On Marxism and Globalism

ON MARXISM AND GLOBALISM
A preliminary outline
by
Baba Aye
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways – the point is to change it"
Karl Marx
Theses on Feurbach
INTRODUCTION
The documented history of communistic thoughts and ideas could be traced to the "collectivist doctrines from Plato" (1). These stemming from an Athenian democracy that had freemen and slaves held in thrall i.e. a socially stratified society or a class divided socio-economic formation as it were, it is believed in some quarters could have been a mediated reflection of the preserved memory of "earlier, more just, more equal societies" or what is considered as "primitive communism" (2)
A number of the major religions in the world also have their roots in that period of the subsuming of "primitive communism" by forces unleashed by the private property as apple in humankind’s garden of Eden. This is expressed in the values of equality and communality. However, just as Plato’s ideal Republic in which there would be no extremes of poverty and affluence still upheld the slave-owning socio-economic system the religionists equality became something to be real only with the individual’s exit from the real world to the hereinafter.
The 16th – 17th century saw a renaissance of socialistic and communistic ideas and perspectives as the European Enlightenment foreshadowed the then forthcoming industrial revolution. It was not to be until after the industrial revolution of the new class of entrepreneurs and the burgesses of yesterday was to form and steel its modern working class that communistic thoughts and ideas were transformed from romantic utopias to a systematized framework of perspectives. With the publication of the Communist Manifesto a century and six decades ago on the eve of the "revolution and counterrevolution" that swept through Europe in February 1848 Marxism declared its emergence as a critique – framework of the modern industrial society and a clarion call for its transcendence.
The systematization of communistic perspectives by Marx and Engels was however not one of the realm of criticism or an aggregation of some schemes of what ought to be, formulated in the mind of the genius that Karl Marx was. Marxism from its onset set out for itself to be a theory of society, a science of history and the ideological self-identity of the working class. And with this it held aloft the banner of social transformation.
To say a lot of water has passed under the bridge in a century and a half would be stating the obvious.
The world is presently in the grip of what is often termed "globalization". As oppression cannot but sooner or later generate resistance, the "anti-globalization" movement stands arrayed against the "neo-liberal forces" of globalization. As activists who appreciate the existence of a dynamic between theory and practice, we cannot but ask ourselves certain questions.
A few of these would suffice here and cannot but include; what is Marxism? Is there one truth that is Marxism or several "brands" of the Marxism? Is Marxism (or one brand or the other?) relevant in today’s world? What actually is globalization? Are the claims of Marxism as a philosophy of history correct or tenable? How do we relate the above questions to the quest for Nigeria’s social transformation? We must make haste to point out here and now that this essay could at best be considered strictly as a "work-in-progress" (3). We shall thus for now be content with broad brushstrokes of the perspective being self forth here.
The aim of the essay is to appraise the problems and prospects for the socialist idea and the emergence or development of socialist society in the 21st century.
There are three major sections.
The section on "Theory, Praxis and Classes" will consider how correct it is to consider Marxism as a science, and the relationship between Marxist theory and Praxis. It will also give consideration to the underlying perspective of Marxism as a theory of (or for?) the working class and the relationship between theory and classes in general, if any.
In the section on "Ideology, Politics and history" we shall put in perspective views on ideology and theory and how these influence the struggle for power or "politics" as it were. We shall then put to task the Hegelian construct of History as a totality with its inherent logic.
An attempt at characterization of the contemporary society and the dynamics of social change within its chaos and turmoil would then be made. We shall further consider globalization as a form of globalism and the alternative globalization forming in the womb and fractures of neo-liberal globalization.








THEORY, PRAXIS AND CLASSES
"The objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense, corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance"
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
Private Property and Communism


Theory as Science
A major distinguishing characteristic of Marxism from other socialistic systematization or bourgeois-critique-frameworks is its claim to being scientific. Many would as well argue that this crux is also at the kernel of a major difference between Marx and Marxists after Marx.
