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AFTER THE WAR --FROM TAKE-OFF (1945-1970) TO CRISIS (1970-PRESENT): The second World War inaugurated a new phase in the world system. The take-off of the post-war period (1945-1975) was based on the complementarity of the three social projects of the age: a) in the West, the welfare state project of national social-democracy, which based its action on the efficiency of productive interdependent national systems; b) the "Bandung project" of bourgeois national construction on the system's periphery (development ideology); c) finally, the Sovietist project of "capitalism without capitalists", relatively autonomised from the dominant world system. The double defeat of fascism and old colonialism had indeed created a conjuncture allowing the popular classes, the vic tims of capitalist expansion, to impose the forms of capital regulation and accumulation, to which capital itself was forced to adjust, and which were at the root of this take-off. The crisis that followed (starting in 1968-1975) is one of the erosion, then the collapse of the systems on which the previous take-off had rested. This period, which has not yet come to a close, is therefore not that of the establishment of a new world order, as is too often claimed, but that of chaos, which has not been overcome --far from it. The policies implemented under these conditions do not constitute a positive strategy of capital expansion, but simply seek to manage the crisis of capital. They have not succeeded, because the "spontaneous" project produced by the immediate domination of capital, in the absence of any framework imposed by social forces through coherent, efficient reactions, is still a utopia: that of world management via what is referred to as "the market" --that is, the immediate, short-term interests of capital's dominant forces. In modern history, phases of reproduction based on stable accumulation systems are succeeded by moments of chaos. In the first of these phases, as in the post-war take-off, the succession of events gives the impression of a certain monotony, because the social and international relations that make up its architecture are stabilised. These relations are therefore reproduced through the functioning of dynamics in the system. In these phases, active, defined and precise historical subjects are clearly visible (active social classes, states, political parties and dominant social organisations). Their practices appear solid, and their reactions are predictable under almost all circumstances; the ideologies that motivate them benefit from a seemingly uncontested legi timacy. At these moments, conjunctures may change, but the structures remain stable. Prediction is then possible, even easy. The danger appears when we extrapolate these predictions too far, as if the structures in question were eternal, and marked "the end of history". The analysis of the contradictions that riddle these structures is then replaced by what the post-modernists rightly call "grand narratives", which propose a linear vision of movement, guided by "inevitability", or "the laws of history". The subjects of history disappear, making room for supposedly objective structural logics. But the contradictions of which we are speaking do their work quietly, and one day the "stable" structures collapse. History then enters a phase that may be described later as "transitional", but which is lived as a transition toward the unknown, and during which new historical subjects are crystallised slowly. These subjects inaugurate new practices, proceeding by trial and error, and legitimising them through new ideological discourses, often confused at the outset. Only when the processes of qualitative change have matured sufficiently do new social relations appear, defining "post-transitional" systems. The post-war take-off allowed for massive economic, political and social transformations in all regions of the world. These transformations were the product of social regulations imposed on capital by the working and popular classes, not, as liberal ideology would have it, by the logic of market expansion. But these transformations were so great that they defined a new framework for the challenges that confront the world's peoples now, on the threshold of the 21st century. For a long time --from the industrial revolution at the beginning of the 19th century to the 1930s (as far as the Soviet Union is concerned), then the 1950s (for the Third World) --the contrast between the centre and peripheries of the modern world system was almost synonymous with the opposition between industrialised and non-industrialised countries. The rebellions in the peripheries --whether these were socialist revolutions (Russia, China) or national liberation movements --revised this old form of polarisation by engaging their societies in the modernisation process. Gradually, the axis around which the world capitalist system was reorganising itself, and which would define the future forms of polarisation, constituted itself on the basis of the "five new monopolies" that benefit the countries of the dominant Triad: the control of technology; global financial flows (through the banks, insurance cartels and pension funds of the centre); access to the planet's natural resources; media and communications; and weapons of mass destruction. Taken together, these five monopolies define the framework within which the law of globalised value expresses itself. The law of value is hardly the expression of a "pure" economic rationality that could be detached from its social and political frame; rather, it is the condensed expression of the totality of these circumstances, which cancel out the extent of industrialisation of the peripheries, devalue the productive