DOCSLIB.ORG

Introduction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Introduction PERSPECTIVES Perspectives on Global Development ON GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AND and Technology �4 (�0�5) 7-�0 TECHNOLOGY brill.com/pgdt Introduction Jerry Harris Editor, National Secretary of the Global Studies Association of North America [email protected] In 2014 the Global Studies Association of North American held its 13th annual conference at Loyola University in Chicago with the theme, “End of us Hegemony?” There have been ongoing and widespread discussions, in both academia and the mainstream press, over the power and role of the us in world affairs. Debilitating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a deep economic crisis and the snail-like pace of recovery, political deadlocks and the failure of government, the rise of China and the brics, all point to a superpower in rapid decline. Still those responsible for us foreign affairs, from the president to numerous elite think tanks, all insist the us is still the exceptional nation uniquely qualified to lead the world. Most left scholars agree with the official assessment, that the us is still the world’s leading superpower, although from a critical anti-imperialist perspective. Perhaps Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin best articulate this argument in their recent book, The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. But other left academics have come to dispute this viewpoint. Radhika Desai in her Geopolitical Economy: After us Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, draws a picture of the us lurching from one crisis to another, unable to create a stable regime and faced with com- peting powers creating a multi-polar world. World systems theorist Giovanni Arrighi in his final work, Adam Smith in Beijing, argues China will replace the us as the world’s leading hegemon. Common to all these schools of thought is that capitalism is a world system based upon competing nation states, the dominant form of capital is national, and capital has specific national inter- ests defended abroad by their representative states. To go outside this view we must turn to the school of global capitalism and transnational capitalist class theory. William I. Robinson in Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity challenges the idea of a world capitalist system organized around nation cen- tric economies. Instead Robinson speaks to the vast integration of capital and production across national borders and the emergence of a transnational sys- tem. The us state is part of this world system and represents the interests of transnational capitalists, no matter their national origin. This is true of other © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/�569�497-��34�3�9 8 Harris states, as well as transnational bodies such as the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund. Competition still takes place, but mainly between transnational monopolies and financial institutions. While the above theories were discussed at the gsa conference, panelists spoke to hegemony in many different forms and from different perspectives. The first section of this special issue of Perspectives on Global Development and Technology looks to the global South starting with three important articles on China. The first contribution is by David Schweickart, a keynote speaker and internationally known theorist on market socialism. Schweickart is impressed by China’s development, and while recognizing its many challenges, argues that China is not a capitalist country. Rather Schweickart maintains that the social control of investment, market socialism and greater workplace democ- racy will define China’s future. Mel Rothenberg, also a keynote panelist, sees a more powerful basis for the development and consolidation of capitalism in China. Rothenberg analyzes different fractions within the Communist Party, and predicts the struggle over the country’s future direction will mainly depend on the mobilization of the popular classes. Tianni Wang takes a very different look at China with a detailed investigation of how second-tier cities are inserted into patterns of global accumulation and culture. Wang’s work is a highly original attempt to investigate contemporary urban history, a field of study which usually concentrates on centers such as New York, London, and Shanghai. Completing the section on the global South are three more articles. Donovan Braud studies the Naxalite rebellion in India, its connection to rural poverty, and Marx’s concept of the Asiatic mode of production. The Naxalite Maoist peasant insurgency has been a feature of political conflict in India since the 1960s and over the past decade has grown in strength once again. Iqra Anugrah also looks at rural rebellions, but Anugah’s attention is on the peasant movements in Indonesia, particularly in West Java. Lastly we have Madalla A. Alibeli continuing his work on the position of women in the Middle East. This time Alibeli turns his attention to women in the United Arab Emirates and the cultural attitudes of both men and women. Section two pulls together a number of inter-related subjects organized around the problem of contested hegemonies, between nations as well as classes. We begin with an article by keynote panelist Ingo Schmidt investi- gating how globalization in Europe has led to the unmaking and remaking of the working class. Of particular interest to Schmidt is whether or not the growing social movements of resistance will lead to a new subjective work- ing class consciousness. Ismael Hossein-Zadeh turns his attention to us impe- rialism, comparing the George W. Bush years to interventionist activities Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 14 (2015) 7-10.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Global Issues
    Global Issues Bringing Class Back In* Sam Gindin, Adjunct Professor, York University, Toronto, Canada Over the past three decades a rather astonishing change occurred in the trajectory of capitalist societies. Working class achievements that were formerly seen as examples of capitalism’s success – rising standards of living, growing economic security – were suddenly redefined as ‘problems’. Concessions and permanent insecurity became the new norm, rising inequality the new inevitability. The catch-all term to describe this was ‘neoliberalism’ and Adolph Reed, a prominent US political scientist, nicely summarized its essence as ‘capitalism without a working class opposition.’1 This succinctly highlights the kind of society we get when labour is weak. But more important, it pushes us to confront the limited resistance of labour to that rightward shift since the end of the 1970s. This period did of course witness examples of courageous struggles and moments that brought glimpses of labour’s potentials. In fact, the response of Canadian labour was generally more impressive than elsewhere. Yet given the extent of the assault on working people, labour’s response was too sporadic, too timid, and far too narrow in scope. It’s this failure that I want to discuss – not in any spirit of giving up on unions, but as part of demanding more from this crucial institution. The last time there was as profound an economic breakdown as the recent financial crisis was in the 1930s. The contrast between the labour movement’s current reaction and the earlier one couldn’t be starker. Then, with the predominantly craft-based unions reeling and trapped in exclusive, increasingly bureaucratized structures, a rebellion within the labour movement – with communists playing a prominent role – gave birth to industrial unionism, an inclusive unionism committed to organizing across skills, race and gender.
