DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 7, No. 2 (July 2001)

 

Globalisation, the reformist Left and the Anti-Globalisation ‘Movement’

TAKIS FOTOPOULOS

 

Abstract: This article discusses the meaning and significance of globalisation in relation to the main theoretical trends on the matter (which are compared and contrasted to the Inclusive Democracy approach), as well as with reference to the nature and potential of the present anti-globalisation movement. It is shown that the main division in the theoretical analysis of the Left on the matter, and also within the anti-globalisation movement, centres around the crucial issue whether the present globalisation (which is considered to lead to a growing concentration of economic and political power and to an eco-catastrophic development) is reversible within the market economy system, as theorised by the reformist Left, or whether instead it can only be eliminated within the process of developing a new mass anti-systemic movement, which starts building ‘from below’ a new form of democratic globalisation. It is argued that such an alternative  globalisation should be based on a New Democratic World Order that is founded on the equal distribution of political and economic power between nations and their citizens, irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity or culture.

 

1. Introduction

The first question that an examination of the so-called globalisation issue raises is what do we mean by globalisation and why is it significant? This is an important question given the present confusion on the matter, particularly in discussions among politicians, journalists and the like but, also, among theoreticians in the Left. At the same time, it is obvious that the meaning and significance we attach to globalisation is directly relevant to the political, economic, social, cultural and ecological implications we assign to globalisation—an examination of which will inevitably lead us to the main approaches to globalisation. The confusion arises not only because of the usual lack of clarity in defining globalisation but, mainly, because of fundamental differences concerning the nature of economic globalisation.

Today, almost everybody talks about globalisation but few attempt to define it. However, carefully defining it is important because a lot of confusion on the matter, even among analysts, is created by the fact that different people attach different meanings to the term globalisation. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that, although usually it is economic globalisation that many people have in mind when they talk about globalisation, economic globalisation is only one aspect, (or one component) ―though the main one― of globalisation. In other words, one may also talk about technological, political, cultural  and social globalisation.

Thus, technological globalisation refers to the new communications technology and the information revolution. Political globalisation refers to the withering away of the nation-state (at least as far as economic sovereignty is concerned).[1] Cultural globalisation, refers to the present homogenisation of culture, as expressed for instance by the fact that almost everybody in today’s’ ‘global village’ watches more or less the same TV serials and videos, consumes ―or aspires to consume― the same products and so on. Finally, social globalisation refers to the homogenisation of today’s’ mode of life which is based on an individualist and consumerist culture.

Although these aspects (or components) of globalisation are very much interlinked, still, one may argue that it is the economic globalisation which conditions the other components of it. This is because, as I attempted to show elsewhere[2], in a market economy the economic element is the dominant element in society —a fact, which does not preclude autonomy of the other elements. In other words, the relation between the various elements is asymmetrical in the sense that in market economies it is the economic element which conditions the political element, whereas, for instance, it was the other way round in the ex-‘communist’ societies in which it was the political element that conditioned the economic one. However, the relation between the various elements is also one of autonomy and interdependence. In other words, culture, economics and politics are not independent ‘spheres’, but interdependent and this is the case even in market economies where the separation into spheres is obvious. So, in this problematique, there is an interacting process in which economic globalisation is facilitated by technological globalisation but also enhances it, political globalisation is the necessary complement of economic globalisation, whereas social and cultural globalisation are the inevitable effects of economic globalisation. In the rest of this paper, assuming that the main component or aspect of globalisation is the economic one, I will concentrate on economic globalisation.

At the outset, we have to draw a clear line between the case of economic globalisation and internationalisation of the market economy. ‘Globalisation’ refers to the case of a borderless global economy in which economic nationalism has been eradicated and production itself has been internationalised in the sense that the big corporations have become stateless bodies involved in an integrated internal division of labour which spans many countries. ‘Internationalisation’ refers to the case where markets have been internationalised, in the sense of open borders for the free movement of capital and commodities (and, within economic blocks like the European Union, of labour as well) but nation-states still exist and share power with the transnational corporations (TNCs), in a system in which the role of the state is being progressively reduced to that of securing a stable framework for the economically efficient functioning of the market. In the system of the internationalised market economy, the economic policies of national governments and the reproduction of the growth economy itself[3] are conditioned by the movement of commodities and capital across frontiers, while the international institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the WTO nominally act under the instructions of the participating nation-states but effectively represent the interests of the transnational economic elites, which anyway play a decisive role in the process of electing the governing political elites in the major market economies.

It is therefore obvious that the present form of market economy cannot be described as a ‘global’ economy, since globalisation, in the above sense, is still limited. However, this does not deny the fact that the market economy of today is very different from that of the last century, even the one prevailing just fifty years ago. As I will attempt to show below, the new form of market economy that  has been established in the last quarter of a century or so, which we call an ‘internationalised’ market economy (rather than a ‘globalised’ economy, which is a misnomer), represents a structural change, a move to a new form of modernity, i.e. a move from statist to neoliberal modernity,[4] rather than a change in economic policy, as the reformist Left argues. In this sense, today’s globalisation (or, preferably, internationalisation)  is indeed a new phenomenon, although it is the outcome of the dynamics of the market economy that was established two centuries ago.   

In this paper’s problematique, the arrangements adopted in the post-war period in order to open and liberalise the markets, mostly, institutionalised (rather than created) the present form of the internationalised market economy. In other words, it was the market economy’s grow-or-die dynamic and, in particular, the emergence and continuous expansion[5] of transnational corporations’ (TNC)  and the parallel development of the Euro-dollar market,[6] which led to its internationalised form today. In fact, the opening and liberalising of markets was simply part of a historical trend[7] (which has been set in motion by the elites controlling the market economy since its establishment) to minimise social controls over markets and particularly those aiming to protect labour and the environment that interfered with economic ‘efficiency’ and profitability.

Thus, as regards first the institutionalisation of the opening of markets, commodity markets were in a process of continuous opening throughout the period following the second world war both at the planetary level (GATT rounds of tariff reductions so that TNCs could easily move commodities among their subsidiaries) and the regional level (European Economic Community [EEC], European Free Trade Association [EFTA], North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA], Southern Cone Common Market [MERCOSUR], the Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation [APEC] in Asia and the Pacific and so on).  Also, capital markets, which were in a process of informal opening throughout the 1970s, were formally opened in Britain and the USA at the end of the decade when capital and exchange controls were abolished, followed by the rest of the world in  the 1980s and the 1990s .xe "internationalised market economy"

Second, once the opening of markets was institutionalised, the uninhibited flow of capital and commodities across frontiers required the parallel liberalisation of all markets ―i.e. the minimisation of social controls  that have been imposed in the past, in the context of the social struggle, in order to protect human labour and society itself from the market. Therefore, although the labour markets were not opened  (so that the exploitation of cheap local labour, particularly in the South, could continue) their liberalisation was also necessary for the advantages of opening the commodity and capital markets to be fully utilised.  Labour had to be made as ‘flexible’ as possible, so that it could become easily adjustable to the rapid changes in technology and the organisation of production.The institutional arrangements to liberalise markets included:

The arrangements to liberalise the markets constitute the essence of what has been called ‘neoliberalism’/’neoliberal policies’ ―in effect, a misleading term since such policies have been introduced worldwide by governments of all persuasions, not only of the ‘Right’ (Reagan, the Bush family, Thatcher et al) but also of the ‘Left’ (what I call social-liberal) in Europe, Australasia etc. It is therefore clear that these policies reflect the structural changes of the market economy and the corresponding business requirements of late modernity; in this sense, they are ‘systemic’ or endogenous policies necessitated by the dynamics of the market economy. In fact, the neoliberal policies initiated by the economic elites of late modernity to liberalise the newly opened international markets simply repeated a similar process that was initiated by the economic elites of early modernity, at the beginning of the 19th century, to liberalise the ‘national’ markets, which had  emerged at the end of the 18th century. Still, for the reformist Left, as we shall see in the next section, neoliberalism as well as globalisation, are simply ‘utopias’ that the economic elites attempt to impose, in the context of a ‘project’ that ‘aims to create the conditions under which the neoliberal "theory" can be realised![8] However, the very fact that there is a broad consensus between all major political parties in the major market economies to implement such policies is an obvious indication that the presently universal neoliberal policies, far from being a ‘utopia’, in fact, reflect the structural changes of late modernity.  

2. ‘Systemic’ and ‘non-systemic’ approaches to globalisation

The confusion about the nature of economic globalisation arises out of the  conflicting answers given by the various theoretical approaches to globalisation on the crucial question whether globalisation is a  phenomenon of a ‘systemic’ nature or not.

In the case in which we see globalisation as a ‘systemic’ phenomenon, this implies that we see it as the result of an endogenous change in economic policy (i.e. a change reflecting existing trends that manifest the market economy’s grow-or-die dynamic). In this case, globalisation is irreversible within the system of the market economy. I will therefore call ‘systemic’ all those approaches to globalisation which,  in order to interpret it, refer to the structural characteristics of the existing socio-economic system, either implicitly or explicitly.

On the other hand, in the case in which we see globalisation as a ‘non-systemic’ phenomenon, this implies that we see it as the result of an exogenous change in economic policy. In this case, globalisation is a reversible development, even within the system of the market economy. I will therefore call ‘non-systemic’ all those approaches to globalisation which, in order to interpret it, refer to various exogenous factors that are not directly related to the structural characteristics and the dynamics of the market economy system. In the same category we may also classify all those views for which globalisation is just a myth or an ideology.

On the basis of this criterion, the neoliberal and social-liberal approaches to globalisation should be seen as ‘systemic’ approaches since they see it as a phenomenon mainly due to changes in technology and particularly information technology. But, technology, as I attempted to show elsewhere[9], is neither ‘neutral’ nor autonomous. Therefore, when neoliberals and social-liberals take the existing technology for granted, and therefore irreversible within the market economy system, they implicitly assign globalisation to ‘systemic’ factors and, consequently, they also take it for granted and irreversible.

Similarly, the Inclusive Democracy (ID) approach, which explicitly assumes that it is the grow-or-die dynamics of the market economy system that inevitably led to its present neoliberal globalised form, is also a systemic approach. For the ID approach, globalisation is irreversible, as no effective controls over markets to protect labour and the environment are feasible within the system of the internationalised market economy. However, although both the neo/social-liberal and ID approaches are systemic approaches (implicitly in the former case and explicitly in the latter), there is a fundamental difference between the two types of approaches. The neo/social-liberal approaches take the existing system of the market economy for granted, while the ID approach does not. As a result, whereas the former adopt globalisation with or without qualifications, the latter looks for an alternative form of social organisation, which involves a form of globalisation that is not feasible within the system of the market economy and statist ‘democracy’.

On the other hand, the approaches suggested by the reformist Left (see for a definition of it below) could be classified as ‘non-systemic’ approaches to globalisation. Thus, although these approaches usually assume that globalisation is an old phenomenon, which was set in motion by the emergence of capitalism—an assumption which prima facie gives the impression that they recognise the systemic character of the trends which have led to globalisation—still they assign an explicitly non-systemic character to it. The argument frequently used to overcome this blatant contradiction is that the capitalist system was always globalised and what changed recently was only the form of globalisation. However, this change in the form of globalisation is assumed to be not the outcome of the system’s dynamics (as one would expect on the basis of their assumption that globalisation is an old phenomenon), but, instead,  of such non-systemic or exogenous developments as the rise of the Right and/or of the neoliberal movement, the historical defeat of the Left after the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’, the degradation of social democracy and so on. Thus, on the basis of hopelessly contradictory arguments of this sort, the reformist Left sees globalisation as reversible and amenable to effective reform, even within the system of the market economy ―provided enough pressure is exercised ‘from below’ so that the political and economic elites are forced to introduce effective measures to protect labour and the environment.

Finally, between the systemic and non-systemic approaches, which I mentioned above, stands a number of intermediate approaches that are characterised by a mix of systemic and non-systemic elements and a significant number of analytical differences with respect to the usual  approaches of the reformist Left. I will classify under the label of an ‘intermediate approach’ the Transnational Capitalist Class approach, the ecofeminist approach and a recently developed anarcho-syndicalist approach. All of them will be discussed separately below.

But, let us examine in more detail the main theoretical approaches to globalisation.

The neoliberal approach

Neoliberals, which include most orthodox economists, conservative parties and the main international institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO et.c, adopt an unqualified positive stand towards globalisation.[10] According to the neoliberal approach, globalisation is the inevitable result of technological and economic changes which created the need for the opening of markets, free trade and free movement of capital, (though not labour), privatisations, flexible labour markets, as well as for the drastic restriction of the welfare state and the economic role of the state generally. Supporters of this approach maintain that globalisation is beneficial to everybody, as well as to the environment, because it supposedly allows healthy competition to develop and, consequently, it leads to improvements in efficiency and the spreading not only of knowledge, but also of the benefits of growth, through what they call the ‘trickle-down effect’.

However, the evidence of the past twenty-five years or so shows that the more open and flexible the markets become the greater the degree of concentration of income and wealth in a few hands. Thus, according to official UN data, the income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest, which was 30 to 1 in 1960 before the present globalisation began, it has doubled to 60 to 1 by 1990, and by 1997 it was 74 to 1.[11] As a result of these trends, by the late 1990s, the richest 20 percent of the world’s population had 86 percent of world GDP versus 1 percent of the poorest 20 percent! Of course, such concentration means a corresponding concentration of economic power, something that is confirmed by the fact that the same fifth of rich people control today 82 percent of world export markets and 68 percent of foreign direct investment.[12] It is therefore clear, and it can also be shown theoretically using radical economic theory or even parts of orthodox theory, that the concentration of income, wealth and economic power was the inevitable outcome of the opening and liberalisation of markets, which constitute the essence of  globalisation.

