It's us or globalisation
BY STEPHEN DARLEY
Globalisation is not that new and not that different, despite some unique features. It's the latest phase of what we used to call imperialism — capitalism on a global scale, neo-colonising through direct economic relationships without the need for old-style colonial domination.
It marks a stage in capitalist development when there is decreasing room for expansion or intensification. Nearly all the world has been given over to capitalist productive forces and further development within existing countries has very limited potential.
Those countries with the most possibilities — the Third World — are also those unalterably allocated a role in the international division of labour which makes fully developed capitalism impossible.
These countries are required for resource extraction and/or for cheap labour. A powerful and autonomous local ruling class simply will not be permitted to develop. All that will be allowed is firmly subordinate compradors, agents of the transnationals who indeed share in the exploitation of their own people, but do not and cannot direct or dominate that exploitation.
So what does that leave? Capitalism by its very nature must expand or perish. And that absolute injunction is laid not only on the system as a whole but on each and every significant productive unit within it, principally the transnationals.
Not simply greed
We can talk about a system which is based upon an ethic of greed, because that is the basic psycho-social assumption of capitalist economics — the self-interested human. But greed as a motivator implies a potential change of heart, which is not available.
This is the full horror of this economic system — no matter what stands in the way, it must overturn it or perish. The old dream of a kinder, more just capitalism is a fantasy, despite its continued preaching.
Reform can and should be taken on board only for tactical reasons: to gain advantage for a further assault on the system, to expose its workings to more and more people, or to prevent an irrevocable step in destruction. But never accept the illusion that the fundamental drive to expand and intensify can be changed. That option is not available to the capitalist system.
For example, the Global Climate Coalition — a corporate front group made up of 200 corporate polluters like Exxon, General Motors, Ford, Texaco — works to pull the wool over the public's eyes on global warming.
These 200 companies are turning the atmosphere into one giant greenhouse. Ozone Action's John Passacantando says that the polluters could end the threat of global warming if they would simply embrace currently available technology to make the economy work more efficiently.
That may well be true, but the impossible dilemma for all transnationals is: if they consistently take action which reduces their efficiency in capitalist terms, even if it increases the overall longer-term health of the economy (and incidently the environment), they will lose out. Eventually they will be subject to forced merger and/or takeover by others who have avoided spending that money on non-profit-oriented actions.
If conditions are imposed from outside that all must comply with, some measures can succeed. This has been a major role of the capitalist state throughout its existence, to act in the interests of the ruling class as a whole, even at the expense of individual capitalist enterprises or even whole economic sectors.
But that safety valve is also being destroyed as transnationalism has grown: not only has no comparatively powerful capitalist global state apparatus developed, but existing capitalist nation-states are systematically being restricted to less and less jurisdiction under the ideology of small government.
When it comes to measures such as on global warming at the Kyoto summit, a vicious process of lowest-common-denominator outcomes increasingly applies (with the Australian government acting as the witless, grinning patsy of boastful self-destruction).
Ecological destruction
If room enough cannot be found for capitalism to expand in the old way, two options come up. War is obviously always a possibility, to re-divide the world. Otherwise, or as well, globalisation must turn to the environment itself to meet the insatiable need for growth.
Of course, that increasingly involves undermining the conditions of existence of that very system: the basic bio-physical structure of life on earth. That this means an unprecedented threat to the human (and many other) species is not the point, only the incidental by-product.
For every Hugh Morgan or other ugly capitalist who denies global warming, mass habitat destruction or pollution of the seas, there are many more principals in transnationals and their various agents in the media, scientific and political worlds who see the writing on the wall. Their response is "sustainable development", an attempt to solve the insoluble dilemmas of capitalist globalism.
How much damage is done to the world, its peoples and its living things in the meantime is primarily dependent on the politics of protest, and on the indeterminate time when those politics of protest turn into the politics of revolution.
Of course, there are many things to be worked out — some of you are anarchists, some Marxists, some feminists, some green activists or you are combinations of these or other political positions. And these differences are important and need to be worked through.
But in the face of a system which, independent of the wishes of even its chief agents, is consuming itself from its tail up to its head, and most of us along with it, the differences become of minor importance.
Previous systems of production, in limited geographical locations, have failed because they have destroyed ecologies essential to their own survival. The effects of the deforestation of classical city-state Greece for warfare purposes, and the salinisation of ancient Sumeria and Babylonia through intense large-scale irrigation can both still be seen today in Greece and in Iraq. But planet-wide degradation is inescapable — it's us or globalisation, a stark choice.
Responsibility
What are the key messages we get from the box or the mass-circulation newspapers? There are two main ones. One: it's a wonderful world, with astonishing new technologies and products; aren't you lucky to be part of it, and aren't the transnational corporations and the world leaders wonderful for bringing it to you via the wonders of globalisation. Or two: yes, it's a terrible world, terrible things are happening, and shouldn't you feel terribly guilty for being terribly responsible for it?
My response is simple: bullshit. I am not responsible for global warming, environmental degradation, massacres and wars, youth suicide, world poverty — and neither are you. But globalisation, the transnationals, the world's so-called leaders, are.
We are responsible for stopping them, but not out of negativity or out of guilt. We are responsible for positive reasons, because of our shared humanity, and our part in this still-beautiful world. We need to celebrate our achievements and spirit and look forward to sharing them with many others.
There was a fellow called Lenin whom some of you will have many disagreements with, and that's fine. But one of the things he said has stuck with me especially: Revolution is the festival of the oppressed. We may not be making revolution yet, just planning the preliminaries — but still, let's party!
[Abridged from a speech given to a teach-in organised by the Adelaide S11 Alliance on August 12. Stephen Darley has been a political activist for some 25 years in the anti-apartheid, nuclear disarmament and environment movements.]