    [Show full text]
  • Capitalist Crises and the Crisis This Time
    CAPITALIST CRISES AND THE CRISIS THIS TIME LEO PANITCH AND SAM GINDIN I xactly a hundred and fifty years before the current crisis began in August E2007, the collapse of the Ohio Life Insurance Company in New York triggered what became known as ‘the great crisis of 1857-8’. As it quickly spread to Europe’s main financial centres, Karl Marx ‘was delighted and thrilled by the prospects for another revolutionary upsurge on the continent’. As Michael Kratke notes, ‘the crisis started exactly as Marx had predicted already in 1850 – with a financial crisis in New York’ and the crisis itself led Marx to extend ‘the scope and scale of his study’ for the Grundrisse notebooks he was working on, so as to take account of ‘the first world economic crisis, affecting all regions of the world’. In their correspondence, Marx and Engels agreed that ‘the crisis was larger and much more severe than any crisis before’, viewing the financial crisis as ‘only the foreplay to the real crisis, the industrial crisis that would affect the very basis of British prosperity and supremacy’.1 In October 1857, Engels wrote to Marx: ‘The American crash is superb and will last for a long time... Now we have a chance’. And two weeks later: ‘…in 1848 we were saying: now our moment is coming, and in a certain sense it was, but this time it is coming completely and it is a case of life or death’.2 As the crisis abated and began to fade away in mid-1858, Marx tried to understand why it had not turned out as expected.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report 2009-2010 Institute for the Humanities Annual Report 2009-2010
    University of manitoba institute for the humanities annual report 2009-2010 institute for the humanities annual report 2009-2010 index Introduction 1 message from the director 1 Publications by the Director 2 Including Director’s 2009-10 Research umih research initiative 2 LGBTTQ Archival & Oral History Initiative the research affiliates 4 Including 2009-10 Affiliate Publications the research clusters 5 Law & Society 5 Power & Resistance in Latin America 5 Jewish Studies Research Circle 7 UMIH on-campus programming 7 UMIH off-campus programming 9 Co-Sponsorships with Other Units 9 graduate student training & outreach 9 Graduate Student Public Talks 10 financial report 2009-10 10 2010-11 Asking Budget 11 Board of Management 11 institute for the humanities 12 UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES ANNUAL REPORT 2009-2010 Introduction Throughout the year, the UMIH, with support from the Faculty of Arts, held a number of sessions for new scholars that attempted The constitution of the Institute requires the Director to report to provide an informal space to discuss the challenges of being a annually to the Dean of Arts, the Vice-President (Academic) and new faculty member. These sessions, normally held over lunchtime, Provost, and the Vice-President (Research). It is customary for ranged from discussing teaching and University service, to research this report to be presented annually at the year-end meeting of the potential and possibilities, as well as sources of intellectual and Board of Management. Copies are also distributed on campus to collegial support. We intend to continue this series next year and the President, the Associate Deans of Arts, the Institute’s Board of to reach out to new Faculty who are looking for potential linkages Management, and many supporters who are members of the Uni- for interdisciplinary collaboration.