Marxism it is asserted is a theory of society and a scientific one too at that. Our point of departure then would be, to try finding some answers to basic questions such as; what is theory? What is science? Could Marxism be said to have inherent in it elements that unambiguously define it as not just a theory, a scientific systematization of ideas that are verifiable from practice in reality?
Theory could be said to be the mental interpretation and organization of human knowledge of things and relations between things which has an internal consistency and universal tenability. Due to space and time we might not be able to go into the historical development of theory in general. Its definition here however should suffice for our discourse.
We could now seek to also attempt a definition of what science is.
Science could be said to be the accumulation and systematization of knowledge involving observation, classification, experiment, verification, criticism and legitimation. "The development of theoretical knowledge towards (a) unified and legitimate whole" is integral to science.
Science is thus understood and made understandable by humans as theory. Theory to be theory-in-deed must of necessity be scientific.
The spirit of the European Enlightenment pursued the Universality of Science with a sense of its singularity. The dynamics of science’s development in the wake of the industrial revolution saw to the separation of the sciences into the physical, natural and social sciences.
Major sources of the dispute between Marxian orthodoxy as it were and critics of Marxian philosophy within Marxism are to be found in what some see as the Engelsian experiment at naturalizing social science and socializing natural science in the dialectic, transposing dialectical materialism for historical materialism.
This brings us to the theory of Marx and Marx’s "theory" by Marxists.
Science always is, in its pure and applied form. We talk of "pure science" and "applied science" of the same science. Pure science is the totality of the basic principles of the science. Its internal coherence is reflected in its universal validity. It is the essence of the Science’s theory. It could be said to be the constant dimension of the science. Applied science on the other hand comprises knowledge acquired from the application of the science’s basic principles to particular phenomena and the articulation of propositions emerging from a systematization of such knowledge as elements of the science. It could be said to be the variable dimension of the science.
It is in the light of the foregoing that we would want to place the relationship between Marxism and several co-existing (and often contending) "versions" of Marxism. These would include; Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, and Castroism.
It would be interesting to consider at what point does what could be claimed to be an "application" of Marxism as "a guide to action" become actually a revision of it? The question could similarly be put this way; could totalitarian monstrosities like the Polpot rule in Cambodia for example and "Stalinism" (or its various variants) be considered as practical applications of Marxism?
Critical to an understanding that would be of great benefit for our grappling with the issue at hand is the two-fold realization that;
An "applied" dimension of a theory has in it the basic principles of the pure theory.
The application of a theory leads to the development of the theory. Development in this sense should be seen as distinct from revisionism in that the integrity and internal coherence of the added elements of knowledge from the green tree of life and of it in relation to the pure body of the theory has a dynamic congruence.
Before rounding up this sub-section we must point out how being a science, within Marxist theory there are theories (which are actually strands of the whole body of theory). To use a sample analogy, this is akin to the relationship between for example, biological science (as a whole), botanical science, zoological science, marine science, etc.
Practice and Freedom
Practice or praxis, which actually amounts to the same thing, is activity with an end in view and consciously chosen means. As Howard puts it "Praxical activity is self-regulated goal-oriented activity operating in terms of what Habermas calls an "interest in freedom." (4)
Practice in the Marxian sense is thus not just activity "directed at changing something" with the conscious choice of elements of mediation. The change it seeks has inherent in it the consummation of freedom. Practice thus becomes qualified as revolutionary practice even in circumstances that quite clearly cannot be defined as revolutionary situations. This is so to the extent that freedom in the capitalist world remains for the immense majority of the population, the working people, a formal concept lacking in its reality which could dissolve the false freedom through which labour is subtly subordinated to (and of cause) subjugated by) capital.
Theory provides practice with its means and end. Theory however is formulated as an articulation of the systematized knowledge of truth which only practice can and does discover. Modern social-democracy with its Giddensist renewal of a third way that seeks to transcend what it calls "the old left and free market fundamentalism" locates "consumer choice" as the "prime force" determining freedom. Freedom thus becomes a quantitative substance which like commodity you can have more of, or less of (5).
The practice of social-democracy thus shows the falsity of its Bernsteinian position of the end-in-itself being nothing and the movement being everything. It accepts the same end as that upheld by bourgeois neo-liberalism as the end of history. "Comprehensive projects of social reform" (6) becomes its practice and not activity "directed at changing something" not activity "with an interest in freedom.
