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Labor internationalism and opposition to globalization:

antiglobalism and counterglobalism

Michael Hanagan

New School University

The distinction between anti-global and counter-global movements is central to the analysis of the worldwide response to capitalist globalization. Following our conference call, anti-globalism refers to movements that resist globalization while counter-globalism identifies movements that formulate an alternative to capitalist globalization. In the case of the labor movement, both anti-global and counter-global movements have undoubtedly increased since the "Battle of Seattle" in 1999 but the distribution of anti-global and counter-global movements varies considerably within the worldwide labor movement. In some countries when supranational protest occurs, an anti-global tone is overwhelmingly predominant. In other countries, counter-global movements thrive alongside anti-global movements.

How can this varying orientation of labor movements be explained? While the ideological orientation of trade unions and the structure of national trade unions undoubtedly plans an important role in influencing political orientation, it is not necessarily definitive. Despite their long-term ideological commitment to labor internationalism, many Marxist parties around the world articulate exclusively anti-global demands. Membership in transnational bodies such as the WFTU or the ICFTU is not inconsistent with anti-globalism. Perhaps as important as ideology, location in a state 2 system may be an important and neglected factor in understanding the orientation of movements towards globalization. "State system" refers to a group of states that interact with each other regularly and whose interaction systematically affects the behavior of each member state. Most state systems are composed of geographical neighbors and many have taken institutional form in regional organizations of state.

This paper argues that state systems influence the structures of states and interrelationships with other states and that these have a profound impact on the response to globalization of social movements that develop within state systems. The process of state system formation is historically contingent and the paper's first section looks at the development of one important state systems, the Westphalian system. The second section examines one successor state to the Westphalian system, the Latin American state system, and seeks to explain why it routinely produces anti-globalization labor movements. The third section looks at post World War II Europe and considers the contemporary European Union (EU) as a post-Westphalian state system that produces important examples of counter-globalization labor movements.

The Westphalian State System, Westphalian State, and Labor Movements

Leading political scientists such as Stephen D. Krasner and Alexander Wendt still debate whether the Westphalian state---territorial, independent, and aggressively pursuing its strategic interests---is an accurate depiction of contemporary international relations.1

While it may be a poor model for understanding contemporary international relations, it deserves consideration because it importantly influenced the formation of modern state systems and because it still shapes much of our thinking about states. Modern labor movements emerged for the first time within this Westphalian system. The labor 3 movement that emerged under the Westphalian order adopted a program of counter- globalization in so far as it supported the expansion of free trade and the implementation of international labor standards. Still the foundation of labor movement internationalism in Westphalian Europe was the national political party. Labor internationalism always coexisted uncertainly with nationalism.

The Westphalian state system is often presented as a model of self-interested competitive behavior among states but a real understanding of the state system must be based on its history. History alone can explain the specific genesis of the Westphalian system and why subsequent state systems modeled on it have developed in different directions. The territorially-based, sovereign Westphalian state system began its development before the Age of the Democratic Revolution and the Era of the Industrial

Revolution. In Europe, the rudiments of the centralized, bureaucratized and interventionary "consolidated state" developed either in advance or simultaneously with industrialization and democratization. As we shall see, in colonial states that had thrown off imperial domination, such as Latin America, democratization advanced ahead of both industrialization and state capacity. Different sequences of historical development were crucial to the evolution of state systems and to the social movements that emerged within them.

In Europe, out of the wreckage of more embracing political concepts of world empire and world church, a distinctive state and state system began to emerge with the

Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The Westphalian system recognized religious. diversity within the Holy Roman Empire. It strengthened territorial princes against imperial claims of allegiance and ended efforts to maintain an 4 institutionally-unified Christendom. It defined a political world where independent and sovereign territorial states were the dominant legitimate authorities and could even determine the religious faith of their subjects.2 Still only the rudiments of what have come to be called the "Westphalian state system" emerged in the 1640s and 1650s. Only a century later did political theorists such as Emer de Vattel and Christian Freiherr on

Wolff codify the practical principles of the settlement into an intellectually coherent concept of a "Westphalian system." 3

Whatever its ideological foundations, warmaking was the dynamic force that drove the Westphalian system relentlessly on.

Military competition forced state makers to bargain with bankers and taxpayers in ways that they would have scorned had the very survival of their state not been at issue.

Wars and the fear of losing them led statesman to increase ruthlessly their control over the national territory in order to collect taxes and conscript men. Concern for war led authorities to improve the health of the general population and to promote increased fertility (or at least to decrease infant and child mortality).4 As Europe democratized, prolonged wars with uncertain outcomes led governments to pledge social and political reforms to raise popular morale. "The state makes war and war makes the state" said

Charles Tilly and international war proved a powerful engine for increasing state's extractive capacities.5

The "balance of power" was the system's guiding principle and constituted a continuous invitation to war. It called for all states to band together against any state that threatened to dominate the system. In 1700 as soon as he heard that the deceased Spanish king had left his kingdom to Louis XIV's grandson, the Austrian Emperor, Leopold I 5 prepared for war. Whatever the legitimacy of its claims, France could not be allowed such a dramatic increase in its power. To work, the new system required three competitive powers and it usually had at least five.

