriman
-----
two things today: (1) talk about question of when people in France began thinking of themselves as French, which is a big historical debate (2) specifically, look at the role of the school system in that process.
-----
question to be resolved: when did the majority of the population start to think of themselves in national terms, rather than in other terms? (in 1789, half the population spoke French; in 1871, about a quarter of the population spoke French(!))
it's a leap of faith to think, of course, that the language you speak entirely informs your identity (Alsace as an example, who thought of themselves as French despite speaking German).
In the view of Eugene Weber (who prof disagrees with), until about 1880, you had an "unawareness" of French identity (in 1864, someone went in to a particular department and students in a school had no idea what France was). A view of "savage" France, where people had to be civilized by the State's institutions into accepting the French canon (the worst of modernization theory, says prof).
Three big agencies of change, according to Weber, transforming peasants into Frenchmen: (1) railroads; (2) military conscription; (3) schools, alongside the increase in literacy in France (such that by 1900, the majority of people in France could read or write).
This basic interpretation became quite compelling (by 1914, you had people going offf to do singing Le Marseilleise)
Language and military is, of course, very interesting question. In Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had roughly 12 national groups, to go anywhere in the army (or to become a teacher, for example), you had to know German.
prof does not agree with this view--hopes to nuance it, and to look also at the role of schools in this argument.
-----
the whole question of timing is essential: when did French national identity permeate the different departments? (language and nationality, of course, is fascinating: at the time of the unification of Italy, in mid-1800s, the percentage of the population that spoke Italian was 5%!)
was Weber completely wrong, then? no, but you need more nuance, in sum. different histories in different departments. it is silly, prof is arguing, to look for one national identity--everyone has shared identities, different things being emphasized in different contexts.
revolution of 1848, which begins as an urban revolution, and turns into a rural lefty revolution in much of the South of the country. ends in 1851, when Napoleon the Third takes power in a coup d'etat. That gives rise to the largest national insurrection in French history (?), to defend the Republic (and the vast majority of those were peasants, and many of them did not speak French! though they were fighting for a French republic).
in that sense, this movement meant that the people didn't wait till the 1880s. so history was more complicated than the modernization picture, prof is arguing.
and indeed, even on that level--the expansion of roads in the 18th century was very important, as was the economic expansion of 1820s and 1830s (which brought people into towns, which begin to make them aware of Le France).
so yes, railroads were important--but they were not the be-all, end-all of the identity-formation process.
and fast-forward to 1914, did the people from Bretton going to fight for France "feel" French? that, also, prof is arguing, involves a leap of faith (and, conversely, not speaking French did not necessarily sign anti-French "backwardness").
in sum, prof is arguing against the "simplistic" view of the modernizers. "it just is terribly complicated."
(what about since WWII--when did patois disappear? in the 1960s, it was still spoken in many households in parts of France, etc., etc.)
(and universities? they are now more active in teaching these languages--which is a welcome change, of course, from de gaulle's determination to crush the regions)
so: be a little cautious in assuming that (1) the agencies of modernization are what created this French identity, and that (2) this has been uniform, and all subordinate identities have vanished.
not disputing the overall notion, i don't think, but complicating the analysis and chronology of it.
-----
what about schools?
certainly, weber is correct, schools do make a big difference.
until 1833, three things can be said about the teaching of anything: (1) girls were much less likely to go to school than boys; (2) many schoolteachers were mobile, they were people who would go from town to town, teaching for a month or two; (3) that the catholic church, primarily, dominated formal and informal education. the priest was often, especially in the 18th century, was the only person who could read in a given village (so nuns and the priests dominate education, especially in the highly religous regions).
in 1833, the Guizot law was passed. Guizot was Protestant, and he wanted to wrest education away from the Catholic church. the law mandated that every village have a school--but this matters, because each school teacher has a stamp of official authority. (and the schoolteacher becomes the person who notifies births, deaths, marriages, etc.--he represents the prestige of the state, and is so a challenge, in his very existence, to the Virgin Mary on the wall).
some control is handed back to the Church, later, with a different law under Louis Philippe.
so, you have these competing authorities scrambling to teach your kids: the State, and the Church.
furthermore, many parents declined to send their kids to school, because there were no obvious benefits to schooling. (prof citing statistics on truancy, correlated to harvests). but the state soon made schooling compulsory, as it did elsewhere--saying to parents "you have no choice."
the view is, then, that these primary school teachers (hardly anyone goes to high school until the second half of the 19th century) are the people who are going to teach children french. (patois not allowed!--at least according to the rules, of course).
but, of course, there's a "performance" effect to this: it's clear, prof is saying, regional identity is still very important in schools, as well. it's absurd to think that people weren't teaching in local dialects, just as it's absurd to think that people who didn't know french had some sense of being french. (prof saying that in the south of france this billingualism is certainly more pronounced than in the north).
don't forget, furthermore, that these perceptions of "backwardness" are written by military men or Parisians on trips to these regions (much like the critique of colonial travelogues, etc.).
