http://www.heartfield.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/interventions.pdf
It tries to come to terms with the "anti-globalization", "global justice", "anti-capitalist" movement--or whatever you want to call it--and finds it lacking. It combines the residual ultraleftism of the Furedi-ites' early period with the kind of Kautskyism that marked the sect just before it morphed into libertarianism altogether. Without referring to him openly, Heartfield has a strong affinity for Verso author Meghnad Desai's "Marx's Revenge", a work that turns Karl Marx into an early booster of the WTO, NAFTA, and other processes associated with "globalization".
The ultraleft side of Heartfield allows him to make some interesting observations:
"Increasingly, the distinction between the protestors outside the summits and the delegates inside has become less clear. International organizations like the World Bank have facilitated the role of NGOs and advocacy groups, inviting them into the lobby. The World Bank’s Development Report argues: ‘Global action can empower poor people and poor countries in national and global forums’ (World Bank 2000). This is in effect an appeal to NGOs to lobby and protest outside the World Bank. The Bank promises ‘open, regular dialogue with civil society organisations, particularly those representing poor people’. The Bank supports ‘ongoing global coalitions of poor people so that they may inform global debates’ (ibid.). International conferences have also adapted to the agenda of the lobbyists, as was the case with the United Nations Conference on Racism in 2002, where the floodgates were opened to radical complaint.
"The violence of the anti-capitalist protestors’ arguments is, for the most part, a pose. Moral indignation precedes compromise and accommodation. The point of the somewhat histrionic demands is not that they are to be taken literally or acted upon, but that they vouch for the sincerity of their framers. By demonstrating their emotional commitment to the issues, the protestors demand the attention of the authorities, as acceptable interlocutors for the poor and dispossessed."
While the Kautskyism leads him to make some really boneheaded ones. In this instance, Marx is not just a prophet of Globalization in Desai's terms, but of consumerism as well.
"It should be recalled that Marx never made a blanket case against capitalism, but saw it as a combination of progressive trends that tended to economic growth, and reactionary constraints that set limits upon such development. He sought to liberate the former from the latter. By contrast, today’s ‘anti-capitalists’ seek to restrain growth, in favour of constraint. Most pointed is the latter-day anti-capitalists’ constant complaint against rising living standards and the expansion of consumer goods. This is far from the Marxist case that capitalism was to be faulted for the restrictions it placed on consumption. Marx allied himself with the working-class movement’s demands for increased living standards, specifically for higher wages. In contrast to today’s anti-capitalists Marx thought that the emerging consumerism was capitalism’s redeeming feature:
"he searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chatter etc. It is precisely this side of the relation of capital and labour which is an essential civilising moment, and on which the historic justification, but also the contemporary power of capital rests." (Marx 1973: 287)
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