As the state system became more firmly established, it became more carefully calibrated: relatively slight changes in the power balance produced major conflicts. As a result, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe warmaking became nearly continuous. While the end of the Thirty Years war marked the end of one of the largest wars in early modern European history, it was quickly followed by other conflicts that took hundreds of thousands of lives. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the

Franco-Spanish War (1648-1659), the War of Devolution (1667-1668), a first Ottoman

War (1657-1674)) the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), a second Ottoman War (1682-

1699), and the wars of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) were all major conflicts that cost at least one hundred thousand lives, sometimes much more.6 The eighteenth-century was even more brutal and unrelenting. The pace of war only slowed down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as European rulers confronted revolutionary democratic challenges within their own nations; nevertheless, wars when they did come were much more deadly with greater losses among civilians than during the first century and a half of the Westphalian era. Dramatic collapse in these wars and poor performance risked the loss of great power status. For many states, lack of success resulted in absorption by more militarily successful states.

In some sense the high point of the Westphalian state system in Europe was reached in World War I when European states, none of which actually wanted to go to war, each mobilized to counterbalance what each saw as a threat to the balance of power. 6

In the end, one of the powerful reasons sending the U.K. into the war was its fear that the

German invasion of Belgium presaged its annexation by Germany. The strategic importance of Belgium, opening England to foreign invasion, was one important calculation in the U.K.'s decision to declare war.

Clear territorial boundaries were a characteristic of Westphalian states but continuous warfare gave new importance to strategically-defined borders. While taking territory anywhere they could get it, rulers made more of an effort to build territorially contiguous states with strategically defensible borders. The doctrine of "natural boundaries" had long antecedents but emerged publicly during the French Revolution as revolutionaries tried to resolve the tension between national identity and strategic calculation in the drawing of state boundaries.7 The doctrine of "natural borders" asserted that military defensible borders represented a legitimate goal for state expansion. Of course, astute rulers had long appraised the strategic value of adjacent territories before advancing their own claims, but the claims of the French revolutionaries meant that strategic value justified annexation independently of any other legal claims.

From the beginnings of the Westphalian order in 1648, to its culmination in

World War I and until its end in 1945, strategic considerations constituted a key element of warfare and a major aspect of treaty settlements. The 1815 Vienna settlement gave rise to a United Netherlands combining modern day Belgium and Holland that was designed to strengthen France's northeastern border and to protect England's southeast flank. In 1919 at St Germain, the Austrian SouthTyrol/Alto Adige was given to Italy in gross violation of the self-determination principle. The basic reasons diplomats gave the territory to Italy were strategic and political. The South Tyrol controlled access to the 7 militarily vital Brenner Pass and the Alpine watershed provided Italy with protection against vengeful Germans. In 1920 British authorities also felt that Northern Ireland was valuable military asset, its shipbuilding industry, a vital national resources. It was a bulwark against an independent Irish Free State that might seek allies with a hostile

France or Germany and so constituted a strategic danger to the imperial heartland. The

Peace settlement of 1921 preserved British military control over four ports in the Irish

Free State and, for a variety of reasons including calculations of military strategy, retained Northern Ireland in the U.K..

State capacity also expanded alongside strategic borders in Westphalian Europe.

Prompted by military concerns, dramatic expansion can be seen in the centralization and control of the great European powers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. These developments culminated in the French Revolution and the decades of war that followed.

The consolidated state of the French Revolution was a "high-capacity" state of an unprecedented character; it was a bureaucratized, centralized state that intervened in the daily life of ordinary men and women.

In revolutionary France, a dramatic increase in democratization occurred simultaneously with the expansion of state capacity. In the throes of war, the French

Revolution deepened the democratization of the country while greatly accelerating the centralization that the Bourbon's had begun.8 Rapid state centralization was accompanied by a whole series of citizenship rights including the right to trial by jury, religious toleration, freedom of the press, the end of legally privileged corporations, and the abolition of noble titles. More importantly many males--the number varied according to different election laws---received the right to vote. Subsequently democratization and 8 state capacity fed on one another, democratization increasing state capacity and vice versa. Demands for public schooling, old age pensions, and highway building would emerge from democratic politics and bring increases in state capacity.

By themselves the consolidated, democratizing state of the French Revolution would have attracted only limited attention from European rulers. What made them all take notice was the ability of the French state, with its enhanced extractive capacity and increased popular support, to wage effective war. The armies of Ancien Regime Europe, based on demoralized conscripts and professional mercenaries, were no match for the more willing and more numerous conscripts and volunteers of the revolution. Mass conscription was one of the new innovations of the revolutionary era. In revolutionary armies, rich and poor shared food and shelter. This cross-class experience helped instill a spirit of citizenship among Frenchmen. Unlike the armies of Frederick the Great, the armies of Napoleon could perform quick night marches over difficult terrain and parade through big cities without losing half of their number in desertions. French armies could send out preliminary lines of skirmishers and expect those who had not been killed or wounded to return.9

The example of the revolutionary French armies continued to transform European statemaking long after Napoleon had been whisked away to St Helena. Looking at the

French case, European rulers sought to increase popular loyalty and expand state capacity while avoiding democratization. Mercenary troops fell out of favor while central

European monarchs turned to teachers to inculcate political loyalty in the common people and to draft boards to conscript the commons into royal armies. Restored monarchs retained the centralized measures --but not the democratic rights--enacted by French 9 occupying regimes or introduced their own centralizing legislation. Some of the centralizing legislation introduced in response to the French Revolution had longstanding antecedents in pre-revolutionary legislation.10 One great result of the Westphalian system stressed by Tilly was that while it recruited and trained an unparalleled number of professional military men, it also effectively subordinated the military to civilian rulers and bureaucrats. Increasingly in states where war was frequent and military success was required, civilians led governments, not generals.