As regards the effects of globalisation on the environment, few doubt the negative nature of these effects. It is now widely accepted that the greenhouse effect, which is the main symptom of the ecological crisis today, is already leading to catastrophic climatic consequences[13]. However, it is not simply the resistance of some powerful corporate interests that, as social democrats argue,  prevents the political elites from taking effective action to deal with the problem. In fact, effective action against the greenhouse effect would require a complete change in today’s’ pattern of living. This pattern has been determined by the dynamic of the market economy and, in particular, the concentration of income and wealth between and within countries, the consequent urban concentration, the car culture and so on. A by product of the same concentration process is industrial farming, which has already led not only to the elimination of small farmers and the need to industrialise farming further through genetic engineering (supposedly to solve the food crisis that is looming because of the growth in population), but also to the spreading of diseases like the ‘mad cows’ disease (with possible catastrophic implications on human life itself), the foot and mouth epidemic and so on. It is therefore clear that the environmental effects of globalisation are due to systemic causes, which refer to the system of concentration of power that is institutionalised by market economy and representative ‘democracy’, rather than to ‘bad’ economic policies and practices.    

The ‘social-liberal’ approach

Social-liberals, which include the centre-left governments in Europe and Australasia, as well as establishment sociologists and economists like Anthony Giddens, Amartya Sen, Paul Krugman and others, adopt the present globalisation with some minor qualifications, which amount to little more than a ‘globalisation with a human face’. There are several versions of this approach but the common element in all these versions is that they all adopt the thesis that globalisation is both a new and an irreversible phenomenon (i.e. a systemic phenomenon) and, consequently, they explore ways of making it more ‘humane’. The explicit ―or sometimes implicit― assumption social-liberals make is that any return to some form of statism, like the one characterising advanced market economies up to the mid seventies, is impossible.

Thus, one version of this approach supported by theoreticians like Anthony Giddens, the father of the ‘Third Way’,[14] talks about ‘renewing social democracy’ ―having abandoned in the process the basic commitments of old social democracy, i.e. direct state intervention to secure high levels of employment, social welfare and equality. However, the ‘benefits’ of ‘Third Way’ policies have already started emerging in Britain, where such policies have been in full force since the rise of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ government in 1997. Thus, according to some recent data, under New Labour, there has been a significant increase in the huge poverty gap that conservative governments created in the 1980s and early 1990s: the incomes of the rich have grown three times as rapidly as those of the poor during the Blairite period,[15] whereas Britain still has almost the worst levels of child poverty in the industrialised world.[16]

Another version of the same approach is supported by Amartya Sen, an establishment economist and Nobel Prize-winner for economics, who is a strong supporter of the market economy and free trade. Sen stresses the absence of any basic conflict between, on the one hand,  economic globalisation (which he sees favourably) and, on the other, the fostering of democracies and prosperity.[17] For Sen, the problem is not free trade and the market economy, but the inequality of global power, which however he believes it can be adequately checked by NGOs, a watchdog institution that would be concerned with inequality and fair trade etc.[18] Obviously, for the  Nobel laureate, the inequality of global power has nothing to do with the market economy and free trade! Still, one does not need to be a Nobel prize winner in order to understand the strong correlation between the acceleration of globalisation in the last decade and the increase in the concentration of economic (and consequently of political) power as it is shown, for instance, by the fact that the world’s richest people more than doubled their net worth within just five years, from 1994 to 1999. As a result, in 1999,  the combined wealth of 200 billionaires amounted to $1 trillion 135 billion while the total annual income of the 582m people in all the ‘developing’ countries together was only $146bn, i.e. about 10 percent of this.[19]

It is therefore obvious that, unlike the reformist Left approaches that I will consider next, the social-liberal approach does not aim at any effective controls over the internationalised market economy to protect labour and the environment, as it takes for granted not only the system of the market economy and representative ‘democracy’ (as the reformist Left also does) but globalisation as well. As such, the social-liberal approach to globalisation, effectively, plays the role of legitimising the neoliberal globalisation, so that it can be sold to the middle class electorate that constitutes nowadays the power base of social-liberals in the governing centre-left parties.

The ‘non-systemic’ approaches of the reformist Left

I will call ‘reformist Left’ all those intellectuals, movements and political parties in the Left which adopt a ‘non-systemic’ approach to globalisation according to which globalisation is due to exogenous changes in economic policy and, as such, is reversible even within the system of the market economy. Therefore, the reformist Left includes all those who either suggest various reforms to improve the functioning of the internationalised market economy (e.g. eliminating its ‘corporate’ character, abolishing the neoliberal deregulation of markets and so on), or simply raise a variety of criticisms against it without proposing any alternative form of social organisation, adopting a postmodern rejection of universalism[20] or just taking the present system of the market economy and representative ‘democracy’ for granted. In this sense, the reformist Left on globalisation includes post-Marxists, socialdemocrats and others in the broad Left (Pierre Bourdieu, Immanuel Wallerstein, Noam Chomsky, Samir Amin, John Gray, Leo Panitch among them) who take a negative, but a reformist, stand towards globalisation.

There are several approaches which may be classified under this heading. They all share a common element: unlike the much more realistic social-liberals, they all adopt the thesis that globalisation is not a new phenomenon but something already existing at the beginning of last century and then go on to explore ways of resisting it (without raising any anti-systemic challenge) on the grounds that, apart from its adverse effects on labour and the environment, globalisation is also incompatible with the present ‘democracy’. The explicit ―or sometimes implicit― assumption shared by the reformist Left is that a return to some kind of statism is still possible, since the present globalisation of markets is simply seen as the product of neoliberal policies, (if not merely an ideology to justify neoliberalism), and not the outcome of a fundamental structural change.

Thus, Bourdieu, starting with the assumption that neoliberalism is a utopia, which was  imposed mainly by the American elite, concludes that we have to turn to ‘the nation-state, or better yet the supranational state ―a European state on the way toward a world state― capable of effectively controlling and taxing the profits earned in the financial markets and, above all, of counteracting the destructive impact that the latter have on the labour market’.[21] In this problematique, ‘globalisation is more of a political imperative than an economic fact’,[22] a policy aiming to extend to the world as a whole the American economic model:[23]

Economic globalisation is not a mechanistic result of the laws of technology or of the economy, it is the outcome of a policy which is implemented by  an ensemble of agents and institutions (…) the global market  is the product of a more or less deliberately coordinated policy (…) what is proposed and imposed in a universal way, as the normative model  of every rational economic practice, is in fact the universalisation of the specific characteristics  of one economy which emerged in the framework of a very concrete history and social structure, the history and social structure of the United States of America.