-----
what about now?
if these areas in the south (which are tourist-invested) are going to remain more than simply sites for tourists from the north, then schools will have to maintain their traditional role in representing the identity of these communities.
in 1851, 2/3 of the departments in france were larger than they were in 1939--due to the collapsing birth rate and, as local industries collapse and the destruction of common resources, there's a huge withdrawal to urban areas (by 1900, the french population is stagnant, though of course supplemented by massive flows of immigration).
by 1979, says prof, 10,000 one-room schoolhouses close down--local educational system, in other words, is being eroded--regional and village identity giving way (schools being grouped with schools from other villages).
prof arguing, our school has to survive! if regional identity is going to persist, it will have to come through the school.
-----
in sum: let us realize the complexity of regional and national identities, against the modernizers. and emphasize that schools continue to play an important role, and can save regional identity, in a sense.
Showing posts with label nation-state. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nation-state. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
lecture 3, "centralized state and republic"
john merriman
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two things: (1) centralization of the state, and why paris as center; (2) why the "miracle baby," Chambord, did not become King of France--why did France end up a republic, and how?
-----
the role of Paris is unique in European history--and it still is this way, despite various decentralization proposals. it is the most centralized state in the world, according to professors.
(Spain, Germany all examples that have two or three balancing cities, at the very least. Even England, with industry in the north in Manchester, etc.--the economic centers, etc.)
the role of Paris, in sum, is special, and particular to France.
("Paris in the French Desert"--where else, but in France, would so much of the population be considered provincials, in a deeply condescending way.)
-------
One of the reasons that Paris' role is so great in France has to do with the way that the French state was constructed, the way it was centralized (you only hear people with Parisian accents on the radio, even in other regions, most of the time--always people with Northern accents).
Balzac articulated the way that Parisians view provincials (dominated by role and monotony, like "frogs at the bottom of their puddles"..."they don't think about things that are serious")
One of the key economic indicators of this dominance: Lyon, France's second city--its principal bank moved itself to Paris in the 1860s!
------
How did it get this way?
All states centralized, but why Paris is so uniquely centralized?
In Europe in 1500, you had about 1500 independent, territorial states. State-making, of course, was one of the central processes in early modern European history. Unification of Italy (1850s and 1860s), Germany (1871), of course. States developed their ability to extract resources from the provinces.
In the 16th century, Paris came to be France's capital ("absolutism": in the 17th century, European rulers expand their abilities to extract resources from ordinary people, expand their reach to other provinces).
Louis XIV (the "sun-god") sends people out in the provinces to do his well--they negotiate with local nobles, etc.--but ultimately, the only thing that matters is that this increases the power of the state (it's at this time that the standing armies of the central, absolute monarchy become enormous).
And along comes the French Revolution, which seeks to rationalize the administration of France. So, before, where you had to pay tolls in many parts of France, different weights/etc., they try to strengthen the center. And because their rivals are the nobles and the Church, they opt to base their administrative center on Departments.
They become strings which reach out from Paris into the different Departments--the three things that any resident of the provinces sees, then, are the ministry of war, the ministry of justice, and the ministry of the interior.
Created in 1790, and they still exist (the only major change came in 1860, when the departments around Paris were consolidated due to the city's expansion). Most are named after rivers.
The point is: in order to defeat its enemies, the revolution centralizes the State.
And next, of course, Napoleon makes state centralization even more important, as he seeks to consolidate his power.
Similarly, the Second Empire (1852-1870), his nephew (Napoleon III), uses centralization as a tool of the state, to consolidate his own power, and to undercut the residual influence of the nobility. If you wanted something, it no longer made sense to go to the local notable--the patronage of the Empire (the Center) is key, as he can provide railroads, schools, etc.
You have economic processes that clarify the power of the Center, in sum. The state can authorize economic processes that make a city (railroads, bridges, factories, etc.). The evolution of banking, as well, which further consolidates power in Paris (the State financial institutions are in Paris, and they can direct investment).