Determined to keep strategically valuable territory, European states put a new emphasis on efforts to assimilate their populations. State-sponsored school masters sometimes enjoyed success in establishing a common language and culture among peasant populations but, just as often, such efforts produced popular reactions that strengthened attachments to minority languages and customs and served as the basis for the evolution of new nationalisms. Almost everywhere, however, the nation state remained a dream. The problems of ethnic minorities stretching across state borders remained a lively issue in European politics into the twenty-first century.

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, democratic tides swept over the consolidated states of the European state system but democratic tides ebbed as well as flowed. No headlong rush to democracy occurred. State bureaucracies, extending into the countryside and possessing extensive policing powers, were all in place long before most of today's continental democracies were established. For most of

Europe, democratic advances of the years between 1848-1851 were quickly reversed.

Except for France where manhood suffrage was securely won in 1848, the first substantial expansions of European suffrage generally came in the late nineteenth 10 century. The majority of British males did not get the right to vote until 1884 and only the electoral reforms of 1918, 1919, and 1928 gave the vote to all adults.

Democratization marched through continental Europe after World War I but, save for

France and the Low Countries, was pretty much routed in the 1930s as Europe massively dedemocratized.11

Inevitably, the socialist parties that emerged in a Westphalian state system with expanding suffrage were profoundly nationalizing parties. The basic activity of political parties and increasingly of trade unions was carried on at the national level. In most of the continent, European socialist parties were the first organized mass parties, and many workers entered national political life under their auspices. In fighting for social reforms and winning them socialist parties and trade unions also attached workers to states.12

Despite their strong national orientation, socialist parties generally favored market expansions and gradually formulated the elements of a counterglobalization program.

Socialists parties were generally internationalist--at least within the framework of

Westphalian economic internationalism. Between 1870 and 1950, every nation, powerful

European industrial capitalists themselves were divided on the desirability of free trade or protectionism.13 Throughout the period, while European labor movements often opposed the colonial incorporation of states until European empires, they generally embraced the incorporation of states into free trade zones.

Free trade was generally an article of internationalist faith among labor movements but also a reflection of class interest for the workers of industrial nations.14

Falling agricultural prices, resulting from the entry of grain from the Americas and meat from the Americas and Australasia, benefited urban workers; tariffs as aided rich and 11 often reactionary landlords (and peasants). Savage political battles in France and

Germany yielded higher tariffs but embittered labor movements. In the U.K., the great advocate of free trade, the election of 1906 was waged primarily over the Conservative turn to protectionism and brought a huge Liberal victory----and the first large contingent of Labour MPs into parliament. In 1931 in the U.K., the second Labour government's defense of the gold standard has deservedly been ridiculed but it was perfectly consistent with socialists' longstanding commitment to free trade.

While supporting the expansion of free trade, the labor movement also fought for international labor standards. In its origins in 1889 the May Day commemorations were intended as a battle for the eight-hour day. The foundation of the International Labor

Organization (ILO) in 1919 marks a high point of this internationalist strategy. The ILO whose early founders were in close contact with European socialists was intended to promote unified standards among Westphalian states. Indeed in the militant period after

World War I the ILO helped promote the spread of the eight-hour day, nation by nation.15

Yet for all its formal internationalism, the national structure of the European labor movement remained predominant. Discussions of labor standards were carried out at conferences organized by national sections and relations with the ILO were on a government by government basis. The road to internationalism led through the individual national party and was carefully regulated and supervised by national parties.

Preoccupied by national politics and authoritarian threats, labor movements showed increasingly less enthusiasm for counterglobalization movements in the decade and a half before World War II.

Non-Westphalian State Systems: Latin America 12

In some areas where state formation was profoundly shaped by colonialism and the age of the democratic revolution, state systems emerged that saw relatively low levels of inter-state conflict and high levels of intra-state violence. The earliest example of such a state system can be found in Latin America. This section argues that the combination of low state capacity and democratization helps explain both decreased warmaking and increased internal instability. It will also argue that, in contrast with Westphalian states driven to state centralization by the force of war, state systems such as that of Latin

America can have an impressive stability in maintaining the status quo in regard to state structure. In these states, labor movements have often developed in a nationalist direction, not simply by building national parties as in Europe, but also by championing projects for state expansion that Europeans had long taken for granted. In such labor movements antiglobalization themes predominated.

Let us begin with the Latin American case. The Latin American state system had important distinctive characteristics that distinguished it from the Westphalian state system in Europe. Latin American states were characterized by: (1) relatively low levels of warfare, (2) few strategic borders, (3) low state capacity, and (4) internal instability.

While the European and Latin American state systems had many contrasts, both participated in the Age of Democratic Revolution 1776-1848 and democratization played an important role in both systems.

