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No. 71 Spring 2007 NO. 71 SPRING 2007 THE CLASS POLITICS OF PRIVATIZATION: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC WORKERS, LAND, AND SERVICES Introduction Jennifer Klein 1 Roots of Resistance to Urban Water Privatization in Bolivia: The “New Working Class,” the Crisis of Neoliberalism, and Public Services Susan Spronk 8 “There is tragedy on both sides of the layoffs”: Privatization and the Urban Crisis in Baltimore Jane Berger 29 Privatization and the Historical Trajectory of “Social Movement Unionism”: A Case Study of Municipal Workers in Johannesburg, South Africa Franco Barchiesi 50 The Two Faces of Petr Arkad’evich: Land and Dispossession in Russia’s Southwest, ca. 2000 Jessica Allina-Pisano 70 The Hospital Employees’ Union Strike and the Privatization of Medicare in British Columbia, Canada Benjamin Isitt and Melissa Moroz 91 A Class Approach to Municipal Privatization: The Privatization of New York City’s Central Park Oliver Cooke 112 Workforce Responses to the Creeping Privatization of the UK National Health Service Rebecca Kolins Givan and Stephen Bach 133 The Politics of Ports: Privatization and the World’s Ports Colin Davis 154 ARTICLES “Blame the System, Not the Victim!” Organizing the Unemployed in New Zealand, 1983–1992 Cybe`le Locke 162 Racism in a “Raceless” Society: The Soviet Press and Representations of American Racial Violence at Stalingrad in 1930 Meredith Roman 185 BOOK REVIEWS The Moral Significance of Class, by Andrew Sayer Reviewed by Siobha´n McGrath 204 Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932, by Kate Transchel Reviewed by Julie Hessler 208 Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius, by Megan Vaughan Reviewed by Anne Pe´rotin-Dumon 210 Los Artistas del Pueblo: Prints and Workers’ Culture in Buenos Aires, 1917–1935, by Patrick Frank Reviewed by Oscar Chamosa 213 Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosı´, by Jane E. Mangan Reviewed by Ann Zulawski 214 Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaraugua, by Elizabeth Dore Reviewed by Arthur Schmidt 217 Eric Williams & The Making of the Modern Caribbean, by Colin A. Palmer Reviewed by Godfrey Vincent 220 Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and Illegality in Mexican Chicago, by Nicholas De Genova Reviewed by Matthew Gritter 223 BOARD OF CONSULTING EDITORS Risto Alapuro Deborah Levenson-Estrada University of Helsinki Boston College Kathryn Amdur Bruce Levine Emory University University of Illinois, Eric Arnesen Champaign-Urbana University of Illinois, Chicago Earl Lewis Gerd Callesen Emory University Arbejderbevaegelsens Bibliotek Nelson Lichtenstein og Arkiv, Copenhagen University of California, Santa Barbara Jane Caplan Alf Luedtke St. Antony’s College, Oxford Max-Planck-Institut fu¨r Geschichte Lizabeth Cohen Mary Jo Maynes Harvard University University of Minnesota Patrizia Dogliani Gwendolyn Mink University of Bologna University of California, Santa Cruz Geoff Eley Mary Nash University of Michigan University of Barcelona Elizabeth Faue Mae Ngai Wayne State University University of Chicago John French Elizabeth Perry Duke University Harvard University Patrick Fridenson Anson Rabinbach Ecole des Hautes Etudes Princeton University en Sciences Sociales Pamela Radcliff Wendy Z. Goldman University of California, San Diego Carnegie Mellon University Philip Scranton Andrew Gordon Rutgers University Harvard University Dilip Simeon Rick Halpern Association of Indian Labour Historians University of Toronto Deborah Valenze William P. Jones Barnard College, Columbia University University of Wisconsin, Madison Marcel van der Linden Don Kalb International Institute of Social History, Utrecht University Amsterdam Linda Kerber Adelheid von Saldern University of Iowa Universita¨t Hannover Neville Kirk Barbara Weinstein Manchester Metro University University of Maryland Introduction: The Class Politics of Privatization: Global Perspectives on the Privatization of Public Workers, Land, and Services Jennifer Klein Yale University Abstract Surveying countries in all continents, a recent international report sponsored by The Club of Rome declared privatization to be “one of the defining features of our era.”1 Any major phenomenon of our time must have historical roots. The purpose of this volume is to address privatization as an issue of globalization, to give it a history apart from the totalizing notion of neoliberalism and the prescriptive models of economic theory. The consensus among social theorists and observers is that this global process of privatization is a result of neoliberalism, a practice and ideology whose central tenet is the primacy of markets. Certainly, the rhetoric and policies of neoliberalism have been spreading rapidly throughout the globe, but