    [Show full text]
  • Marx's Critique of Ideology: Its Uses and Abuses Keynote Speaker
    Society for Socialist Studies Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences June 2 – 5, 2015, University of Ottawa http://www.socialiststudies.ca Program, 28 February 2015 Kapital Ideas: analysis, critique, praxis. Kapital Ideas are theories and analyses that help point us toward a better world through critique of the unequal, violent and exploitative one we now inhabit. They take inspiration from the author of Das Kapital, though they range widely over many issues which include ecology and political economy, gender and sexuality, colonization and imperialism, communication and popular struggles, but also movements and parties, hegemony and counter hegemony, governance and globalization and, of course, class struggle and transformation. Kapital Ideas are interventions that contribute to what Marx, in 1843, called the ‘self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age.’ In an era of deepening crisis and proliferating struggles, of grave threats and new possibilities, the need for these ideas, and for the praxis they can inform, could not be more acute. Conference Highlights Keynote Address: Marx’s Critique of ideology: its uses and abuses Keynote Speaker: Himani Bannerji, York University Wednesday, 3 June 2015 @ 16:30-18:00 Montpetit Hall 203 Chair: TBA SSS Book Prize Wednesday, 3 June 2015 @ 18:10-19:10 Venue TBA The Rik Davidson/Studies in Political Economy 2014 Book Prize Lecture Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, York University The Unmaking of Global Capitalism? Tuesday, 2 June 2015 @ 17:30-19:00 Montpetit Hall 201 Chair: TBA Registration TBA Tuesday, 2 June @ 8:30-10:00 a.m. Note: our first sessions begin at 9:00, so register early, or during lunch break.
    [Show full text]
  • Gindin Pamphlet FINAL
    GLOBAL ISSUES: BRINGING CLASS BACK IN Sam Gindin Socialist Interventions Pamphlet Series This pamphlet series is meant to encourage principled debate amongst the left and the working class to advance a viable socialist movement in Canada. Democratic debate is encouraged within and beyond the Socialist Project. 1. Sam Gindin (2004). The Auto Industry: Concretizing Working Class Solidarity: Internationalism Beyond Slogans. 2. Leo Panitch (2005). Whose Violence? Imperial State Security and the Global Justice Movement. 3. Carlos Torres, et al (2005). The Unexpected Revolution: The Venezuelan People Confront Neoliberalism. 4. Hugh Armstrong, et al (2005). Whose Health Care? Challenging the Corporate Struggle to Rule Our System. 5. Labour Committee (2007). The Crisis in Manufacturing Jobs. 6. Richard Roman and Edur Velasco Arregui (2008). The Oaxaca Commune: The Other Indigenous Rebellion in Mexico. 7. Labour Committee - Socialist Project (2008). Labour Movement Platform. 8. Michael A. Lebowitz (2009). The Path to Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism? 9. Socialist Project (2009). Financial Meltdown: Canada, the Economic Crisis and Political Struggle. 10. Marta Harnecker (2010). Ideas for the Struggle. 11 . Angela Joya, et al (2011). The Arab Revolts Against Neoliberal Economies: Confronting Capitalism? 12. Stefan Kipfer, et al. (2012). Free Transit. 13. Greg Albo and Carlo Fanelli (2014). Austerity Against Democracy: An Authoritarian Phase of Neoliberalism? 14. Sam Gindin (2015). Global Issues: Bringing Class Back In To download these pamphlets and to learn more about the Socialist Project, see our website at www.socialistproject.ca Global Issues Bringing Class Back In Making Workers ………………………………. 6 Canadian Exceptionalism ……………………. 11 Disorganizing the Class ………………………. 13 Getting From Here to There ………………….
    [Show full text]
  • The Persistence of American Economic Power in Global Capitalism: from the 1960S Into the Twenty-First Century
    The Persistence of American Economic Power in Global Capitalism: From the 1960s into the Twenty-First Century Sean Kenji Starrs A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA June 2014 © Sean Kenji Starrs, 2014 Abstract This dissertation intervenes in the more than four decades-long debate on the decline or persistence of American economic power. It argues that we cannot move forward without reconceptualizing the nature of economic power in global capitalism, especially by moving beyond national accounts (such as GDP). Too many commentators from across the diversity of perspectives assume that the relative rise and decline of national accounts approximates the relative rise and decline of national economic power. In contrast, this dissertation argues that in the era of globalization, national accounts are an inadequate measure of national economic power. Rather, we must investigate the transnational corporations themselves in order to encompass their transnational operations, and analyze the matrix of inter- linkages now characteristic of global capitalism in general, and American power in particular. Therefore, this dissertation draws upon extensive original empirical research, including the following: 1) the first aggregation of the national sales- shares of the world’s top 200 corporations from 1957 to 2013; 2) the first aggregation of the national profit-shares of the world’s top 2,000 corporations across 25 broad sectors from 2006 to 2013; 3) the first aggregation of the top 50 national acquirers and targets of all cross-border mergers and acquisitions worth $1 million or more from 1980 to 2012; and 4) the first national aggregation of the ownership structures of the world’s top 500 corporations.