A look at warfare in Latin America between 1816 and 1965 shows that it was far less militarized and less involved in murderous inter-state conflicts than Europe and

North America in the post-independence period. On a per capita basis, Europe and North

America had over 86 times the number of men in the armed forces. European and North 13

American armies killed more than 123 times as many people.16 Latin American wars were often more devastating than European wars but they occurred much less frequently; most casualties were concentrated in Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay.

Because war figured as less important in political calculations, strategic borders were less important in Latin American disputes. By 1825, marking the final triumph of their revolt from European domination, Latin American states had become Westphalian type states: they had acquired territorial borders and a sovereign government established in the capital city. Unlike in Westphalian Europe, territorial borders were less salient in

Latin America wars because war was less important: Latin American states had little inducement to demarcate, defend, and inspect border passages. Generally, Latin

American territorial borders were liminal. They marked off desolate and distant areas signaling the extreme limits of state power rather than being strategic locations marking points of confrontation between two political states. Although few and far between,

Latin American wars tended to break out in areas of unusual strategic and economic importance such as the La Plata basin and in the mid-Pacific littoral where Bolivia, Peru and Chile meet.

Border disputes in Latin America were often settled by arbitration. The great neo- colonial powers, Great Britain and the United States, often played a role in arbitration, typically obtaining advantages for themselves in the process as in the Chile-Argentina disputes over Southern Patagonia of 1902, the Peru-Chile disputes over the Tacna in

1929, and the Ecaudor-Peru-Columbia quarrels of 1942. At the same time, groups of

Latin American nations often sought to exert pressure for a settlement as in the Chaco

War of 1932-1935. 14

Unlike the French revolution in Europe, Latin American revolutions did not produce high-capacity states. The savage wars of independence (1810-1825) had basically been to control the patrimonial territories of the Spanish empire not to build a new state; in Latin America no centralized state like Prussia or Piedmont existed to incorporate weaker states. The vast territory of Spanish America with its different cultures and often difficult terrain made overall coordination of the revolutionary effort impossible and revolutionary armies were often autonomous actors rather than agents of clearly-constituted governments. Even after the wars of independence, the Church still possessed large properties and an elaborate set of immunities. Once independence was achieved, British support, given in exchange for commercial access, meant that the new nations need not fear further European intervention in their early decades. More threats came from the American north in a civil war that brought Texas independence and an extra-systemic war between Mexico and the U.S. (1846-1848) which helped centralize the Mexican state while inflicting grave territorial losses on it

Except perhaps in a few cases such as Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay the force of war did not increase Latin American states' extractive capacity and, throughout most of the period, most Latin Americans paid considerably less taxes than North Americans or

Europeans. As Centeno has argued, most Latin American states emerged from the revolutionary period built not on "blood and iron" but on "blood and debt." Latin

American elites balked at financing revolutionary efforts that by mobilizing masses in the army threatened elite political predominance. Unable to extract resources from local sources, revolutionaries turned to foreign lenders. In this way, Latin American revolutionary leaders were able to find financing without transforming their nations' 15 extractive capacities; the result of such strategies was successful revolution and subordination to foreign lenders. When states ultimately proved unable to pay, they were forced to relinquish control of natural resources or customs tolls and national sovereignty was further undermined. 17

Another characteristic feature of the Latin American state system was the advance of democratization. Latin America fully participated in the Age of the Democratic

Revolution. By 1825 most Latin American countries possessed constitutions conferring some level of democratic participation and citizenship rights.18 In general, early Latin

American constitutions were distinctive in giving the head of government large amounts of power but, overall, they were similar to most other constitutions of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Europe. Latin American constitutions had literacy and property qualifications but so did the French constitution of 1790, the Spanish constitution of

1812, and many American state constitutions.19 Unfree labor and slavery still existed in regions of democratizing Latin America but slavery also existed a large portions of the democratizing U.S.. Still despite their constitutions and the widespread predominance of republican forms of government (save in Brazil and Mexico for several decades), the rights of citizenship were often unenforced.

In some ways the very existence of democratic constitutions which conferred rights that were not enforced made Latin American elites fearful of taking the steps necessary for the construction of high-capacity states. Fear of popular democracy limited elites' willingness to recruit mass armies; small professional armies were handy checks for democratic movements. No Latin American state imposed an enduring policy of universal conscription on its male population and Latin American armies were generally 16 small establishments. Although the poor, indians, and blacks were often conscripted, universal military conscription was unattractive to elites who feared the massively arming populations subject to social and economic discrimination. Armies did not serve as

"schools for the nation" nor was entry into the army an egalitarian experience where recruits mingled across class and racial lines.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule but these exceptions can also provide a way of examining our argument and considering alternative possibilities. The example of Uruguay as presented by Fernando López-Alves illustrates the case of a Latin

American country that constructed a strong democratic state in the twentieth century. 20

While a variety of forces contributed to Uruguay's path, warmaking clearly played a central and distinctive role. From the wars of independence, Uruguayan rebels appealed and won support from more popular constituencies in the cattleherding countryside.