the blanket use of this concept has not enabled us to get inside the real social and political transformations that marked the last decades of the twentieth century. The writers in this volume introduce the particularities of social and labor histories and locate privatization in narratives of class politics and struggle. Bringing social and labor history into the analyses of privatization, at the same time, these essays put labor history, often monographically focused, into larger discussions of the state and capitalism. These essays make the class agenda of privatization explicit, viewing it not just as the “opening of markets,” but as clear assaults on the working classes and on the public claims that workers and citizens are able to make on the economy’s resources and productivity. Narratives of neoliberalism often present these models and imperatives as ema- nating from the United States and United Kingdom. For Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, “any economic analysis of the world’s current economic problems and of the decade that preceded, must begin with a discussion of America.” From his perspective, the story is one of how “Uncle Sam became Dr. Sam, dispensing prescriptions to the rest of the world.”2 But this is not a historically useful way of understanding the processes and conflicts at work. Whether presented in political or economic terms, it is often a top-down story: a story of governments, economic experts, and financial intermediaries. It cannot explain precisely why, when, and how privatization happens in any particular instance. Here we bring together scholars from history, labor studies, economics, and political science to connect the significance of local variation with the bigger picture. A first round of discussion concerning privatization focused on the transfer or sale of state industries, particularly extractive industry, transportation, and ports, to private hands. These large-scale privatizations did not necessarily begin under conservative governments. Privatization of British Petroleum, for International Labor and Working-Class History No. 71, Spring 2007, pp. 1–7 # 2007 International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2 ILWCH, 71, Spring 2007 example, was begun under the Labour government in 1977. Once begun, however, conservative governments accelerated the process. When Margaret Thatcher came into office in 1978, her government set out rapidly to privatize gas, electricity, coal, airlines, rail, telecommunications, and water. According to Mattias Finger, the term “privatization” was popularized by the sale of British Telecom in 1984. Within twenty years, Britain had sold off 119 enter- prises.3 Argentina, Chile, and Mexico sold most of their state-owned enterprises. In Chile and Peru, the sale of public assets occurred in nearly all economic sectors.4 In cases such as these, privatization has meant simply selling a public asset and transferring it to private ownership. Yet privatization more generally entails a complex and far-reaching phenomenon in which a wide range of formerly public goods and services are transformed into commodities available on the market. Privatization was also taking place through the use of private contractors for the purchase, sale, and delivery of particular goods and services that had previously been provided by the state. By shifting our focus to service sectors––healthcare, welfare, parks and recreation, and urban services––the essays in this volume look at this more complicated process of privatization. It becomes clear, then, that pri- vatization is not synonymous with the retreat of the state. Instead, as Beatrice Hibou writes, privatization entails the ongoing negotiation between public and private actors, “the constant redrawing of the frontiers between public and private.”5 As Stiglitz points out, business and financial interests certainly expected government to play a role in helping them gain access to markets.6 Rebecca Givan and Stephen Bach show us the privatization of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) has involved the growing outsour- cing of support services, the rise of privately employed workers in the NHS, and major expansion of the private sector in the construction of hospitals, pro- vision of clinical services, and the operation of all nonclinical services. In part, their study reveals how, in David Harvey’s words, “the boundary between state and corporate power has become more and more porous.”7 In this light, we might ask, when an inmate in an American prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) stares up at a guard with a PCA uniform and badge, is he looking at state power or private corporate power? One aim of this volume is to examine the response of
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