work incorporated in these products, and overvalue the supposed added value attached to the activities through which the new monopolies operate to the benefit of the centres. They therefore produce a new hierarchy in the distribution of revenue on a world scale, more unequal than ever, while making subalterns of the peripheries' industries, and reducing them to the status of putting-out work. Polarisation finds its new basis here, a basis which will dictate its future form. During the "Bandung period" (1955-1975), the states of the Third World had begun to implement autocentric development policies aimed at reducing global polarisation (at "recouping"). This implied systems of national regulation as well as the permanent, collective (North-South) negotiation of international regulatory systems (the role of the CNUCED was particularly important in this respect). This also aimed at reducing "low-productivity labour reserves" by transferring them to higher-productivity modern activities (even if they were "non-competitive" on open world markets). The result of the unequal success (not the failure, contrary to common belief) of these policies has been the production of a contemporary Third World now firmly engaged in the industrial revolution. The unequal results of an industrialisation imposed on dominant capital by social forces engendered by the victories of national liberation today allow us to differentiate the front-line peripheries, which have been capable of building productive national systems with potentially competitive industries in the framework of globalised capitalism, and the marginalised peripheries, which have not been as successful. The criterion of difference that separates the active peripheries from those that have been marginalised is not only that of competitivity in industrial production: it is also political. The political authorities in the active peripheries --and, behind them, all of society (this does not preclude the contradictions within society itself) --have a project, and a strategy for its implementation. This clearly seems to be the case for China, Korea, and to a lesser degree, for certain countries of Southeast Asia, India, and some countries of Latin America. These national projects are confronted with those of globally dominant imperialism; the outcome of this confrontation will shape tomorrow's world. On the other hand, the marginalised peripheries have neither a project (even when rhetoric like that of political Islam claims the contrary), nor their own strategy. In this case, imperialist circles "think for them" and take the initiative alone in elaborating "projects" concerning these regions (like the EEC-ACP association, the "Middle Eastern" project of the US and Israel, or Europe's vague Mediterranean projects). No local projects offer an opposition; these countries are therefore the passive subjects of globalisation. This rapid overview of the political economy of the transformations in the 20th century global capitalist system must be completed by a reminder of the stunning demographic revolution that has taken place in the system's periphery at the same time, bringing the proportion formed by the populations of Asia (excluding Japan and the USSR), Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean from 68 per cent of the global population in 1900 to 81 per cent today. The third partner in the post-war world system, made up by the countries where "actually existing socialism" prevailed, has left the historical scene. The very existence of the Soviet system, its successes in extensive industrialisation and its military accomplishments, were one of the principal motors of all the grandiose transformations of the 20th century. Without the "danger" that the communist counter-model represented, Western social democracy would never have been able to impose the welfare state. The existence of the Soviet system, and the coexistence it imposed on the United States, furthermore, reinforced the margin of autonomy available to the bourgeoisie of the South. The Soviet system, however, did not manage to pass to a new stage of intensive accumulation; it therefore missed out on the new (computer-driven) industrial revolution with which the 20th century is coming to an end. The reasons for this failure are complex; still, it places at the centre of its analysis the antidemocratic drift of Soviet power, which was ultimately unable to internalise the fundamental exigency of progress toward socialism as represented by the intensification of a democratisation capable of transcending that defined and limited by the framework of historical capitalism. Socialism will be democratic or will not exist: this is the lesson of this first experience of the break with capitalism. Social thought and the dominant economic, sociological and political theories that legitimised the practices of autocentric national welfare state development in the West, of the Soviet system in the East and of populism to the South, as well as the negotiated, regulated globalisation that accompanied them, were largely inspired by Marx and Keynes. The latter produced his critique of market liberalism in the 1930s, but was not read at the time. Relations between social forces, skewed in capital's favour at the time, necessarily fuelled the prejudices of liberal utopia --as is the case again today. The new social relations of the post-war period, more favourable to labour, would inspire the practices of the welfare state, relegating the liberals to a position of insignificance. Marx's figure, of course, dominated the discourse of "actually existing socialism". But the two preponderant figures of the 20th century gradually lost their quality as originators of fundamental critiques, becoming the mentors of the legit