Repeatedly fending off invasions from Argentina and Brazil, Uruguayan Colorado party leaders succeeded in building a strong local constituency in Montevideo, the capital which contained more than a quarter of the country's population in 1852. Warmaking provided the basis for increasing state capacity. The war with Paraguay (1865-1870) brought to power a whole series of military leaders committed to reform. These leaders culminated with the regime of Colonel Lorenzo Latorre (1876-1880). Latorre was a force centralizer who promoted education, expanded government bureaucracy, challenged the power of rural caudillos, and enforced rural legislation. Despite everything Latorre had remained a loyal member of the Colorado party and when he stepped down he handed over power to his party. Despite the key role of a military leader, Latorre's administration created a centralized state that began to get the upperhand over the military. Increases in 17 state capacity preceded democratization and prepared its way. Latorre's regime created the basis for the social reformist and democratizing legislation of José Battle y Ordoñez at the beginning of the twentieth century.

While Latin American states avoided war between states, the same cannot be said of civil war. Low capacity states were too weak to respond to popular demands and their weakness often inspired resistance. Democratic constitutions that conferred rights that went unenforced were a standing invitation to protest. Unable to carry out broad political programs, state had to ignore groups, negotiate particularistic policies, and repress popular claims which could easily lead to an escalation of conflict. Over the course of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, civil war has taken a much higher toll of

Latin American lives than conflict between states.

A look at Latin American and Westphalian state systems focuses comparison between democratization in low-capacity and high-capacity states. In both Westphalian

Europe and Latin America, the Age of the Democratic Revolution produced an early wave of democratization that did not fully take in either system. In early nineteenth century Europe, democratization was generally repudiated by reactionary monarchs who continued centralizing policies. In contrast in early nineteenth-century Latin America constitutional rights were not so much repealed as unenforced and large sections of the population were excluded from citizenship. The pretence of democratic elections was maintained while rival party leaders divided parliamentary seats in advance. With so many unacknowledged claims, Latin American elites were naturally hesitant to arm and mobilize large sections of their population. 18

The nineteenth century failure to create high-capacity states remains a problem for twenty-first century Latin American labor movements. Labor movement reformers are naturally frustrated with low capacity states in which it was impossible to effectively implement reforms on a national scale. In many Latin American countries, labor movements and leftwing parties have undertaken the unfulfilled task of state formation.

As Jorge G. Casteñada has noted "this meant reducing social, regional, and ethnic disparities, instilling a common language and developing a notion of citizenship and equality before the law not too flagrantly at odds with inequality before society and power."21

Seeing a need for state building, long-ago completed in Europe, Latin American trade unions have often accepted corporatist integration into nation-building governmental coalitions. Corporatism and long experience with U.S. trade unionism has often made Latin American trade unions suspicious of international labor solidarity.

Particularly when supported by foreign labor movements, demands for international standards have ben viewed by Latin American trade unionists as efforts to by already industrialized nations prevent industry from establishing itself in their country.22 In such circumstances, nationalist anti-globalization behavior comes naturally to labor movements resisting genuine threats from international financial organizations often supported by the U.S.

A look at May Day protests in Latin America shows a vast increase in concern with antiglobalization after the Seattle protests. 2001 May Day protests in Honduras denounced free market reforms "imposed by international financial institutions" and marchers in Costa Rica opposed "concessions to the open market." Colombian 19 demonstrators were told that "the government is limited by the agreements with the IMF which leaves it with little freedom of action."23 Throughout Latin America anti- globalization demands dominated labor movement protests in successive May Days.

Post-Westphalian Europe: The EU

Although Europe has had its share of anti-globalization movements, it has also produced some important examples of counter-global movements. In the second half of the twentieth century a remarkable change occurred as a post-Westphalian order emerged in Europe. The new state system that increasingly emerged in Europe was characterized by a "composite sovereignty" in which high-capacity, relatively democratized

Westphalian states composed the building blocks of a federation, itself characterized by low capacity and limited democratization. Most power remained in the hands of the separate states and it makes sense to classify European Union (EU) Europe as still mainly a state system and not a federal state.

Considered as a state system, its most distinctive feature was its repudiation of war. In the words of Karl Kaiser, "Europeans have done something that no one has ever done before: create a zone of peace where war is ruled out, absolutely out."24 As exemplified by the Gulf War of 1991, EU nations still involve themselves in wars but the chances of EU nations engaging in conflict among themselves seems remote. After three hundred years of incessant military conflict how did this happen?

In Europe, the Westphalian order dissolved immediately after World War II. The

Cold War divided Europe between two powers and made the old "balance of power" game impossible. The U.S. and the U.S.SR both attempted to lead and coordinate the nations in their respective regions of Europe. U.S. domination allowed a great deal more 20 autonomy than Soviet domination, but both nations had considerable economic and military leverage in dealing with the nations belonging to their respective blocs.

While the U.S. championed a variety of forms of European union, the economic union that was originally established worked because it corresponded to the interests of

European states as these states were configured circa 1947. In post-World War II

Western Europe, in order to repair divided economies and sundered polities, individual nations were willing to establish common control over vital coal and ore resources and coordinate access to steel plants. The forces behind European integration were basically nationalist in one form or another, political nationalism dominated in some decisionmaking areas and economic nationalism in others. Germans sought to free their nation from the political tutelage imposed after the Second World War; Frenchmen looked to win access to German steelmaking capacity and ore fields; and Belgians sought to maintain a failing coal economy. While the pursuit of national interest dominated the political calculations of leading politicians, it produced a genuinely transnational product.

