Globalisation and the crisis of the state
Presentation by Paul Feldman
The situation in London and the events of the last few days and weeks, reinforce both the urgency and the possibility of creating an alternative to the existing political and economic setup. That’s what the book A World to Win is all about. It’s not about making a few alterations to the current set up, as that is no longer possible.
At the G8 summit which took place behind protection of police, US soldiers and barbed wire fences, they met and agreed to continue their destructive course of the last 30 years of globalisation.
And we are not surprised at that, in fact we say how could it be otherwise, because these governments and the states they command are an interconnected whole with the corporate global economy.
We don’t see a separation between economics and politics today and one of the main features of the last 30 years has been this coming together of the state and politics and governments with the development of the market economy – a seamless link which has produced a number of effects:
And I should add that we are talking about profit driven globalisation here – we are not against globalisation – but the form of it today is domination of the world economy by a handful of financial institutions, corporations and states.
So these effects are:
- despite the advances in science and technology which could help us to resolve these problems, countless millions will die of disease
- inequality within and between countries will grow
- intense exploitation and alienation at work will grow, with people tied to tedious and repetitive work
- the economic crisis will intensify this
- minority communities in countries like Britain will suffer more harshly, from racism and alienation from the society round about them
- culture and education will continue to be commercialised and turned into commodities which only the richest can purchase
- housing and pensions will be inaccessible for all but the richest; only the fittest will survive into old age if we have to continue to live in this dog eat dog market economy
- climate change and ecological meltdown will continue unchecked and there was not even an attempt to seriously address this at the G8 summit
This thing is out of control and the rapaciousness of the economic system, its need to produce profit at all costs, means they will continue to produce more and more goods and hope to make us buy them. And this does put the planet in peril - it is not some scaremongering on our part.
It is urgent, therefore, that we come back to this question of an alternative political and economic framework.
The market economy will be imposed on countries as a result of what the G8 decided, and, as in Iraq, if it requires an illegal invasion and occupation to achieve this, this will be done.
And increasingly authoritarian rule will continue to replace nominal forms of democracy in countries like Britain. The right to vote, hard won in this and in other countries, will continue to lose its meaning.
This, in our view, is the background to the terror attacks in London which the political elite is content to dismiss as the work of a few people with some evil in their heads.
The fact is that while we oppose these terror attacks absolutely, aimed as they are at people whose only crime is to go to work in the morning, not at the leaders of these regimes - the fact is that this profit-driven globalisation, on top of decades and decades of colonial and imperialist exploitation, has the conditions for this deep alienation and these attacks on workers in London.
But the war on terror only results in more terror and in some respects that’s what it’s designed to do. There is no attempt to address, and no possibility , no capacity for these governments to address these background issues, because the background is this exploitative globalised capitalist system.
We cannot expect the leaders of the G8 and other regimes to address these questions.
Behind the war on terror the state builds its surveillance society. In Britain people are now encouraged to spy on and inform on each other and now the police, as we saw yesterday, have reinstated a policy last seen in northern Ireland of “shoot to kill” and the army is now being used on the streets of London. It turns out, as we saw in this morning’s newspapers, that the person chased through Stockwell was neither armed nor did he have a bomb. He was simply executed on the train – just think about it.
So that’s why our book and the draft constitution that you have in your folder, places the issue of the state and its institutions of rule as the central question, and that is the dividing line in progressive politics. Can we use this old system –the parliamentary system, protests, marching – all the other aspects of traditional politics - to make the changes needed, because as I said at the beginning we certainly cannot go on living in the old way.
From the standpoint of climate change, the threat to freedoms, inequality, the crisis of economy, the continuous threat to our lives – and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner says we are going to have to live like that for 20 years until they root out all the terrorists.
We cannot live this way and there’s no solution from the war on terror or regimes like Blair’s New Labour.