If you look at a map of the railroads, in France--all roads lead to Paris. Trains reinforce the predominance of the capital city. (Turbo-Prof, a name for somebody who lives in Paris, and teaches outside of the city, but is desperate to live in Paris. This is bad, of course, because it destroys local university life.)
The 19th century, then, accentuates all of this. (Prof reading an absurd definition of the "provincial" from the Larousse dictionary). (De Gaulle, as a further example of this, which we will talk about later: "How can you govern a country that has 440 different kinds of cheese?")
It is illegal, in France, to use names that are not officially approved.
What has not changed, in Paris, is the capacity of the center's ministries to influence life in the provinces. (In the 1980s, there were huge demonstrations favoring Catholic Church against the diktats coming down from Paris with regards to content of education).
There is no other country, in the post-communist world, where so many people work for the State. (Prof's aside: it's entirely untrue, of course, that public services don't work).
----
All this, of course, becomes a salient question in debates over Europe, and the EU constitution. We will talk about this later, but prof is arguing for a vote against--"I know of no one, except professors in Paris and Lyon, who would have voted for it"
----
How did this happen?
In February of 1870, you had a monarchist-dominated Assembly, elected, in which rural regions (Brittany, Normandy, etc.) wanted the restoration of a monarchy. Why does that not happen? Why did it become the Third Republic (1875/1877-1940)?
A story of decisions taken by individual people (old-style history).
There was a miracle baby (part of the Bourbon royal family), Count de Chambord. In 1820, his father was assasinated, by a liberal, who wanted to extinguish this royal line (the Bourbons, who had been restored in 1815-1830).
France goes into great mourning, because the heir to the French throne is dead.
And then, lo and behold, it turns out his widow, was pregnant! And as the country holds its breath, the baby was a boy. A miracle baby! ("Henry V")
Unforunately, he was sort of a "sad sack."
Now, there were the Orleanists, who, under King Louis Phillipe, were in power from 1830-1848, and seen as "progressive", bourgeois-liberal monarchs. Carried an umbrella! He is chased from the throne in 1848--but he had helped modernize the economy, and did not restore the Church to its original power.
Whereas the Orleanists were sharp, then, Chambord was thick as a brick.
When France collapsed after the war with Prussia, it seemed to the monarchists that their ship had come in. It's easy to make fun of Chambord, of course, but there was a strong royalist movement--and it wasn't just people looking backward. He himself said he didn't want to be a king of the old regime, but to combine monarchy with modernity.
You have to imagine him after the Commune--he comes to Paris, had never been to the city. And he goes around as a tourist. He has an entourage, but there is this tradition of popular royalism--of people who wanted the King. There was a close association, of course, between the King and the Church, so there was support in the religious regions (he has made clear that he will restore the church to its rightful place of privilege). And he stands to benefit from the religious revival of the 1870s (after crisis, religious revivals--just like after the French revolution).
But it's hard, if you're 47 years old, and you're a pretender to the throne. He had a royal accident (broke his leg), he was himself a large man. He was a big-time gambler.
Viewed hereditary monarchy as a unique form of "salvation" for France. The key, of course, to his authority, as well, is the nobility, who have been disenfranchised since the revolution (the State had been winning the battle against its nobles). Elections in the 1880s bore out the fact that this was generally popular.
This did not stop nobles from believing that had they run in elections, they would have won, on behalf on the monarchy.
Chambord, though, when disaster came was not ready, in sum. He issued anachronistic manifestos, etc. Even still, for all his limitations, he was a man of faith and loyalty to his principles. In 1789, when the Bourbons were deposed, the family's white flag was replaced by the Tricolore. Chambord refused to compromise on this principle, which was the flag of the revolution that had killed his family members. And he didn't agree, either, to the sucession of the Orleanists after his death (Chambord didn't have any children: "Without my principles, I am a fat man with a big limp"(!)).
And so, Franch, lurched into the Republic of the Moral Order. In 1875, there's an amendment to the constitution that transforms France into a republic (won by won vote). In 1877, a General tries to overthrow the Government--but fails to do so, and by the early 1880s, the Republic is consolidated. And most people wanted it--its social base was the new middle class, and the workers. Some peasants in the south, of course, were still in favor of a monarchy.
The executive is fairly weak--real stregnth lies in the assembly. This does not mean that the State is not strong, at all. A very controversial decision of this centralized government comes in 1905, for separation of the Church and State.
The State becomes the new vehicle of economic, cultural, political patronage--replaces the nobility, the Church, and the monarchy that most people did not want.
john merriman
-----
two things: (1) centralization of the state, and why paris as center; (2) why the "miracle baby," Chambord, did not become King of France--why did France end up a republic, and how?