Once the factories and coal and ore fields of the European Coal and Steel community had been integrated it would be extremely difficult to disintangle them again. The growth of the European Iron and Steel community was established it encouraged Europeans to go further along the route of cooperation.25

As cooperation grew in the 1960s and 1970s, members of the European

Community, both elite politicians and ordinary people, realized that economic integration and increased political cooperation diminished the prospects of war with fellow

Community members. The change occurred gradually but it was fundamental to subsequent changes. The ending of the dispute over German rearmament in 1955 was an 21 absolute pre-requisite for the spread of a new pacific consciousness. The 1963 Franco-

German Treaty of Friendship negotiated between the "grand old man" of German politics, Konrad Adenauer and the "grand old man" of French politics, Charles DeGaulle was also an important step. Symbolic gestures had enormous importance. Europeans of a certain age never seemed to tire of the image of the Germany Prime Minister Helmut

Kohl shaking hands with the French President François Mitterand at Verdun in 1986. So powerful was the image that Kohl and then President Jacques Chirac repeated the gesture in 1996.

The recognition of the greatly reduced possibilities of military conflict had a whole series of important consequences. As the possibility of war diminished, European

Community members began to tear down formerly strong internal borders. One by one,

European nations abandoned mass conscription. Military budgets within individual nations began their long-term decline. Cooperation increased as the European Common market merged into the European Community and, today, the European Union.

Despite serious challenges, the European commitment to mutual peace remained firm. A key moment in the evolution of the EU state system was the incorporation of

East Germany into a united German state in 1989/1990. German reunification really did represent a serious change in the balance of power within the EU. West Germany had long been the economic powerhouse of EU development but the incorporation of twenty- million East Germany altered the established roughly equal demographic relationship among major EU nations, since the U.K., France West Germany, and Italy each had around sixty-million inhabitants. Initially opposed to immediate reunification, French president François Mitterand quickly realized the futility and danger of French resistance. 22

Ultimately, he seems to have responded to this change by endorsing European Monetary

Union, so as to diminish enhanced German power by more thoroughly integrating

Germany into the EU. Another case where nationalist impulses have led to transnational solutions.

But Mitterand's decision provides a striking contrast with a Westphalian response.

In 1700, faced with a similarly dramatic expansion of a rival power, Leopold I had declared war!

As possibilities of war diminished with the EU, so did the salience of old strategic borders. Where strategic borders had produced ethnic tensions, new solutions suddenly became possible. For example, in the 1980s British politicians, including the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, acknowledged that Northern Ireland was no longer of strategic value to Great Britain. Many Irish nationalists had already recognized that the

EU was making a preoccupation with border lines irrelevant. John Hume of the Social

Democratic and Labour Party, once a member of the Strasbourg European Parliament, has forcefully argued that the expansion of Europe can be the bases for finally solving

Ireland's age-old British problem. With both the U.K. and Eire as members of the EU, border problems are obsolete. The EU makes it possible to accommodate the loyalties of some in Nothern Ireland to Great Britain and others to Eire while maintaining the existence of an autonomous Northern Ireland. Hume argues that "The Single Europe and the whole ongoing process of integration…will provide a context which will require and should inspire, policy programmes and administrative instruments which will be cross- border and all-Ireland in scope."26 23

The present day "Good Friday" agreement that has brought a tense peace to

Northern Ireland would have been impossible in a Westphalian Europe. Both Irish and

U.K. governments are guarantors of the plan and each are recognized as intermediaries for the respective, republican and unionist parties. The Good Friday agreement approaches, ever so gently, the issue of joint sovereignty that was anathema to orthodox

Westphalians. Prior to World War II, the U.K. rejected all efforts of Irish governments to represent themselves as legitimate parties in internal Northern Irish matters. Further challenges to old Westphalian assumptions may be in the works. Some SDLP members have proposed that every citizen of Northern Ireland should possess two passports. All would have a Northern Irish passport and vote for representatives in the Northern Irish legislature and everyone could also choose whether to have a passport from the U.K. or

Eire. Those who choose a U.K. passport could vote on sending members to the English

Parliament. Those with an Eire passport could send members to the Dail (the Irish parliament). Such an idea is not anywhere near the front burner of Northern Irish politics but it could only be seriously proposed within a state system like that of the current EU.

While exciting cross-border solutions remain in the discussion stage in Northern

Ireland, they have been implemented in some regions of EU Europe. In the contemporary South Tyrol real progress has been made in ending eighty years of ethnic discontent. In South Tyrol, ethnic Germans have been fighting to maintain their language and culture since the cession of their province to Italy in 1919. The fascist regime attempted to stamp out German language and culture altogether and failed.

The democratized Italian state was less repressive but negotiations in 1946-1947 and an autonomy statute in 1948 elicited some concessions----but most of them were 24 never put into effect. In the 1950s, a militant separatist movement began to emerge and the South Tyrol elected autonomist deputies to the Italian parliament. In 1969, U.S.ing the traditional rhetoric of Italian nationalism, a state document affirmed "The inviolable nature of our frontiers…we repeat that our frontier is on the Brenner, consecrated by the sacrifice of over 600,000 lives." 27 In 1972, considerable progress was made in the negotiation of an agreement for "dynamic autonomy" but again it was only partially implemented. This agreement seemed to have broken down until the admission of

Austria into the European Community in 1990. With Austrian entry into the European

Community, the pace of progress picked up and by 1992 even Tyrolese autonomists agreed that the agreement was fairly enforced by the Italian government. The diminishing importance of borders between EU members has led to further concessions.