    [Show full text]
  • The Making of Global Capitalism
    Contents Preface vii INTRODUCTION 1 PART I: PRELUDE TO THE NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE . The DNA of American Capitalism 25 The Dynamic Economy 26 The Active State 31 Internationalizing the American State 35 . American State Capacities: From Great War to New Deal 45 From Wilson to Hoover: Isolationism Not 46 The Great Depression and the New Deal State 53 From New Deal to Grand Truce with Capital 59 PART II: THE PROJECT FOR A GLOBAL CAPITALISM . Planning the New American Empire 67 Internationalizing the New Deal 69 The Path to Bretton Woods 72 Laying the Domestic Foundations 80 . Launching Global Capitalism 89 Evolving the Marshall Plan 91 The American Rescue of European Capitalism 96 “The Rest of the World” 102 PART III: THE TRANSITION TO GLOBAL CAPITALISM . The Contradictions of Success 111 Internationalizing Production 112 Internationalizing Finance 117 Detaching from Bretton Woods 122 . Structural Power Through Crisis 133 Class, Profi ts, and Crisis 135 Transition through Crisis 144 Facing the Crisis Together 152 PART IV: THE REALIZATION OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM . Renewing Imperial Capacity 163 The Path to Discipline 164 The New Age of Finance 172 The Material Base of Empire 183 . Integrating Global Capitalism 195 Integrating Europe 196 Japan’s Contradictions of Success 203 The Rest of the World (Literally) 211 PART V: THE RULE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM . Rules of Law: Governing Globalization 223 The Laws of Free Trade 224 Global Investment, American Rules 230 Disciplinary Internationalism 234 . The New Imperial Challenge: Managing Crises 247 Firefi ghter in Chief 248 The Asian Contagion 254 Failure Containment 261 PART VI: THE GLOBAL CAPITALIST MILLENNIUM .
    [Show full text]
  • GLOBAL CAPITALISM and AMERICAN EMPIRE Leo Panitch
    1 GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN EMPIRE Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin ‘American imperialism… has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic.’ 1 Harold Innis, 1948 Este material aparecerá publicado en Socialist Register del 2004, y la revista nos autorizó a divulgarlo durante seis meses en la web Cuba Siglo XXI The American empire is no longer concealed. In March 1999, the cover of the New York Times Magazine displayed a giant clenched fist painted in the stars and stripes of the US flag above the words: ‘What The World Needs Now: For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is’. Thus was featured Thomas Friedman’s ‘Manifesto for a Fast World’, which urged the United States to embrace its role as enforcer of the capitalist global order: ‘…the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.... The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.’ Four years later, in January 2003, when there was no longer any point in pretending the fist was hidden, the Magazine featured an essay by Michael Ignatieff entitled ‘The Burden’: ‘…[W]hat word but “empire” describes the awesome thing that America is becoming? …Being an imperial power… means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest.’2 The words, ‘The American Empire: (Get Used To It)’, took up the whole cover of the Magazine.
    [Show full text]
  • The Stagflation of the 1970S Начало Падения Америки
    Vestnik RUDN. International Relations 2021 Vol. 21 No. 2 243—251 http://journals.rudn.ru/international‐relations Вестник РУДН. Серия: МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЕ ОТНОШЕНИЯ DOI: 10.22363/2313-0660-2021-21-2-243-251 Research article / Научная статья Prelude to America’s Downfall: The Stagflation of the 1970s Vassilis K. Fouskas 1 University of East London, London, Great Britain [email protected] Abstract. Since the end of the Bretton Woods system and the stagflation of the 1970s, the transatlantic core, under the leadership of the United States of America, has been trying to expand its model of free market capitalism embracing every part of the globe, while addressing its domestic overaccumulation crisis. This article follows a historical methodological perspective and draws from the concept of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD), which helps us consider the structural reasons behind the long and protracted decline of the American economic power. In this respect, according to the UCD concept, there is no global power that can enjoy the privilege for being at the top of the global capitalist system forever in a world which develops unevenly and in a combined way. Power shifts across the world and new powers come to challenge the current hegemonic power and its alliance systems. The novelty of the article is that it locates this decline in the 1970s and considers it as being consubstantial with the state economic policy of neo-liberalism and financialisation (supply-side economics). However the financialised capitalism of the transatlantic assemblage lack industrial base producing, reproducing and recycling real commodity values. Further, the article shows that this attempt to remain at the top of the global capitalist system forever has not been successful, not least because the regime which the recovery of the core had rested upon, that of neo-liberal financialisation represents a major vulnerability of the transatlantic assemblage eroding the primacy of the United States of America in it.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Manitoba Department of Economics