-----
the role of Paris is unique in European history--and it still is this way, despite various decentralization proposals. it is the most centralized state in the world, according to professors.
(Spain, Germany all examples that have two or three balancing cities, at the very least. Even England, with industry in the north in Manchester, etc.--the economic centers, etc.)
the role of Paris, in sum, is special, and particular to France.
("Paris in the French Desert"--where else, but in France, would so much of the population be considered provincials, in a deeply condescending way.)
-------
One of the reasons that Paris' role is so great in France has to do with the way that the French state was constructed, the way it was centralized (you only hear people with Parisian accents on the radio, even in other regions, most of the time--always people with Northern accents).
Balzac articulated the way that Parisians view provincials (dominated by role and monotony, like "frogs at the bottom of their puddles"..."they don't think about things that are serious")
One of the key economic indicators of this dominance: Lyon, France's second city--its principal bank moved itself to Paris in the 1860s!
------
How did it get this way?
All states centralized, but why Paris is so uniquely centralized?
In Europe in 1500, you had about 1500 independent, territorial states. State-making, of course, was one of the central processes in early modern European history. Unification of Italy (1850s and 1860s), Germany (1871), of course. States developed their ability to extract resources from the provinces.
In the 16th century, Paris came to be France's capital ("absolutism": in the 17th century, European rulers expand their abilities to extract resources from ordinary people, expand their reach to other provinces).
Louis XIV (the "sun-god") sends people out in the provinces to do his well--they negotiate with local nobles, etc.--but ultimately, the only thing that matters is that this increases the power of the state (it's at this time that the standing armies of the central, absolute monarchy become enormous).
And along comes the French Revolution, which seeks to rationalize the administration of France. So, before, where you had to pay tolls in many parts of France, different weights/etc., they try to strengthen the center. And because their rivals are the nobles and the Church, they opt to base their administrative center on Departments.
They become strings which reach out from Paris into the different Departments--the three things that any resident of the provinces sees, then, are the ministry of war, the ministry of justice, and the ministry of the interior.
Created in 1790, and they still exist (the only major change came in 1860, when the departments around Paris were consolidated due to the city's expansion). Most are named after rivers.
The point is: in order to defeat its enemies, the revolution centralizes the State.
And next, of course, Napoleon makes state centralization even more important, as he seeks to consolidate his power.
Similarly, the Second Empire (1852-1870), his nephew (Napoleon III), uses centralization as a tool of the state, to consolidate his own power, and to undercut the residual influence of the nobility. If you wanted something, it no longer made sense to go to the local notable--the patronage of the Empire (the Center) is key, as he can provide railroads, schools, etc.
You have economic processes that clarify the power of the Center, in sum. The state can authorize economic processes that make a city (railroads, bridges, factories, etc.). The evolution of banking, as well, which further consolidates power in Paris (the State financial institutions are in Paris, and they can direct investment).
If you look at a map of the railroads, in France--all roads lead to Paris. Trains reinforce the predominance of the capital city. (Turbo-Prof, a name for somebody who lives in Paris, and teaches outside of the city, but is desperate to live in Paris. This is bad, of course, because it destroys local university life.)
The 19th century, then, accentuates all of this. (Prof reading an absurd definition of the "provincial" from the Larousse dictionary). (De Gaulle, as a further example of this, which we will talk about later: "How can you govern a country that has 440 different kinds of cheese?")
It is illegal, in France, to use names that are not officially approved.
What has not changed, in Paris, is the capacity of the center's ministries to influence life in the provinces. (In the 1980s, there were huge demonstrations favoring Catholic Church against the diktats coming down from Paris with regards to content of education).
There is no other country, in the post-communist world, where so many people work for the State. (Prof's aside: it's entirely untrue, of course, that public services don't work).
----
All this, of course, becomes a salient question in debates over Europe, and the EU constitution. We will talk about this later, but prof is arguing for a vote against--"I know of no one, except professors in Paris and Lyon, who would have voted for it"
----
How did this happen?
In February of 1870, you had a monarchist-dominated Assembly, elected, in which rural regions (Brittany, Normandy, etc.) wanted the restoration of a monarchy. Why does that not happen? Why did it become the Third Republic (1875/1877-1940)?
A story of decisions taken by individual people (old-style history).