In 2001 a new revision of the Tyrolese statue has come into effect which provides much more thoroughgoing recognition of the international (ie Italian and Austrian) guarantees of the treaty, increased autonomy for the South Tyrolese legislature. and measures of recognition for the small Ladin population.28

Today, the South Tyrolese autonomy statutes have won wide acceptance and the

South Tyrolese play an important role in the Arge-Alp a transnational body composed of cantons, provinces and regions in the alpine areas of Germany, Austria Switzerland and

Italy. These groups are one of the most active members of the EU's Committee of

Regions.

The substantial degree of autonomy won by the South Tyrolese since Austria's entry into the European Community contrasts with the minor concessions won by the

Slovenes of the Julian Region of Italy. Although two conventions signed by the Italian 25 and Yugoslav governments in 1949 and 1955 eased the passage of people and goods across the border and greatly reduced tension, the Slovene population obtained none of the concessions won by the South Tyrolese. The major difference of course is that the line between Yugoslavia and Italy corresponded with a strategic border that still possessed some significance.29 The inclusi on of Slovenia into the EU may well lead to dramatic changes in this area.

One of the clearest indicators of the devaluation of strategic borders within the modern EU is the decentralization of modern-day Belgium. For decades liberal Wallons and more conservative Flemings have been held together by their fear of annexation by larger neighbors. A unified Belgian kingdom was long promoted by the U.K. which had long sought a stable independent territory on France's borders across the English

Channel.

As tensions between the French and Flemish speaking communities increased in the 1960s, politicians decided to abandon the centralized unitary Belgian state in favor of a federation that would have three elements: Flanders, Brussels, and Wallonia. Brussels, the capital, located in Wallonia but containing larger numbers of Flemish speakers was to occupy a special position. A complex division of administrative responsibility was made between national governments, regions and communities. While responsibility for international relations and economic policy is largely retained by the central government, non-territorial communities have important say on education, cultural policy and aspects of social welfare and geographically-based regions deal with planning, the environment, housing, energy and transport. Communities also exist for the protection of the German speaking minority which is mainly located in the Flemish areas.30 Belgian federalism 26 constitutes an extremely interesting experiment in dealing with ethnically-divided polities. But let U.S. stress the point. The fracturing of the Belgian state was unlikely in a region menaced by hostile and threatening neighbors.

While consolidated states remain the fundamental units of EU decisionmaking they can no longer claim to be omnicompetent. In a low-capacity federated state with relatively limited democratic rights, bargaining is carried out not only about policies but also about competency, about which institution, consolidated state or EU, has jurisdiction. And current trends are leading to further complications, producing a checkerboard EU legal system in which some laws apply in some EU nations and not in others. European Monetary Union, the greatest achievement of the EU, has further fragmented EU unity and led to a very significant reinforcement of the extremely dangerous principle that individual nations can opt out of EU policies. The result is an increased emphasis on a "multitrack" and a "two (or three) speed)" Europe based on

"variable geometry." In the hard economic times of the 1990s, even some of the old stalwarts adopted policies of financial retrenchment and increasingly national governments began to impose vetoes on EU expansion. In 1995 the Austrian EU commissioner for agriculture balked at efforts to develop further a common agricultural policy and the German Bundesrat asserted the need to scale back Germany's financial commitments.

While the growth of state capacity within the modern EU has slowed considerably there has been no return to the Europe of independent states. EU labor movement act within a larger political unit that is more reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire than

Westphalian Europe. Europe too has its anti-global movements but it also has developed 27 significant counter-globalization movements. Why? The counter-globalization character of these movements is not unrelated to the deterritorialized character of the contemporary

EU. Characteristic features of these new movements are their autonomy from existing national reform organizations, their easy spread across European borders, and their willingness to adapt to regional and local situations. One example of the new type of social movements emerging within the EU is the” Clean Clothes Campaign,” (CCC) a coalition of groups against sweated labor that originated in the Netherlands and has found

"partners" in much of Western Europe. The counter globalism of the CCC is based on its acceptance of the spread of free markets so long as wages and working conditions follow international guidelines. CCC urges consumers to purchase goods produced according to international labor standards; in their origins, the standards developed by the CCC are based on ILO standards.31

Unlike earlier labor reform movements the CCC is a relatively decentralized body in which local affiliates possess a great deal of autonomy. While the CCC is not in most cases an organization dominated by labor organizations, it almost everywhere includes trade unions and is frequently supported by socialist party affiliates, religious organizations, and women’s groups. So far, there is little evidence that the trade unions that support the CCC are engaged in low wage work that would give them a narrow economic interest in its success. The CCC began with the publication by a research group of a book revealing a major Dutch retailer, C&A, sold clothes made by low wage workers in many areas of the world. This publication initiated a campaign in which the

CCC formed ties with other Dutch organizations. 28

In 1994, the campaign went European as CCC formed partnerships with organizations in other European countries. These partnerships are quite flexible and the composition of the CCC groups differs throughout Europe. Recently subsidized by the

European Commission, the CCC is concerned with Third World labor conditions and stresses the importance of international labor solidarity. CCC has a very effective presence on the worldwide web and the internet is one of its important vehicles for recruiting supporters and establishing international connections.