So we have to make this change and there’s no avoiding this fact. You can’t simply be anti-capitalist without having an alternative to the current political system. Capitalism does not rule just through corporations – it would be easier if they did and the other institutions were something separate – but they rule through this state, which is the political wing of the corporations if you like. They rule us through these institutions and their proxy governments like new Labour.
So we can’t find solutions to issues around terrorism, for example, unless we have a different kind of people-based political system. We can’t begin to expect that however much pressure is put on New Labour through marching etc., that they will begin to address these things. For them the terrorist attacks are a simple so-called “perversion of Islam” and that’s it. Colonialism, racism etc. are never going to be addressed by them. So if we want these issues addressed we have to have a different approach.
We can’t tackle climate change unless we have a different way of producing, not for profit, that respects nature and does not abuse nature. We can’t even begin to think about resources unless we have a different economy where people don’t have to drive thirty miles to work every day up and down motorways dependent on private cars. We can’t begin to address these urgent issues through the current political system. We cannot imagine the regimes in Washington and London saying to the oil companies, the car companies, we have to do things differently.
So as the current political system cannot address these issues we have a right and a duty to say that working people themselves, the majority of society have to make these changes ourselves and this is the way forward.
The present system cannot protect people from poverty and provide for them, provide pensions, protect them from the consequences of the actions of the system. And the present system is immune to pressure. We saw this at Live 8, and before with the 2 million-strong marches – they are immune. Simple marching and protesting, important as it is, will not make this change.
It is important also to note that the state has already lost a large proportion of its legitimacy. The decline in support for the electoral process and this turn towards dictatorial rule is a response to that. And the invasion of Iraq too, was in some ways an attempt to claim a new role as the defender of the people etc.
One in five voted for Blair and this is not democracy in any shape or form, and that brings a continued slide to dictatorial rule.
Unless the majority is able to create an alternative political and economic framework we don’t believe there is a way forward and that’s the purpose of A World to Win.
We’re not afraid to say, and we do say in our constitution, that we favour the transfer of democratic power to new local, regional and national political bodies which are described in some detail in the book.
We do put forward alternatives to the punitive so-called justice system, and advocate an extension of basic democratic rights and an enhancement of the rule of law, which is such an important aspect of capitalist democracy which is now being overthrown. The shift to this shoot to kill policy is, in our view, just such an overthrow of the rule of law.
And who is making up these rules now, who decides it is legal to invade Iraq for example, or shoot to kill?
We propose in the book not to abolish anything that has been achieved in our history, including the rule of law, including the right to vote, but to create a new framework within which these can be enhanced and developed – for example not just democratic rights but social rights: rights to housing, pensions, education and culture that does not exclude huge numbers of people.
We do propose this transfer of political power and we also advocate the transfer of economic power, into a form of self-managed, co-operatively owned, self-organised economic units, working with local democratic assemblies to build a new society that will produce in a different way.
We think this will extend democracy and give a new meaning to the right to vote.
So this is a new moment in history and you can feel it in London over these last several weeks.
Our world is verbalised as never before – people hear about and can respond to things more quickly than ever before. The issues of environmental degradation, of corporate power, financial power are common to every country. The starving masses in Africa as well as the workers killed in the bombs in London face the same issues. And we can see that millions do oppose the power of the corporations and their governments.
The response to the war, to Live 8, to the terrorist attacks and even the Tsunami show that people know that they have to come to the streets to make their voices heard. They know that it is no longer adequate to cast your vote once every four or five years for a government that is just going to endorse the status quo.
And that is how history is made, and society’s change, when people decide they can no longer live in the old way. They cannot live within the old political and economic framework. We have to break this stranglehold of the corporations and the party/state regimes. And I don’t think it’s wrong to call it that – New Labour does more and more resemble an old Stalinist party/state regime than anything democratic.
So we have to put breaking this stranglehold at the centre of what we do and the launch later today of a World to Win, which I hope you will support, will be a way of doing this.
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