There was a miracle baby (part of the Bourbon royal family), Count de Chambord. In 1820, his father was assasinated, by a liberal, who wanted to extinguish this royal line (the Bourbons, who had been restored in 1815-1830).
France goes into great mourning, because the heir to the French throne is dead.
And then, lo and behold, it turns out his widow, was pregnant! And as the country holds its breath, the baby was a boy. A miracle baby! ("Henry V")
Unforunately, he was sort of a "sad sack."
Now, there were the Orleanists, who, under King Louis Phillipe, were in power from 1830-1848, and seen as "progressive", bourgeois-liberal monarchs. Carried an umbrella! He is chased from the throne in 1848--but he had helped modernize the economy, and did not restore the Church to its original power.
Whereas the Orleanists were sharp, then, Chambord was thick as a brick.
When France collapsed after the war with Prussia, it seemed to the monarchists that their ship had come in. It's easy to make fun of Chambord, of course, but there was a strong royalist movement--and it wasn't just people looking backward. He himself said he didn't want to be a king of the old regime, but to combine monarchy with modernity.
You have to imagine him after the Commune--he comes to Paris, had never been to the city. And he goes around as a tourist. He has an entourage, but there is this tradition of popular royalism--of people who wanted the King. There was a close association, of course, between the King and the Church, so there was support in the religious regions (he has made clear that he will restore the church to its rightful place of privilege). And he stands to benefit from the religious revival of the 1870s (after crisis, religious revivals--just like after the French revolution).
But it's hard, if you're 47 years old, and you're a pretender to the throne. He had a royal accident (broke his leg), he was himself a large man. He was a big-time gambler.
Viewed hereditary monarchy as a unique form of "salvation" for France. The key, of course, to his authority, as well, is the nobility, who have been disenfranchised since the revolution (the State had been winning the battle against its nobles). Elections in the 1880s bore out the fact that this was generally popular.
This did not stop nobles from believing that had they run in elections, they would have won, on behalf on the monarchy.
Chambord, though, when disaster came was not ready, in sum. He issued anachronistic manifestos, etc. Even still, for all his limitations, he was a man of faith and loyalty to his principles. In 1789, when the Bourbons were deposed, the family's white flag was replaced by the Tricolore. Chambord refused to compromise on this principle, which was the flag of the revolution that had killed his family members. And he didn't agree, either, to the sucession of the Orleanists after his death (Chambord didn't have any children: "Without my principles, I am a fat man with a big limp"(!)).
And so, Franch, lurched into the Republic of the Moral Order. In 1875, there's an amendment to the constitution that transforms France into a republic (won by won vote). In 1877, a General tries to overthrow the Government--but fails to do so, and by the early 1880s, the Republic is consolidated. And most people wanted it--its social base was the new middle class, and the workers. Some peasants in the south, of course, were still in favor of a monarchy.
The executive is fairly weak--real stregnth lies in the assembly. This does not mean that the State is not strong, at all. A very controversial decision of this centralized government comes in 1905, for separation of the Church and State.
The State becomes the new vehicle of economic, cultural, political patronage--replaces the nobility, the Church, and the monarchy that most people did not want.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
william robertson on transnational capital:
The key characteristic of this new epoch is the rise of truly transnational capital and a new globally integrated production and financial system. Production has become fragmented into countless and constantly changing phases that are decentralized and dispersed across the planet. In turn, the distinct segments are functionally integrated into vast global chains of production and distribution. Each autonomous national economy has been restructured and externally integrated, so that each “national” economy because a constituent part of the larger global production system.
(...) We also now have a truly global financial system. There is no longer any such thing as a national financial system. In fact, finance capital is the most mobile and the most transnationalized fraction of capital. This has major implications. Money capital exists in cyberspace, where it recognizes no borders and faces few, if any, state controls. Money capital subordinates fixed capital. Those who control money capital can appropriate values anywhere in the world by financial manipulation and relocate them on an ongoing basis to anywhere else in the world.
(...) I am pointing this out because it is transnational capital that stands at the pinnacle of these global networks. This means that there still may be local and national capitals but they cannot compete with transnationally mobile capital. If they want to remain competitive, if they want to continue playing the game, they must link up with transnational capital, and they must do so, structurally, in a way that subordinates them to transnational capital.
(...) [can we also speak of a global working class?]
Yes. There is a global working class that runs the factories, farms, and offices of the global economy. Their ranks can be found in the maquiladoras, in the agro-industrial complexes around the world, among the armies of service workers in global cities. However, the global working class is internally stratified. It is divided along national - as well as racial, ethnic, and gender - lines. The continued existence of the nation-state serves to distort the consciousness and subjective experience of the global working class.