Analogous is the position adopted by some writers  in the reformist Left, like Leo Panitch,[24] Noam Chomsky,[25] and others, who also maintain that globalisation is nothing new, representing a kind of neoliberal conspiracy of US origin, whose aim is to promote the interests of US corporate capitalism. Their advice to the anti-globalisation movement is to exert maximum pressure on the elites, so that the nation-state is forced to resist the neoliberal globalisation. Similarly, Immanuel Wallerstein[26] explicitly adopts the exogenous (if not ideological) nature of present globalisation when he stresses that:

The 1990's have been deluged with a discourse about globalization. We are told by virtually everyone that we are now living, and for the first time, in an era of globalization. We are told that globalization has changed everything: the sovereignty of states has declined; everyone’s ability to resist the rules of the market has disappeared; our possibility of cultural autonomy has been virtually annulled; and the stability of all our identities has come into serious question. This state of presumed globalization has been celebrated by some, and bemoaned by others. This discourse is in fact a gigantic misreading of current reality ―a deception imposed upon us by powerful groups, and even worse one that we have imposed upon ourselves, often despairingly. (…)The processes that are usually meant when we speak of globalization are not in fact new at all. They have existed for some 500 years.

Finally, yet another version, supported by socialdemocrats like the LSE professor John Gray[27], declares the end of globalisation, following the example of Eric Hobsbawm, the doyen of Marxist historians, who, as late as 1998, was still proclaiming the end of neo-liberalism’![28] This time, the argument supporting the case for the supposed end of globalisation is based on the present slowdown in the US economy and the election of George Bush as US president.

The conclusion shared by everybody in the reformist Left (and also by the main body of the anti-globalisation ‘movement’), is that pressure ‘from below’ could reverse ‘neoliberal globalisation’, or at least force the social-liberal governments to ‘renegotiate’ its rules, and, in particular, the rules governing the operation of international organisations like the World Trade Organisation ―as, for instance, Pierre Bourdieu[29], Samir Amin[30] and others suggest.

But, let us see in more detail the arguments of the reformist Left that globalisation is a ‘myth’, or an ideology, with specific reference to probably the most systematic exposition of these arguments to date, the study by Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson,[31] who competently put the case for the continuing significance of the nation-state in the framework of the neoliberal internationalised market economy. Although the authors’ explicit aim is to attack the globalisation thesis that is put forward by the nationalist Right, their study represents in effect an argument in favour of the sort of strategy and policies suggested today by the reformist Left. Their argument can be summarised as follows:

1. The present highly internationalised economy is not unprecedented and the degree of openness in 1913 was in fact higher than in the post world war II period[32]

2. Genuinely trans-national corporations appear to be relatively rare since most companies are nationally based.[33]

3. The world economy today is not genuinely global since trade, foreign direct investment and financial flows are concentrated in the ‘Triad Countries’, i.e. the countries in the three main economic regions (North America, European Union and Japan).[34]

4. Therefore, the major economic powers “have the capacity to exert powerful governance pressures over financial markets and other economic tendencies. Global markets are by no means beyond regulation and control.”[35]

Let us examine each of the above arguments in more detail. As regards the authors’ first argument, as I will try to show below, it is true that during the liberal form of modernity there was indeed an initial internationalisation of the market economy, which was accompanied by an attempt to establish a purely liberal internationalised market economy. But, this attempt, for the reasons I will examine next, failed. So, although a significant degree of internationalisation of the market economy was already evident at the beginning of the twentieth century, still, the present internationalisation is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from that earlier internationalisation.

It is quantitatively different because, despite the unsubstantiated claims to the contrary, there has never been a similar degree of market openness in the past. The main indicators used by Hirst and Thompson to support their case of less openness today is the degree of trade and financial openness to the rest of the world. However, as regards financial openness first, the studies they quote to show greater  openness in the period before the first world war compared to today use a statistical indicator[36] which is not universally valid, as it yields nonsensical results in the case of the country with the major reserve currency, the USA. On the other hand, the use of alternative indicators points to a dramatic increase in financial openness. Thus, there has been a significant rise in foreign direct investment, which, as a proportion of the advanced capitalist countries’ GDP, has nearly doubled within the first 20 years of the present internationalisation.[37] Furthermore, huge short-term capital movements take place today within a global network of foreign exchange and capital markets in which something like one trillion dollars change hands every day. Last, but not least, the short-term capital movements of the present internationalisation differ not only quantitatively but also qualitatively from those of the earlier one. Thus, whereas in the early 1970s about 90 percent of capital movements were linked to investment and trade and only 10 percent were speculative, today, the situation has been reversed and only around 5% of the deals struck are linked with foreign trade, whereas the rest are purely speculative.[38]

Coming next to trade openness, contrary to the evidence produced by Hirst and Thompson, this openness, far from being lower today than in the pre-world war I period, has increased significantly in the last quarter of the twentieth century (i.e. the period of neoliberal globalisation). Thus, trade openness has increased in all major trading countries listed in the following table (apart from Japan) throughout the post-war period. As a result, the average index of openness increased from 43.6 percent in 1913 to 48.3 percent in 1996. Furthermore, trade openness  in 1996 was significantly higher in four major trading countries (US, Germany, UK and France) compared to 1913. As these four countries account for about three quarters of the total trade in the six countries listed, it is obvious that the claim by Hirst and Thompson that there was a greater international openness in 1913 than today (a claim which, curiously, is based on data up to 1973, i.e. before the beginning of present globalisation!) is hardly supported by the facts.

 

Trade openness* in major market economies

 

 

 1913

1950

   1973

   1980

 1996

 France

  35.4

  21.2

    29.0

    44.0

   45.0

 Germany

  35.1

  20.1

    35.2

 

   46.0

 Japan

  31.4

  16.9

    18.3

    28.0

   17.0

 Holland

 103.6

  70.2

    80.1

 103.0

 100.0

 UK

  44.7

  36.0

    39.3

    52.0

   58.0

 USA

  11.2

    7.0

    10.5

    21.0

   24.0

 

* Trade openness is measured by the ratio of merchandise trade, (i.e. exports and imports combined) to GDP at current prices

 

Source: Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalisation in Question, Table 2.5 (for the years 1913, 1950 and 1973) and estimates based on the World Bank’s World Development Report 1998/99, Table 20.

 

Equally significant is the fact that the present internationalisation is  qualitatively different from the earlier internationalisation. This is because the earlier internationalisation was based on nation-states rather than on transnational corporations as today. The degree of (formal or informal) openness of commodity and financial markets, which was much smaller in the past than today, has played a crucial role in determining the ‘agent’ of internationalisation in each period. It has also played a critical role in determining the degree of the state’s economic sovereignty. When the degree of market openness was small (up to the mid 1970s) states could exercise a significant degree of control over the level of economic activity through monetary, exchange rate and fiscal policies. On the other hand, as soon as (and as a result of the expansion of TNCs) the degree of market openness began increasing, nation-states have lost a significant part of their economic sovereignty. Thus, aggressive fiscal policies to control economic activity are no longer possible in a framework of open commodity and capital markets, whereas the present degree of integration of market economies makes equally impossible any really divergent monetary policies.