"Critical theory" and Revolutionary Practice
The concept of critical theory was developed by Horkheimer. And as Howard put it: "In Horkheimer’s early writing it often becomes apparent that "Critical theory" is used simply as a code word for Marxism."
Traditional theory is science that reinforces the subsisting social-economic, political and cultural reality. Critical theory on the other hand is subversive of it.
Theory in general is formulated from truth which practice in engaging reality, rationally discovers and in discovering moulds within the realms of what is possible in the Now which is not merely the fruit of the past but indeed the future’s seed. Critical theory thus reflects the objective contradictions inherent in the existing society.
Theory becomes a material force when it seizes the minds of the masses. Marx made this clear enough. The most scientific theory no matter how critical can never in itself subvert any socio-political system whatsoever. The fullness of critical theory rests in revolutionary practice. Critical theory without the critical mass in revolutionary practice simply amounts to critical nonsense!

Classes and Practice
It has come to be taken for granted by Marxists that "class" is a socio-economic category comprising aggregates of persons occupying the same position in the social organization of the labour process and in relation to the means of production. Without losing track of the point of departure and internal logic of the Marxist theory, we cannot but be more rigorous in the application of analyses to an understanding of the characteristics of classes (particularly "the changing working class as Alex Callinicos is wont to put it) and the dynamics of their relations.
An issue that also requires serious introspection on is that between the working class and Marxist theory. We cannot but seek to be clear on this question; is Marxism a theory of the working class or a Theory for the working class?" The answer to this could have consequences for our practice.
Practice is stated to be the criterion for truth. The proletariat is to be the harbinger of the socialist resolution. It is in practice that the modern working class discovers the truth of itself and its possibilities. In internalizing this realization as a theory that not only critiques the existing societal framework that reduces it to collective bargaining but critiques its very foundation, it becomes "a class for itself". Such theory leads it from spontaneous practice which could only lead it into the abyss of an illusory democratic bliss of bourgeons ideology to revolutionary practice.
The Leninist position in "What is to be done?" is to the affect that a self-realization of the truth of its history is not given within the spontaneity of its practice which otherwise sinks down to reformist schemes. The transcendence of the working class to revolutionary practice through the prism of critical theory entails the mental labour of the "organic-intellectual" of Gramsci.
IDEOLOGY, POLITICS AND HISTORY
"But the precondition of the philosophy of each epoch… is a definite body of thought which is handed down to it by its predecessors and which is also its starting point"
Frederick Engels
Letter to Conrad Schmidt
Philosophy, theory and ideology
Philosophy in our view could be considered primarily as the seeking of knowledge of the totality of material and social conditions towards understanding the essence of being as a basis for establishing the notion of human purpose.
It is trite Marxism that in this process, two broad schools have existed over the past three millennia; the idealist and the materialist.
Theory in a sense could be said to be the scientification of philosophy. One major reality in our generation of the left in Nigeria is the seeming synonymous identity, ascribed to the concepts of philosophy, theory and ideology, particular the latter two. Marxism in particular is often considered as both a theory and an ideology, matters are not helped by the seeming "confusion", so the speak, in defining socialism. Is it an idea, a movement, a social-economic structure, a theory, or all of these? And if it were all of these, what is the internal coherence that binds these different dimensions/elements/ categories of one and the same thing?
Not to lose track and to save time we cannot but seek to define what an ideology is.
We wish to align with the definition of the MIA, of ideology as "a system of concepts and views which serves to make sense of the world while obscuring the social interests that are expressed therein, and by its completeness and relative internal consistency tends to form a closed system and maintain itself in the face of contradictory or inconsistent experience"
The term ideology has however been used by Marxists to connote a myriad of meaning. Terry Engleton has listed out fifteen of these. Suffice to say though that "Marxism itself is frequently described as an "ideology". However, while "any social view must contain an element of ideology" living Marxism cannot stricto senso be considered as merely an ideology.