[a capitalist class?] In distinction, the transnational capitalist class is a class group with a subjective consciousness of itself and its interests. Its members increasingly socialize together in their private institutions such as the World Economic Forum in Davos and develop a transnational class consciousness. In this sense it is a class-for-itself, to use Marx’s language on this matter, whereas the global working class is a class-in-itself but not yet for-itself.
(...) The question is how can the transnational capitalist class exercise its political authority? Well, one way is through utilizing existing state apparatus in each country, and we have seen plenty of that. Another is through the transformation of existing international institutions, such as the old Bretton Woods institutions or the agencies of the United Nations system, and the creation of entirely new ones, such as the World Trade Organization. Transnational capital attempts to convert the structural power of the global economy over individual countries and over working classes in each nation-state into direct political authority or influence through this transnational state apparatus. Transnational institutions attempt to coordinate global capitalism and imposing capitalist domination beyond national borders. The IMF, for instance, by imposing a structural adjustment program that opens up a given country to the penetration of transnational capital, the subordination of local labor, and the extraction of wealth by transnational capitalists, is operating as a transnational state institution to facilitate the exploitation of local labor by global capital.
(...) [on the transnational character of imperialism; nation-state less important in this process?] If by imperialism, we mean relentless pressures for outward expansion of capitalism and distinct political, military and cultural mechanisms that facilitate that expansion, then, yes, we are obviously seeing ongoing imperialism in 21st century. But there is nothing in this “new” imperialism to suggest it is a U.S. drive for empire in competition with other nation-state capitalists. Those who make this argument have frozen their historical analysis in an earlier moment. They are trapped in world of late 19th and early 20th century. They see world capitalism as still in its national “monopoly” stage of Lenin’s and Hilferding’s day, so that U.S. interv ntionism can only be a drive for “U.S.” hegemony over other states.
Recent U.S. policies such as the imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustment programs and sponsorship of free trade agreements have served to further pry open regions and sectors around world to global capitalism, to transnational capital. The IMF and other transnational state agencies have not acted as simple instruments of “U.S.” imperialism. I know of no single IMF structural adjustment program that creates conditions in intervened country that favors “U.S.” capital in any special way, rather than opening up the intervened country, its labor and resources, to capitalists from any corner of world.
(...) [and the effects?] The system is in chaos; its contradictions are explosive and, frankly, humanity is in grave danger. The global crisis is one of social polarization and social reproduction, reflecting the deeper structural problem of over-accumulation. The crisis is also of sustainability. An ecological holocaust has already begun. If we do not pull back from the precipice, and very soon, we could well be facing catastrophic consequences.
(...) [and the big picture?] Let’s step back and see the big picture. The 1980s saw a recovery of profits following the decline of the 1970s. There was a massive wave of transnational investment in the 1980s and the 1990s, leading to overcapacity and overproduction. Capital began increasingly to seek an investment outlet through financial speculation – the notorious “casino capitalism.” The volatility of financial speculation in the face of over-accumulation led to the 1995 Mexico peso crisis and its “tequila effect” elsewhere, followed by the 1997-98 Asian financial meltdown, the Russian, Turkish, and Brazilian crises, and worldwide recession in 2001-02. It is at this point that structural and political pressures building up in the system lead towards a militarization of global accumulation. The U.S. state as the guarantor of the system sought to open up new outlets for the global surplus through a military Keynesianism and a war mobilization, through the “creative destruction” of war. From the 1990s to date we seen a shift in the axis of accumulation, from computer and information technology as the cutting edge, along with financial speculation in stocks, real estate, and so forth, to a military-industrial-petroleum-construction-engineering complex.
(...) [social welfare to social control] We are seeing a transition from social welfare to social control states, the rise of police states that manage prison-industrial complexes to contain the excluded population, new forms of social and spatial apartheid, social cleansing, Katrina-type militarized control responses to disasters and other stresses. We may be heading more generally towards a global police state.
(...) [Hasn’t globalization also led many nations out from underdevelopment?] Your question is phrased within a misleading nation-state framework of analysis, as if what “develops” or what is “underdeveloped” is a nation-state. This ignores class polarization, power relations, and social inequality within each nation-state. Globalization has turned many people in the South into participants – consumers - in the global marketplace – and spread the culture of global capitalism, with its individualism, consumerism, escapism and banality. But it has generated downward mobility, marginality and immiseration for many more. Inequalities worldwide have reached unprecedented proportions. The pattern is a polarization between 20 percent of the population that is advancing, on the one hand, and 80 percent that is falling behind, on the other. There are new transnational class inequalities that cannot be understood within the North-South divide. The global South is increasingly dispersed across the planet so too is the global North. India now has 200 million middle class consumers who participate in the global market, as does China, even while majorities in those countries sink into destitution. Global social polarization is cutting across national lines in new ways.