As regards the authors’ second argument that genuinely trans-national corporations appear to be relatively rare since most companies are nationally based, the real issue is not the proportion of TNCs to the total number of companies but the power they exercise. And the statistical data on this are conclusive. In the 1990s, the top 500 trans-national corporations controlled 70 percent of world trade), 80 percent of foreign investment and 30 percent of world GDP [Gross Domestic Product].[39] Furthermore, what is at issue is not whether TNCs possess a national base or whether, instead, they are stateless bodies, but whether their activities and particularly trade, investment and production are extended well beyond their national boundaries. In this problematique, a national base is still very useful to the trans-national corporations in gaining advantages against competitors and this fact is perfectly compatible with today’s accelerating marketisation[40] of the economy. In fact, the thesis supported here, as regards the significance of TNCs with respect to internationalisation, is very similar to the argument put forward by Suzan Strange that ”it is not the phenomenon of the trans-national corporation that is new but the changed balance between firms working only for a local or domestic market and those working for a global market and in part producing in countries other than their original home base”.[41]

Concerning the authors’ third argument that the world economy today is not genuinely global since trade, foreign direct investment and financial flows are concentrated in the ‘Triad Countries’, (NAFTA, European Union and Japan), it is indeed true that the bulk of the advanced market economies’ manufacturing trade takes place between these countries and only a small fraction (about 1,5% excluding China) is between them and the South.[42] However, this is not an argument against globalisation but an argument against the type of globalisation going on. The expansion of the market economy, as well as its internationalisation, has always been uneven, exactly because of its essentially self-regulating nature. Therefore, it does not make sense to expect today’s internationalisation, which is founded on the highest degree of marketisation in History, to be anything different. Any kind of internationalisation of the market economy is bound to be concentrated in the North, which has already created, within the marketisation process, built-in comparative advantages in productivity, efficiency, technology and competitiveness.[43]

Finally, as regards the authors’ argument, which is, in fact, the main argument used by the reformist Left, that global markets are not beyond regulation and control and that the major economic powers “have the capacity to exert powerful governance pressures over financial markets and other economic tendencies’, I would argue that the thesis advanced in this article does not imply the elimination of the regulatory role of the state, let alone its physical disappearance at the political level. What it does imply is the effective loss of the state’s economic sovereignty in the past quarter of a century or so. In fact, the authors themselves implicitly admit this when they christen as ‘radical’ even the objective of full employment[44] ―i.e. the main objective of social democracy throughout the period of the social-democratic consensus. It is therefore clear that when the authors argue that “far from the nation-state being undermined by the processes of internationalisation, these processes strengthen the importance of the nation state in many ways”,[45] what they have in mind is not effective social controls to protect labour and the environment, but, mainly, ‘regulatory controls’.[46] 

It is also noteworthy that even when the authors refer to the possibility of a “new polycentric version of the mixed economy” aiming to achieve “ambitious” goals, the only condition they mention for this is “a highly co-ordinated policy on the part of the members of the Triad”.[47] However, what the authors do not explain is why the elites controlling the Triad will embark on policies to create a new global mixed economy. In fact, the only argument they produce to support this case is the old underconsumptionist thesis, namely, that the reproduction of the growth economy is not viable in the framework of high inequality, which inevitably leads to low demand.[48] But, this argument ignores the fact  that the growth economy has shown no difficulty in reproducing itself, as long as the “two-thirds society” keeps expanding its consumption. It is clear therefore that for the authors, as well as for the reformist Left in general, the only way in which the elites of the Triad will be persuaded to adopt a global mixed economy is through some kind of pressure ‘from below’–no matter whether a mixed economy is still feasible today!

The reason why the reformist Left ends up with this sort of nonsensical conclusions is that their starting point is either a crude Marxist analysis, which assumes that the present internationalisation is no different from the early internationalisation at the end of 19th century/beginning of 20th (if not before, as Wallerstein suggests) or, alternatively ―as in the case of Hirst and Thompson― an a-historical analysis of the present world economy, which assumes that the present internationalisation is simply a conjunctural phenomenon rather than a structural change.[49] The conclusion drawn by both types of analysis is that the present ‘globalised’ economy is still ‘governable’ and that therefore all that is needed for the initiation of a system of effective governance over it is an effective pressure from the anti-globalisation movement.

However, the fact that the market economy is governable, in the narrow sense of regulation, is not disputable by anybody, apart perhaps from some extreme “globalizers”. The real issue is whether nation-states are still capable, in an internationalised market economyxe "internationalised market economy" , of imposing effective social controls to protect man and nature, or whether instead  such controls are not feasible anymore, either at the level of the nation-state,  the level of the economic block, or even the planetary level.

Thus, as regards the state, If we take into account the significant increase in foreign penetration of stock exchange and bond markets[50] that has taken place in the last quarter of a century or so, it becomes obvious that no national government today may follow economic policies that are disapproved of by the capital markets, which have the power to create an intolerable economic pressure on the respective country’s borrowing ability, currency value and investment flows. If we assume, for instance, that a social-democratic party adopts, against the trend, policies to reverse the flexibility of labour markets or, alternatively, more aggressive policies to slow down the greenhouse effect, it may easily be shown that under conditions of free capital mobility, this would lead to a capital flight and a pressure on the respective currency and stock exchange prices, i.e. to developments which could easily lead to a recessionary situation, if not to a full blown economic crisis. It is for these reasons that Mitteran and Jospin had to abandon any idea of resorting to the old social democratic policies, while Lafontaine had to be ousted from the German government.

Lafontaine’s case is particularly illuminating as regards the power of TNC’s. As the (reformist) author of a very recent book on corporate power describes it:[51]

In Germany, where revenue from corporate taxes has fallen by 50 per cent over the past 20 years, despite a rise in corporate profits of 90 per cent, a group of companies, including Deutsche Bank, BMW, Daimler-Benz and RWE, the German energy and industrial group, thwarted in 1999 Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine’s attempt to raise the tax burden on German firms, threatening to move investment or factories to other countries if government policy did not suit them. “It’s a question of at least 14,000 jobs,” threatened Dieter Schweer, a spokesman for RWE. “If the investment position is no longer attractive, we will examine every possibility of switching our investments abroad.” Daimler-Benz proposed relocating to the US; other companies threatened to stop buying government bonds and investing in the German economy. In view of the power these corporations wield their threats were taken seriously. Within a few months Germany was planning corporate tax cuts which would reduce tax on German companies below US rates. As one of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s senior advisers in Washington commented at the time, “Deutsche Bank and industrial giants like Mercedes are too strong for the elected government in Berlin.”