Ideology in the sense we have considered it thus far remains an abstraction. Ideology however becomes real in the super structure of all social-economic formations (politics, law, family, religion, e.t.c). It is such real ideological constructs that human beings within the social categories that they live the world in and through (the community, the nation, sex, etc) seek "to make sense of the world" and in it’s posing itself as the real essence of the being of social life obscures "the social interests that are expressed therein".
Before summing up this subsection, we go back to abstract ideology to consider the relationship; so to speak, between ideology and "idea" from which most of us tend to believe ideology is broadened from (we have heard many Marxists today allude to ideology as simply an arithmetical sum-up of some set of ideas or the idea).
Within the philosophical framework of Hegel, the "Idea" expresses the maturity of a principle or movement. Lichthem further asserted that "the difference between an "idea" and an ideology … is quite simply the difference between a proposition that an be debated on theoretical grounds and a belief which may or may not possess a rational core but for which (to) those who hold it (it) has become a faith that cannot be argued out of existence". Abstract ideology thus becomes the construct of "a faith". Like all faiths it inspires, and ideology, even as real ideology expressed as real relations that do not and cannot of their own gain the notion of what they are, becomes obfuscatory. All ideology in themselves, thus become false consciousness. It is in being a systematized critique framework embedded in practice, that Marxism is raised to the stature of a science which is a revolutionary theory.
Economics, politics and society
The vulgarization of Marxian "materialism" is best noted in the crude mechanistic rendition of "economic determinism". A seemingly more urbane rendition of basically the same thing is the nursery rhyme-like recitation of "objective condition are ripe for revolution, it is for us to develop the subjective factor i.e. working class organization and consciousness". This trivialization of Marxist theory comes out of muddled heads in some instances, but more often than not it is the dodging of the serious business of concrete critique of concrete reality. Determinism becomes fatality of some sorts; necessity becomes a mantra of the positivist spirit deceptively donned in garments of dialectics.
The difference between Marxism on determinism within the "revolutionary-critical dialectic" of its theory and the asinine views mentioned above is that which Slaing Zizek (2001) puts as that between "a social scientific method" and the "confident certainty of positive science"
Engels in his letter of 27th October 1890 to Conrad Schmidt (7) demonstrated the dynamic interactions and interrelations between economics, law and the "ideological outlook" noting the internal coherence of ideological constructs within the superstructure and thus the historical determination of transformation not in a simplistic generalization of the contradictions within the mode of production but in the reality of the all-round engagement-in critique and in practice-of every fibre of the existing and obdurate society.
The Political and History
The political is the realm of contestation for power. It exists in theory and in practice and could be fundamental (revolutionary-critical) or secondary (as in intra-class contestations, for example)
The political thus is an expression of struggle in which the turning of the wheels of history makes itself manifest
A concise study of polities and the political would be of immense value to our theory and practice in the present era. The character, essence, possibilities and limitations of "networking", identity politics and alliance politics, require thorough examination and analyses
The concept and conception of History with its roots in Vico as "a single coherent evolutionary process" which Hegel systematized and which became the pillar of Marxian historical materialism is being manipulated by the likes of Fukuyama to win an ideological legitimation of liberal democracy as "the end of History" (8). This poses a challenge for Marxists to tear the ideological veil of such seeming "dialectical analysis" to reveal the monstrosity of fetters it seeks with weights to tie down the marching of history that breaks the bones of the last neo-liberal man standing in its way.


CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
"The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material but raw materials drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness becomes more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production, it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeons themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image"
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
The Communist Manifesto
The rather extensive extract above, from the Communist Manifesto is one that in its definition of capitalism, better characterizes "globalisation" than most texts today, over a century and a half latter. In this section,
we will attempt to put in perspective capitalism as the mode of production of the modern industrial (and subsisting "post-modern"/"post-industrial") social-economic formation and the phenomenon of ‘globalisation’. In doing this, we shall put emphasis on having a grasp of "international finance capital", imperialism and the myriad of that composite-amalgam which is often termed the ‘anti-globalisation movement’.