(...) [for the future] Social justice requires a measure of transnational social governance over this global production and financial system as a necessary first step in a radical redistribution of wealth and power to poor majorities. What would such a new redistributive component involve and how would it come about? Certainly it would require a reversal of neo-liberal policies at the nation-state level. But redistribution is not enough. It must be linked to the transformation of class and property relations. Local class and property relations have global implications. Webs of interdependence link the local to the global. Pockets of counter-hegemony are now emerging more clearly, for example, in the rise of an anti-neo-liberal power bloc in Latin America centered around Venezuela. Nonetheless, the challenge is how to convert a reactive global resistance into a proactive global program. The recent experiences of Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa, and Haiti, among others, make clear the limitations to reintroduction of a redistributive project at nation-state level alone. Any challenge to capitalist state power must involve a major transnational component. Struggles at nation-state level are far from futile. They remain central to the prospects for social justice and progressive social change. But any such struggles must be part of a more expansive transnational counterhegemonic project and a program to rein in on the global market and the power of global capital. An alternative to global capitalism must be a transnational project, involving transnational trade unionism, transnational social movements, transnational political organizations, and so on.
The key characteristic of this new epoch is the rise of truly transnational capital and a new globally integrated production and financial system. Production has become fragmented into countless and constantly changing phases that are decentralized and dispersed across the planet. In turn, the distinct segments are functionally integrated into vast global chains of production and distribution. Each autonomous national economy has been restructured and externally integrated, so that each “national” economy because a constituent part of the larger global production system.
(...) We also now have a truly global financial system. There is no longer any such thing as a national financial system. In fact, finance capital is the most mobile and the most transnationalized fraction of capital. This has major implications. Money capital exists in cyberspace, where it recognizes no borders and faces few, if any, state controls. Money capital subordinates fixed capital. Those who control money capital can appropriate values anywhere in the world by financial manipulation and relocate them on an ongoing basis to anywhere else in the world.
(...) I am pointing this out because it is transnational capital that stands at the pinnacle of these global networks. This means that there still may be local and national capitals but they cannot compete with transnationally mobile capital. If they want to remain competitive, if they want to continue playing the game, they must link up with transnational capital, and they must do so, structurally, in a way that subordinates them to transnational capital.
(...) [can we also speak of a global working class?]
Yes. There is a global working class that runs the factories, farms, and offices of the global economy. Their ranks can be found in the maquiladoras, in the agro-industrial complexes around the world, among the armies of service workers in global cities. However, the global working class is internally stratified. It is divided along national - as well as racial, ethnic, and gender - lines. The continued existence of the nation-state serves to distort the consciousness and subjective experience of the global working class.
[a capitalist class?] In distinction, the transnational capitalist class is a class group with a subjective consciousness of itself and its interests. Its members increasingly socialize together in their private institutions such as the World Economic Forum in Davos and develop a transnational class consciousness. In this sense it is a class-for-itself, to use Marx’s language on this matter, whereas the global working class is a class-in-itself but not yet for-itself.
(...) The question is how can the transnational capitalist class exercise its political authority? Well, one way is through utilizing existing state apparatus in each country, and we have seen plenty of that. Another is through the transformation of existing international institutions, such as the old Bretton Woods institutions or the agencies of the United Nations system, and the creation of entirely new ones, such as the World Trade Organization. Transnational capital attempts to convert the structural power of the global economy over individual countries and over working classes in each nation-state into direct political authority or influence through this transnational state apparatus. Transnational institutions attempt to coordinate global capitalism and imposing capitalist domination beyond national borders. The IMF, for instance, by imposing a structural adjustment program that opens up a given country to the penetration of transnational capital, the subordination of local labor, and the extraction of wealth by transnational capitalists, is operating as a transnational state institution to facilitate the exploitation of local labor by global capital.