The situation is not much different with respect to economic blocks. If a block, like the EU, attempts to introduce the kind of policies that were dominant during the social democratic consensus, (e.g. policies to expand the welfare state irrespective of the impact of such  policies on inflation) or, alternatively, if it attempts to introduce strict environmental controls, irrespective of their impact on profitability, then, this block faces the immediate risk of a serious capital flight towards the other blocks with severe repercussions on its currency, the Euro, versus the other block currencies—particularly so when the chronic weakness of Euro versus the dollar seems to reflect the fact that the remnants of the welfare state in Europe are, still, more significant than in the USA. The process of internationalisation and the present degree of openness implies that social controls on the major market economies have to be homogenised. Since this homogenisation, in a competitive framework, is based on the principle of the ‘least common denominator” and given the present disparity of social controls in the Triad countries, any idea that the introduction of effective social controls (initiated by the state or the “civil society”) is still feasible becomes nonsensical. Therefore, the ideas currently adopted by some in the reformist Left that globalisation could be seen as a US attempt to impose its own version of free-market capitalism, which could be resisted by a EU based on a social market,[52] or, even worse by a new kind of ‘good’ nationalism,[53] simply reflect the present demoralisation of the Left and its inclination to believe utopian myths.    

One may ask at this point, what about the possibility of an international agreement by the Triad countries (the G7 for instance) to impose such effective controls? However, as anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the historical dynamic of the market economy and the political and economic power structures which resulted from this dynamic can assure, this is just a theoretical possibility. This is because such controls would violently contravene the logic and dynamic of the internationalised market economy and as such would come under the direct and indirect attack of the huge transnational corporations, which control not only the market economies but also the mass media, (on which the promotion of professional politicians crucially depends), and, of course, the sources of  financing of their hugely expensive electoral campaigns. Therefore, to demand today to impose social controls on the economic elites in order to protect effectively labour and the environment (beyond regulatory or relatively painless controls on their activities) amounts to demanding to restrict the very dynamic of the system of the market economy itself—a dynamic which crucially depends on the economic health of the economic elites and particularly that of the transnational corporations. On this, liberal, neoliberal and social-liberal economists have always been right: any effective social controls on markets to protect labour and the environment would necessarily encroach upon economic efficiency (as presently defined) and therefore on the profitability and the incomes and wealth of the economic elites.

In this problematique, the reformist Left’s explanation of the rise of neoliberal globalisation in terms of the ‘conversion’ of the old socialdemocratic parties and their betrayal of the socialist ideals, or in terms of the ‘historic  defeat of the Left’ after the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’, gives a distorted picture of reality. Although it is true that the demise of the working class movement  in the last quarter of the twentieth century has played a crucial role in the rise of neoliberalism, still, the decimation of the working class was directly related, as we shall see below, to the dynamics of the market economy and, in particular, to the drastic change in the employment structure, as a result of technological and economic changes. Therefore the conversion of the old socialdemocratic parties could be explained in terms of the change in the structure of the electorate, as a result of the corresponding changes in the structure of employment, and also in terms of the increased market openness, which made the statist policies used during the period of the socialdemocratic consensus incompatible with the growth requirements of the internationalised market economy.

It is therefore obvious that the general shift to the Right, which has marked the neoliberal form of modernity, had induced many in the Left to move towards the position once occupied by the old socialdemocrats—who have moved to social-liberalism and realistically accepted the non-reversibility of present globalisation. This is not surprising if one takes into account the fact that an adoption of the systemic nature of present globalisation would have serious political implications. In other words, recognition by the Left of the systemic character of globalisation would put it in a serious dilemma: either to adopt the present globalisation with some qualifications (as social-liberals do) or reject it altogether and challenge the fundamental institution that led to it in the first place, the system of the market economy itself. It is obvious that today’s demoralised and generally conformist (frequently by way of postmodernism) Left has chosen an intermediate way between these two ‘extremes’ that involves significant reforms of the globalised economy —which, however, are improbable within the system of the market economy. What is ironic indeed is that the reformist Left justifies the abandonment of any visions for an alternative way of organising the economy (beyond the systems of the market economy and the central planning) by an appeal to ‘realism’ when, in fact, its reformist proposals today are much more utopian than the visions of socialist statism it used to promote before the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’!

But, let us now turn to the three ‘intermediate approaches’ to globalisation mentioned above, i.e. the Transnational Capitalist Class Approach and the Eco-feminist and anarcho-syndicalist approaches.

The Transnational Capitalist Class Approach

This latest attempt to theorise globalisation from a Marxist viewpoint contains a mix of systemic and non-systemic elements and offers significantly different analytical insights on the matter from those adopted by the reformist Left. Starting point in this approach is its strong critique of the reformist Left on the grounds that not only it does not see the obvious fact of the various real processes of globalisation occurring at the moment[54] but it also characterises it, in a preposterous way, as a kind of ideology, if not a myth! However, this realism does not prevent the author of the TCC approach to derive the unrealistic conclusion that national governments can reform globalisation effectively, even within the existing system of market economy, because ‘globalisation is driven by identifiable actors working through institutions they own and/or control’.[55]

Still, the TCC approach takes an important step forward from the usual Marxist or Wallersteinian approaches, which  conceive of capitalism as organized primarily through national economies and, as a result, cannot see anything new in today’s’ internationalisation of the market economy. The TCC approach views globalisation as a new phenomenon, on account of a series of techno­logical, economic, political, and culture-ideology innovations, which began to change the world in the second half of the twentieth century. The primary factor which motivated all these changes —and on this the TCC approach comes close to the ID approach— was the emergence, in the second half of the 20th century, of the TNCs, which differ radically from firms in the past.[56] It was this development which led to the present emergence of a ‘transnational capitalist class’ composed of corporate executives, globalising bureaucrats and politicians, globalis­ing professionals, and consumerist elites. This new class is beginning to act as a transna­tional dominant class in two important spheres in which this approach perceives two central crises to be developing: the simultaneous creation of increasing poverty and increasing wealth and the unsustainability of the system. In fact, these two spheres are also the ones identified by the ID approach as the main components of the present multi-dimensional crisis[57], i.e. the growing concentration of income and wealth within and between societies and the ecological crisis —a crisis, which has worsened significantly in the last half century or so given that the ideology binding together the new form of the market economy is consumerism (a derivative of  the growth ideology).[58]

There are two basic criticisms that can be raised against the globalisation conception of the TCC approach.