Human development and modern industrial society
The UNDP in its 2006 Human Development Report affirmed that "human development is first and foremost about allowing people to lead a life that they value and enabling them to realize their potential as human beings"(9)
A materialist perspective of human development locates its possibilities in the development of the productive forces of society and the social relations entered into by humans on its basis. In Engels letter to J. Bloch he states that "according to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life"
The capitalist socio-economic system entails the exploitation of living wage labour and dead labour (concretized in machinery, building, etc) for and in the "production and reproduction" of commodities for exchange.
The value immanent in commodities and which keeps increasing is simply the concretization of surplus value appropriated from wage labour by the capitalist, the bourgeois, the primary owners of property in modern industrial society. Capital is at the heart of capitalism. Capital is both a pre-condition and the outcome of capitalism. The origins of capitalism are thus rooted in primitive accumulation. On a world scale this involved mercantilist development over the two centuries from the sixteenth century European Enlightenment to the eighteenth century industrial revolution, the pillage and plunder of the Americas after Christopher Columbus’ "discovery" of American and quite noteworthy to state, the triangular globalization of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade.
With primitive accumulation as the womb of its feudal mother, the birth pangs of capital were signaled by the eighteenth century industrial revolution. The development of humankind was marked with the immiseration and pauperization of men, women and children. In the factories, where mass production with machines supplanted the craftsmanship of both guild-master and journeyman, deep down in the shafts of mines within which many died, on the fields of plantations wherein industry subdued agriculture to its needs and dictates; the social process of labour’s production and re-production of life was freed from the fetters of traditions, norms and all sorts of nonsense which had obfuscated earlier economic relations. The modern worker whom capital created was thus free to hawk his/her labour power to an array of capitalists and would-be-capitalist (the petite-bourgeois that craved to become industrialists and employed two, three or four workers) as against the sole subordination of the serf to the lord of his or her manor.
To justify the nakedness of "for-profit" interest of capital within economic relations and the nature of commodity exchange, the Adams Smiths of this world developed the myth of a free market as real for all times (10).
The extent of creation of wealth by capitalist society was one which no one ever envisioned nor was possible in the first place, for any earlier social-economic formations. Thus human development, as conceptualized by the UNDP, for the first time becomes a possibility in human history.
The possibilities of human development and freedom are however constricted not due to material want but rather due to so much of it, but which is and must be subordinated to the accumulation and ever-continuous expansion of capital
The expansion of the old capitalism of laissez-faire free trade was superceded by "the new capitalism" or what is merely a stage and indeed the highest stage of the same capitalism: imperialism.
International finance capital is considered by bourgeois economists as a discipline which "studies the dynamics of exchange rates, foreign investment and how these affect international trade. It also studies international projects, investments and the international capital flows". It operates within and is the soul of the global financial system/market.
Imperialism, globalism and globalisation
Capitalism in its youth prided itself on "freedom". The free market or free competition was as sacred as was the democratic freedom or franchise (for property owners-and male ones too at that- at least). The accumulation of capital in Europe however saw to the expansion of surplus value not only as capital but indeed as surplus capital as well.
The capitalist overlords in the emerging metropolis by the later half of the nineteenth century began exporting not only commodities but as well capital. As capital became more concentrated with industrialization driving the "battering ram" of cheaper prices from ever larger large-scales of production within countries, money which is "the most abstract form of capitalist property, and so the supreme social power through which social reproduction is subordinated to the reproduction of capital" (11) becomes even much more concentrated, wielding an ever greater power on decisions which guide production. Thus was finance capital entrenched as a defining characteristic of capital imperialism.
Lenin in his seminal pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism quoted Hilferding who introduced the term "finance capital" into the social sciences lexicon
"A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry" writes Hilferding, "ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e. capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ‘finance capital’. "Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists"
Lenin felt that Hilferding inspite of his renegade direction politically at that point in time, theoretically grasped the economic dynamics of the development of capitalism into imperialism adding only (which he accepted was stressed in subsequent chapters of Hilferding’s book) that "the increase of concentration of production and of capital was "to such an extent that concentration is leading, and has led, to monopoly "(12).