Within Europe, from nation to nation, CCC affiliates represent a variety of different approaches to anti-sweating. In the U.K., the group has a distinctly working class and feminist appeal, calling itself “Labour behind the Label,” and is associated with

Women Working Worldwide, a feminist group within the Labour Party. In April 1996,

Women Working Worldwide issued a statement explaining their particular involvement in anti-sweating campaigns as an act of “international solidarity” on the part of both trade unionists and feminists. They noted that “trade liberalisation affects women differently from men and their definition of basic rights is not the same.”

Decentralized, cross-border, flexible, and adaptive, the CCC may well be a forerunner of a new generation of EU labor movements. It certainly helps to enlarge the sphere of counter-global movements within the contemporary labor left and it has important similarities with European human rights movements and other social movements.

Conclusion: anti-globalism, counter-globalism and state systems

In summary, this paper has argued that war plays an important role in the shaping of progressive labor movements. Attitudes towards globalization are profoundly shaped 29 by the state systems within which social movements develop. State systems are shaped by state capacity and state capacity is shaped by war. Social movements which develop within high capacity states and low capacity states both protest globalization but labor movements within high-capacity state systems show more support for counter- globalization, for alternatives to the uncontrolled expansion of markets. In part this is because labor movements within high capacity states may have more confidence in states' abilities to act. There is little evidence that particular trade unions, say those engaged in low-wage production, encourage international minimum standards in order to protect their own position, but it is possible that workers in industrialized countries have a general interest in such solidarity. In the particular case of the modern EU, deterritorialization and the ease of forming transnational movements may encourage faith in counter-global programs that depend on the implementation of reforms across borders.

In contrast, counter-globalization demands and movements are often weaker in low-capacity state systems, anti-globalization demands, stronger. This may seem counter-intuitive because such states might seem to suffer disproportionately from market exposure. But labor movements in low capacity states--for good reason-- may have little faith in state action. Labor movements distressed by the inability of their state to protect labor may join nation-building coalitions that are highly nationalistic. Such coalitions are often hostile to international institutions. 30 1Notes

Stephan D. Krasner Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, Alexander Wendt 2 Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, 1495-1806. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. 3 Krasner, Sovereignty 4 Anna Davit, "Imperialism and Motherhood," in History Workshop 5(1978): 9-66. 5 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990-1990. 6 Charles Tilly, Coercion and Capital. 7 Denis Richet, "Natural Borders," in eds. François Furet and Mona Oazouf, A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Pp. 763-770. 8 Charles Tilly, "Contention and Democracy in Europe," forthcoming June 2003. 9 John Lynn, Bayonets of the Republic Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 10 Michael Hanagan, “From the French Revolution to Revolutions,” in Storia d’Europe, vol. 5, eds. Paul Bairoch and Eric Hobsbawm (Einaudi, 1996), pp. 637-674 11 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes. 12 Marcel van der Linden, “The National Integration of the European Working Classes (1871- 1924),” International Review of Social History XXXIII(1988): Part 3: 285-311. 13 see Carl Strikwerda, “The Troubled Origins of European Economic Integration: International Iron and Steel and Labor Migration in the Era of World War I,” American Historical Review 98:4(1993): 1106-1129. For an example of the full complexity of this debate in a single country, Andrew Marrison, British Business and Protection 1903-1932. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. 14 Herman Lebovics, The Alliance of Iron and Wheat in the Third French Republic, 1860-1914: Origins of the New Conservatism. Baton Rouge; LSU Press, 1988. 15 Gary Cross, A Quest for Time: The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 1840-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. 16 Miguel Angel Centeno, "Limited War and Limited States," paper given at the seminar on Militaries and State Formation in Comparative and Historical Perspective, New School, 1998. 17 Miguel Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. University Park Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. 18 Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1500-1850 New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. 19 John Lynch, "Conclusion" in Latin American Revolutions 1808-1826: Old and New World Origins ed. John Lynch. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1994. Pp. 376-377. 20 Fernando López-Alves, State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900 Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. 21 Jorge G. Casteñada, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War, p. 283. 22 See essays by Mark Anner, Ralph Armburster, Joel Stillerman, Heather L. Williams in special issue of Social Science History on theme of Labor Internationalism, ed. By Michael Hanagan, forthcoming 2003. 23 Agence France Presse, May 1, 2001. 24 R.C. Longworth, Europe asks why U.S. can't see its miracle," Chicago Tribune July 31, 2002. 25 Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. 26 John Hume, A New Ireland: Politics, Peace and Reconciliation. New York: Roberts Rinehart, 1997. P. 135. 27 Mario Toscano, Alto-Aidge-South Tyrol. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1975. P. 247. 28 Antony Alcock, "The South Tyrol Autonomy," unpublished paper, May 2001. 29 Feliks Gross, Ethnics in a Borderland: An Inquiry into the nature of Ethnicity and Reduction of Ethnic Tensions in a One-Time Gencoide Area. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. 30 John Fitzmaurice, The Politics of Belgium: A Unique Federalism. London: Westview Press, 1996. 31 "Codes, Monitoring, and Verification--Why the CCC is Involved" Clean Clothes Newsletter June 15, 2002.

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