The first criticism refers to the fact that this approach gives the impression that the new transnational capitalist class is the cause of the present globalisation whereas, in fact, it is only the effect of this process. In other words, as we shall see next, it was the dynamics of the market economy which had led to the emergence of TNCs and, consequently, of  a new transnational economic elite that institutionalised the present internationalised market economy and the neoliberal form of modernity. In exactly the same way, it was the dynamics of ‘nationalising’ the markets and the parallel Industrial Revolution, which had led to the emergence of a new economic elite that institutionalised the market economy and the liberal form of modernity.[59] Therefore, although the ‘subjective’ element (in the sense of the ‘social struggle’ between the elites controlling the market economy and the rest of society) was always crucial in determining the final outcome in each form of modernity (liberal, statist, neoliberal)[60], the importance of the ‘objective’ element (in the sense of the market economy dynamics) should not be underestimated. It seems however that the backlash against the objectivism of the Marxist ‘science’ of the economy, which had erupted after the collapse of socialist statism, induced today’s neo-Marxists, post-Marxists etc who, mainly, constitute the reformist Left, to focus on the subjective element at the expense of the objective element in interpreting History. This led to the blatant contradictions in the interpretation of globalisation that we examined above. It is for the same reason that the father of the TCC approach, in his attempt to emphasise the role of the state in the globalisation of the market economy at the expense of the role of its grow-or-die dynamics, talks about the ‘paradox’ of states which, as they opened up their economies to foreign companies, they facilitated the creation of the transnational capitalist class.[61]

The second criticism refers to the  TCC approach’ s conception of class which is a contradictory hybrid of the Marxist class conception and Bourdieu’s  taxonomy of various forms of ‘capital’:[62] money capital, political capital, organisational capital, cultural and knowledge capital. To my mind, although this taxonomy may be useful to those who do not wish to abandon the Marxist concepts altogether, (even if in the process they make them unrecognisable and therefore irrelevant to their original meaning), it leads to contradictory conclusions if it is used, as by Sclair, in order to define, in effect, the various forms of power in today’s society. Thus, although the author insists that ‘decisive long-term power flows from…the ownership and control of the means of production’[63] he then proceeds to describe the members of the transnational capitalist class as ‘a class in that they are defined in terms of their relationship to the means of production, distribution, and exchange’, and then as  a capitalist class in that ‘they own and/or control, individually or collectively, the major forms of capital’.[64] However,  his definition of this new capitalist class includes politicians, bureaucrats, professionals and mass media executives, who could hardly be classified as members of the capitalist class ―unless, of course one stretches the concept of ‘capital’, as Sclair does, to cover every form of power. But then this conception of the new capitalist class can be seen as little more than an obvious attempt to accommodate the major fault in the Marxist theory of the state: its exclusive concentration on economic power at the expense of the other forms of power characterising the power structures and relations of modern society.

On the other hand, all these categories, which Sclair attempts to fit to the Procrustean bed of the class concept, could easily be accommodated within the concept of a ‘transnational elite’. We may define the ‘transnational elite’ as the elite which draws its power (economic, political or generally social power) by operating at the transnational level —a fact which implies that it does not express, solely or even primarily, the interests of a particular nation-state. The transnational elite consists of :

The ID approach refers to a transnational ‘elite’ rather than a transnational ‘class’ because the former is a broader concept than  the Marxist class concept  that only partially expresses the reality of ‘class’ divisions in neoliberal modernity.[65] It is an elite, because its members possess a dominant position within society because of their economic, political or broader social power. It is a transnational elite, because its members, unlike the national elites, see that the best way to secure their privileged position in society is not by ensuring the reproduction of any real or imagined nation-state but, instead,  by securing the worldwide reproduction of the system of market economy and representative ‘democracy’ (rather than simply to promote the interests of global capital as the TCC approach maintains). This is because this new transnational elite sees its interests in terms of the international markets rather than the national markets. Still, not only the transnational elites do not hesitate to utilise the power of particular states to achieve their aims (even more so when this state happens to be today’s hegemonic power) but in fact they have to rely on the state machines of the major market economies to achieve their aims.

The existence of such a transnational elite is not simply theorised. In fact, the evidence is growing about the existence of such a  transnational elite which expedites the globalisation process by facilitating the institutional arrangements required for its smooth functioning. Few, for instance, are aware of the European Round Table of industrialists (ERT), an alliance of the chief executives of Europe’s largest companies, whose purpose is to formulate policies for adoption by the European Commission. Thus, the Single European Act, which opened and liberalised markets in the European Union, was framed not by the EU but by Wisse Dekker (the president of Philips and subsequently chairman of the ERT) whose proposal became the basis of the EU’s 1985 white paper.[66] Also, the EU enlargement plan (approved by the European heads of government in Helsinki at the end of 1999), which required new entrants to deregulate and privatise their economies and invest massively in infrastructure designed for long-distance freight, was mapped out by Percy Barnevik, head of the Swedish company Investor AB and chairman of an ERT working group.

Furthermore, the transnational economic elite in Europe, expressed by ERT, in coordination with the Transatlantic Economic Partnership (TEP), expressing the interests of the American economic elite, have been preparing, since 1995, a single market that would include a greatly enlarged and liberalised European market and a similarly enlarged and liberalised American (North and South) market. An important step in this direction is the FTAA process, which aims to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the entire hemisphere. This process has already led to the Declaration of Quebec (April 2001) that envisages the creation of the world’s largest free trade zone by 2005.

Finally, it seems that the GATS process (which aims to extend the General Agreement on Trade  to Services ―currently under discussion in the World Trade Organisation) provides another opportunity for the transnational elite to institutionalise its role. Thus,  according to a leaked confidential document from the WTO Secretariat, dated 19 March, a plan is under discussion to create an international agency with veto power over parliamentary and regulatory decisions (article VI.4 of Gats).[67] This plan envisages that final authority will rest with the Gats Disputes Panel to determine whether a law or regulation is, in the memo’s language, “more burdensome than necessary”.

It is therefore obvious that the transnational elite is already in the process of taking the necessary steps to institutionalise its transnational role. The immediate aim is to pull down the “regulatory barriers” impeding the free exchange of goods and services, initially between Europe and America, and then between this huge trading block and the rest of the world, which will be forced to accept the terms of trade of this block. The ultimate aim is the formation of a vast single deregulated market, controlled by multinational companies, in which social controls over markets to protect labour or the environment will be minimised.

In this problematique, although Boggs[68] is right in criticising the TCC’s conception of  a new capitalist class on the grounds that “without a transnational state in control of its own military and police forces, it would be premature to speak of a transnational capitalist class, even if many of the vital constituent elements are already in place”, one could argue that this criticism is much less relevant to the concept of the transnational elite adopted here. The conception of a transnational elite, being broader than that of a class, could easily accommodate the sort of tensions and divisions to which Boggs refers. In other words, the continuous existence of fierce divisions between and within political and economic elites does not preclude the existence of an overriding common aim, which unites the various elites constituting the transnational elite: to secure the uninterrupted flow of capital and commodities across frontiers and to eliminate any obstacles imposed to this flow by peripheral elites (e.g. ‘rogue’ states) on account of political, economic or military considerations.