    University of Manitoba Department of Economics Economics 7690 Structuralist Theories of Development John Loxley Fall 2013 505 Fletcher Argue 474-9769 e-mail, [email protected] Objectives To acquaint students with competing non-orthodox theories of development and their evolution over time. The course will begin with a review of the main currents in orthodox theories of, and approaches to, development economics. It will then consider a variety of alternative approaches beginning with Latin American structuralism and its differences from ‘Anglo-Saxon’ structuralism. The debates about the original transition to capitalism will then be examined as will the Japanese transition which differed significantly from that in Europe. This will be followed by analysis of Marx’s writings on colonialism and their validity, as a segué into Neo-Marxian theories and the Staple Theory (as applied to Canadian and Aboriginal economic development). Feminist and ecological theories of development will also be studied. Theoretical issues in contemporary capitalism and the new imperialism will be addressed, as will the debates about structural adjustment and its role in the neo-liberal re-shaping of the global economy. The reasons behind the growing power of India and China will also be looked at. Post-development theory will be appraised critically. Other possible topics will be the role of institutions in development, contemporary debates about the role of aid, the nature and role of social capital, sustainable livelihoods and social inclusion. Where appropriate, the course will examine the strategies of development which appear to follow logically from the various theories. It will emphasise the richness of debate within the literature and highlight the principal issues which remain controversial or unresolved.
    [Show full text]
  • The Crisis and Economic Alternatives
    THE CRISIS AND ECONOMIC ALTERNATIVES GREG ALBO ince 2008, the world market has been wracked by a degree of economic Sturbulence unusual in its scope, depth and duration. Although uneven in its recessionary impacts, no corner of the global economy has been untouched by this. In the central economies of North America, Japan and Europe, this period has been universally demarcated as a ‘major crisis’, comparable to the ‘great depressions’ of the late nineteenth century and the 1930s and the stagflation of the 1970s. Even as the crisis now presses into its fifth year, economic prospects remain highly uncertain. In cataloguing obstacles to a renewal of economic growth in various parts of the world, the July 2012 IMF World Economic Outlook observes, with a tone of understatement, that ‘the global recovery, which was not so strong to begin with, has shown further signs of weakness’.1 As in other major turning points in the history of capitalism, powerful forces for restructuring the state and the economy have been set in motion. From both sides of the political spectrum, governments have been falling like dominos. In Italy and Greece, ‘technocratic governments’ were struck while in others something like a ‘common front’ formed between centre- right and social democratic parties to back the bailouts of the financial system and secure long-term policies of ‘fiscal consolidation’ (read austerity). This has kept even more interventionist economic policies within the parameters of ‘exceptional monetarism’ (along the lines advocated by Ben Bernanke of the US Federal Reserve), thereby seeking a balance between fiscal austerity and the ‘quantitative easing’ of monetary policy and debt consolidation to stabilize the financial system.
    [Show full text]
  • SOCI 501 Capitalism Socialism Democracy Syllabus Winter 2020
    DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY SOCI 501: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Winter Semester 2020 Meeting Times: Professor: Barry Eidlin Tuesdays 8:35-10:25 ([email protected]) Location: Leacock 819 Office: Leacock 820 Office Hours: Tue. 10:45-12:45 COURSE OBJECTIVES While this course has only recently come to McGill, it arrives with a storied history. It was originally developed in the early 20th century at the University of Wisconsin–Madison by the pioneering labour economist John R. Commons, who passed it down to his student Selig Perlman, also a labour economist of considerable renown. After World War II, the famous German emigré sociologist Hans Gerth, known for his translations of the works of Max Weber, took it over. Perlman’s lectures for this course have been published as Selig Perlman's Lectures on Capitalism and Socialism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976). The course was originally designed to explore the distinctive, some would say “exceptional,” U.S. political and economic landscape, and how it came to be that way. While it is a landscape that has fostered historically unprecedented levels of economic growth and prosperity for some, it has also led to levels of poverty and inequality that are unmatched among comparable countries. In this redesigned version of the course, we will be enriching this analysis of American exceptionalism by comparing the U.S. with Canada. While both countries are similar in many ways, they have important differences when it comes to politics and social policy. Exploring and explaining why those differences exist can help us better understand both countries.
    [Show full text]