(...) [on the transnational character of imperialism; nation-state less important in this process?] If by imperialism, we mean relentless pressures for outward expansion of capitalism and distinct political, military and cultural mechanisms that facilitate that expansion, then, yes, we are obviously seeing ongoing imperialism in 21st century. But there is nothing in this “new” imperialism to suggest it is a U.S. drive for empire in competition with other nation-state capitalists. Those who make this argument have frozen their historical analysis in an earlier moment. They are trapped in world of late 19th and early 20th century. They see world capitalism as still in its national “monopoly” stage of Lenin’s and Hilferding’s day, so that U.S. interv ntionism can only be a drive for “U.S.” hegemony over other states.
Recent U.S. policies such as the imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustment programs and sponsorship of free trade agreements have served to further pry open regions and sectors around world to global capitalism, to transnational capital. The IMF and other transnational state agencies have not acted as simple instruments of “U.S.” imperialism. I know of no single IMF structural adjustment program that creates conditions in intervened country that favors “U.S.” capital in any special way, rather than opening up the intervened country, its labor and resources, to capitalists from any corner of world.
(...) [and the effects?] The system is in chaos; its contradictions are explosive and, frankly, humanity is in grave danger. The global crisis is one of social polarization and social reproduction, reflecting the deeper structural problem of over-accumulation. The crisis is also of sustainability. An ecological holocaust has already begun. If we do not pull back from the precipice, and very soon, we could well be facing catastrophic consequences.
(...) [and the big picture?] Let’s step back and see the big picture. The 1980s saw a recovery of profits following the decline of the 1970s. There was a massive wave of transnational investment in the 1980s and the 1990s, leading to overcapacity and overproduction. Capital began increasingly to seek an investment outlet through financial speculation – the notorious “casino capitalism.” The volatility of financial speculation in the face of over-accumulation led to the 1995 Mexico peso crisis and its “tequila effect” elsewhere, followed by the 1997-98 Asian financial meltdown, the Russian, Turkish, and Brazilian crises, and worldwide recession in 2001-02. It is at this point that structural and political pressures building up in the system lead towards a militarization of global accumulation. The U.S. state as the guarantor of the system sought to open up new outlets for the global surplus through a military Keynesianism and a war mobilization, through the “creative destruction” of war. From the 1990s to date we seen a shift in the axis of accumulation, from computer and information technology as the cutting edge, along with financial speculation in stocks, real estate, and so forth, to a military-industrial-petroleum-construction-engineering complex.
(...) [social welfare to social control] We are seeing a transition from social welfare to social control states, the rise of police states that manage prison-industrial complexes to contain the excluded population, new forms of social and spatial apartheid, social cleansing, Katrina-type militarized control responses to disasters and other stresses. We may be heading more generally towards a global police state.
(...) [Hasn’t globalization also led many nations out from underdevelopment?] Your question is phrased within a misleading nation-state framework of analysis, as if what “develops” or what is “underdeveloped” is a nation-state. This ignores class polarization, power relations, and social inequality within each nation-state. Globalization has turned many people in the South into participants – consumers - in the global marketplace – and spread the culture of global capitalism, with its individualism, consumerism, escapism and banality. But it has generated downward mobility, marginality and immiseration for many more. Inequalities worldwide have reached unprecedented proportions. The pattern is a polarization between 20 percent of the population that is advancing, on the one hand, and 80 percent that is falling behind, on the other. There are new transnational class inequalities that cannot be understood within the North-South divide. The global South is increasingly dispersed across the planet so too is the global North. India now has 200 million middle class consumers who participate in the global market, as does China, even while majorities in those countries sink into destitution. Global social polarization is cutting across national lines in new ways.
(...) [for the future] Social justice requires a measure of transnational social governance over this global production and financial system as a necessary first step in a radical redistribution of wealth and power to poor majorities. What would such a new redistributive component involve and how would it come about? Certainly it would require a reversal of neo-liberal policies at the nation-state level. But redistribution is not enough. It must be linked to the transformation of class and property relations. Local class and property relations have global implications. Webs of interdependence link the local to the global. Pockets of counter-hegemony are now emerging more clearly, for example, in the rise of an anti-neo-liberal power bloc in Latin America centered around Venezuela. Nonetheless, the challenge is how to convert a reactive global resistance into a proactive global program. The recent experiences of Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa, and Haiti, among others, make clear the limitations to reintroduction of a redistributive project at nation-state level alone. Any challenge to capitalist state power must involve a major transnational component. Struggles at nation-state level are far from futile. They remain central to the prospects for social justice and progressive social change. But any such struggles must be part of a more expansive transnational counterhegemonic project and a program to rein in on the global market and the power of global capital. An alternative to global capitalism must be a transnational project, involving transnational trade unionism, transnational social movements, transnational political organizations, and so on.
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