So, although it is true that no formal arrangements have yet been set in place to institutionalise political globalisation, it could be argued that an informal form of political globalisation has already been initiated by the ‘transnational elite’, a globalisation which is implemented at present through international economic institutions (e.g. WTO) and political/military ones (e.g. NATO). The cases I mentioned above, as regards the former, and the two wars which were induced by the new transnational elite in the 1990s (i.e. the Gulf war[69] and the war in Kosovo[70]) as regards the latter, are obvious examples. Thus, it is illuminating that despite the clear divisions between the elites of the advanced market economies as regards these two wars, they eventually stood by the American elite, which plays the role of the political/military arm of the transnational elite, for the common good of the ‘international community’ ―as they euphemistically call the transnational elite.

It seems therefore that the transnational elite, for various reasons, relies at present on this informal system of political globalisation. Such reasons include: the persistent importance of national identities, despite (or because) of the cultural homogenisation forced by globalisation; the need to keep the semblance of a well functioning representative ‘democracy’ in which local elites are supposedly still capable of effective decision-taking; the need to provide safety nets for the provision of minimal social services to the destitute, through local safety nets organised by the state; and last, but not least, the need to delegate to the nation-states a significant amount of the monopoly of violence so that they are capable of controlling the population, and in particular the movement of labour, in a way that would maximise the benefits (to the transnational elite) from  the free flow of capital and commodities.

The Eco-feminist approach to globalisation

Another intermediate approach  is ecofeminism, supporters of which, like Maria Mies & Veronica Bennholdt-Thomsen,[71] have lately developed an analytical framework to interpret globalisation. Starting point in the authors’ analysis is a basically idealist explanation of the rise of the system of the market economy. Thus, the authors, in an obvious misreading of Polanyi, argue that his book The Great Transformation[72] ‘‘describes how this ideology (the belief in inherent economic laws)  took root, so that in the course of the nineteenth century the economy became independent of society’.[73] In fact, however, Polanyi  was much less idealist than described by ecofeminists and socialdemocrats today (although he himself was a socialdemocrat). As Polanyi stresses, after pointing out that the basic characteristic of the Industrial Revolution was the establishment of a self-regulating market (the system of the market economy) out of the local markets, which existed for thousands of years before:[74]

The nature of this institution cannot be fully grasped unless the impact of the machine on a commercial society is realised. We do not intend to assert that the machine caused that which happened, but we insist that once elaborate machines and plant were used for production in a commercial society, the idea of a self-regulating market was bound to take shape.

It is therefore obvious that for Polanyi (as also for the Inclusive Democracy approach) it is the interplay of changes in the objective conditions with corresponding paradigmatic changes that could explain the rise of the market economy, rather than primarily the former (as Marxists usually assume) or the latter (as idealists do). In particular, the rise of the market economy could be fruitfully explained by the interplay of the change in the objective conditions (brought about by the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the commercial society of the time) with the corresponding change in the dominant social paradigm’,[75] (i.e. the inevitable rise of the liberal ideology into a ‘hegemonic’ one) and not merely by the flourishing of liberal ideology, as Mies & Bennholdt-Thomsen assume. Similarly, the rise of the internationalised market economy today could be adequately explained by the interplay of the change in the objective conditions (brought about by the rise of TNCs and the emergence of information technology) with the corresponding change in the dominant social paradigm, (i.e. the  rise of the neoliberal ideology into a ‘hegemonic’ one) and not merely by the flourishing of neoliberal ideology, as the reformist Left, including ecofeminists, suppose.

If we accept this premise then we may see clearly the ecofeminist contradictions. Thus, Mies & Bennholdt-Thomsen emphasise, referring to Wallerstein,[76] that "globalisation" is not a new phenomenon: ‘right from its beginning the capitalist economy has been a world system based on colonialism and the marginalisation and exploitation of peripheral countries and agriculture’. Therefore, what  the authors see as new is only the form of globalisation, distinguishing, in the process, between three forms of it: the colonial phase proper (from the sixteenth century on up to the Second World War), the phase of the so called new international division of labour which started around 1972-73 and the present phase, whose main features are “the universalisation of the neoliberal dogma as the only possible economic theory and the elimination of all protectionist barriers to trade and investment, not only in the South but also in the East and the North”.[77] In fact, as if their aim was to dispel any doubts about the non-systemic nature of the ecofeminist approach to globalisation, they  stress that:[78]

Although the globalisation of the economy is as old as capitalism, the modern use of this concept refers to the period that started around 1990. ‘Globalisation’ is part of neoliberal economic policy, which aims at abolishing protectionist rules, tariffs and regulations (…) this policy has resulted in the integration of most national economies into one global market (…) three phenomena made this rapid change possible: first, the long-term political strategy of those who wanted to replace post-1945 Keynesian economics by neoliberalism; second, the new communications technology; and third the breakdown of socialism in Eastern Europe.

The obvious implication from the above extracts is that for Wallersteinians and their followers in the ecofeminist camp the rise of the internationalised market economy could be adequately explained by reference to exogenous factors like the breakdown of socialism in Eastern Europe and similarly exogenous changes to economic policy introduced by evil neoliberal governments and reproduced by degraded socialdemocratic ones. The ecofeminist way out of such an economy is a kind of utopian reformism which is based on the assumption that the present globalisation is reversible, even within the system of the market economy.  We may distinguish two versions of this utopian reformism.

According to one version, expressed by ecofeminists like Vandana Shiva, what is needed is a drastic reform of the present institutions. Thus, as Shiva stressed in the aftermath of Seattle:[79]  

[T]he failure of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting in Seattle was a historic watershed in more ways than one. Crucially, it has demonstrated that globalisation is not an inevitable phenomenon which must be accepted at all costs but a political project which can be responded to politically’.... Changing the rules (set by WTO) is the most important democratic and human rights struggle of our times. It is a matter of survival. Citizens went to Seattle with the slogan "No new round, turnaround". They have been successful in blocking a new round. The next challenge is to turn the rules of globalisation and free trade around, and make trade subservient to higher values of the protection of the earth and people’s livelihoods.

But, according to another version, proposed by Mies &  Bennholdt-Thomsen, our problems will not be solved through more regulation and equality politics within the framework of the existing welfare state  (or even the welfare state of the statist period). However, although this stand gives the  impression that this approach rejects the existing institutional framework of the market economy and statist ‘democracy’, in fact, this is not the intention. The fundamental institutions in this society which secure the unequal distribution of economic and political power (the system of market economy and statist ‘democracy’) are not seen by this approach as the main causes of the present multi-dimensional crisis and, consequently, are not challenged by it. Instead, the authors suppose that these fundamental institutions could somehow be by-passed and a new system be created that would combine, in a highly utopian way, these institutions with subsistence economics and politics. It is therefore obvious that for ecofeminists there is no inherent contradiction between the dynamics of the market economy and subsistence economics.

In this vein, the authors propose