imation of the practices of state power. In both cases, we may therefore observe a shift towards simplification and dogmatism. Critical social thought then shifted for a time --the 1960s and '70s --toward the peripheries of the system. Here the practices of national populism --a poor version of Sovietism --triggered a brilliant explosion in the critique of "actually existing socialism". At the centre of this critique was a new awareness of the polarisation produced by capital's global expansion, which had been underestimated, if not purely and simply ignored, for over a century and a half. This critique --of actually existing capitalism, of the social thought that legitimated its expansion, and of the theoretical and practical socialist critique of both of these --was at the origin of the periphery's dazzling entry into modern thought. Here was a rich and variegated critique, which it would be mistaken to reduce to "dependency theory", since this social thought was to reopen the fundamental debates on socialism and the transition toward it, but also on Marxism and historical materialism, understood as having to transcend the limits of the Eurocentrism that dominated modern thought. Undeniably inspired for a moment by the Maoist eruption, it also initiated the critique of both Sovietism and the new globalism glimmering on the horizon. THE "FIN-DE-SIECLE" CRISIS: That period of the 20th century is over and done with. Starting in 1968-71, the collapse of the three post-war models of regulated accumulation opened up a structural crisis of the system very reminiscent of that of the end of the 19th century. Growth and investment rates fell precipitously to half previous levels; unemployment soared; pauperisation was intensified. The ratio used to measure inequality in the capitalist world (1 to 20 toward 1900; 1 to 30 in 1954-48; 1 to 60 at the end of the post-war growth spurt) increased sharply: the wealthiest 20 per cent of humanity increased their share of the global product from 60 to 80 per cent during the two last decades of this century --globalisation has been fortunate for some. For the vast majority --notably, for the peoples of the South, subjected to unilateral structural adjustment policies, and those of the East, locked into dramatic involutions --it has been a disaster. But this structural crisis, like its predecessor, is accompanied by a third technological revolution, which profoundly alters modes of labour organisation, divesting the old forms of worker and popular organisation and struggle of their efficiency, and therefore their legitimacy. The fragmented social movement has not yet found a strong formula for crystallisation, capable of meeting the challenges posed; but it has made remarkable breakthroughs, in directions that enrich its impact: principally, women's powerful entry into social life, as well as a new awareness of environmental destruction on a scale which, for the first time in history, threatens the entire planet. The management of the crisis, based on a brutal reversal of relations of power in capital's favour, has made it possible for liberalist recipes to impose themselves anew. Marx and Keynes having been erased from social thought, the "theoreticians" of "pure economics" have replaced the analysis of the real world with that of an imaginary capitalism. But the temporary success of this highly reactionary utopian thought is simply the symptom of a decline --witchcraft takes the place of critical thought --that testifies to the fact that capitalism is objectively ready to be transcended. Crisis management has already entered the phase of collapse. The crisis in Southeast Asia and Korea was predictable. During the 1980s these countries, and China as well, managed to benefit from the world crisis through greater insertion in world exchanges (based on their "comparative advantage" of cheap labour), attracting foreign investment but remaining on the sidelines of financial globalisation, and inscribing their development projects in a nationally controlled strategy (in the cases of China and Korea, not the countries of southeast Asia). In the 1990s, Korea and Southeast Asia opened up to financial globalisation, while China and India began to evolve in the same direction. Attracted by the region's high growth levels, the surplus of floating foreign capital flowed in, producing not accelerated growth but inflation in movable property values and real estate investments. As had been predicted, the financial bubble burst only a few years later. Political reactions to this massive crisis have been new in several respects --different from those provoked by the Mexican crises, for instance. The United States, with Japan following closely, attempted to take advantage of the Korean crisis to dismantle the country's productive system (under the fallacious pretext that it was controlled oligopolistically!) and to subordinate it to the strategies of US and Japanese oligopolies. Regional powers attempted to resist by challenging the question of their insertion within financial globalisation (with the reestablishment of exchange control in Malaysia), or --in China and India --by removing participation from their list of priorities. This collapse of the financial portion of globalisation forced the G7 to envisage a new strategy, provoking a crisis in liberal thought. It is in light of this crisis that we must examine the outline of the counterattack launched by the G7. Overnight, it changed its tune: the term regulation, forbidden until then, reappeared in the group's resolutions. It became necessary to "regulate international financial flows"! The World Bank's chief economist, Stiglitz, suggested a debate aimed at defining a new "post-Washington consensus". |
Title: Samir Amin on C20 (and C21?) #2