Imperialism "is something quite different from the old free competition between manufactures, scattered and out of touch with one another and producing for an unknown market". Further and quite perceptively, Lenin pointed out that "capitalism in its imperialist stage….drags the capitalist against their will and consciousness into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one…" For a work that does not "deal with the non-economic aspects of the question" before the League of Nations, etc, this is simply insightful.
There have been several commendable developments in theorization on imperialism since Lenin’s time and imperialism itself as mutated while retaining its essence, into what many today understand as globalization. Due to the limitations of space and time, we might have to take up the tasks of an extensive consideration of these, later.
For the purpose of this essay we shall in this section consider "globalization" as a phase of imperialism, which is the highest stage of capitalism (13). In this light we shall summarily put in perspective the global financial system and its evolution as the kernel of (and within) "globalization"
The Chicago school asserted that "money matters" as its motto. Shafika Isaacs from a more progressive standpoint highlighted the fact that "money makes the world go round" while Ana Dinerstein noted that "money has freed itself from institutional coercion" and that money as "the most sophisticated materialization of social relations is a "supreme social power" which has "imposed itself upon both society and the state" (14)
The global financial system also termed the global financial market comprises the processes and structures through which money is exchanged betweens persons, companies, governments, multilateral economic institution and other global institutions
This system as analyzed by Shafika Isaacs and staff of the Trade Union Research Project consists of: a currency market; exchange rates; market for trading shares and; bond market (15)
The global financial system is the fundamental area for the manifestation of international finance capital and the exercise of its domination of society. The pillars of globalisation could be said to be transnational corporations and multilateral economic institutions (16). The global financial market and the pillars of neo-liberal globlalisation evolved within imperialistic capitalism in the 20th century with the great depression signaled by the Wall Street crash of October 24, 1929, the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and the ‘74-‘76 financial and energy crisis being watershed points in their development.
Capitalism remoulded society into nation states, only as a foothold for its internationalising soul. Imperialism being characterized primarily as the export of surplus capital makes finance capital which is the purest manifestation of surplus capital, unambiguously international
The twentieth century opened with Britain and France as the two dominant imperial powers with vast colonies outside Europe. Germany in hosting "the partition of Africa" a decade and a half before the close of the nineteenth century had clearly signalled its imperialist interest. This was not surprising as the German Junker-bourgeois capitalism was the biggest economy in capitalist Europe. It was not surprising as well that Germany played the aggressor role in the clash of imperialist powers which the First World War was.
The reconstruction of Europe after that war and defeats of socialist forces in Europe and the working class movement in America (which was least affected by the 1900-03 recession, which Europe had barely recovered from before the war) paved the way for the "roaring twenties". The world economy grew at a pace, then hitherto, never witnessed. The capitalization of the American stock market accelerated rising to a peak in August 1929, as finance capital spurred speculations. A "slow down" began in September 1929, but this did not slow down financial speculation as the bourgeois buoyed by optimism in the market and the strength of the American economy stepped up the investment of fictitious capital. The bottom came off the bucket on October 24 as in its "Black Thursday" 12, 894,680 shares were traded in a panic. Attempts by finance capital through the big banks and large investment firms to mop up shares off loaded, failed. "Black Monday’ followed the "Black Thursday" and finally on the "Black Tuesday" of October 29, the wall street stock exchange crashed with 16,000,000 shares sold and prices took a disastrous plunge. Companies declared bankruptcies and unemployment soared like never before. This dire situation swept from the United States of North America across the capitalist world. The USSR with its planned economy and its isolation from the world economy by the capitalist powers was the only country where production continued to expand. This was the Great Depression which lasted a decade with over 15million workers rendered jobless in the United States alone and several captains of industry committing suicide. Roosevelt’s New Deal resting on Keynesian economics was the bail-out-recipe and for forty years would guide the macro-economic policies of capitalist metropoles
The international financial system before the Second World War and up to 1949 was based on bilateral agreements between governments. According to the Bank for International Settlements, Annual report N0 19 as quoted by Professor Tew bilateral agreements "were usually concluded between government, according to a fairly uniform pattern: the central banks, as technical agents, supplied their own currency at a fixed rate of exchange against that of their partner up to a certain limit, which was often referred to as the "swing", since it was intended to afford room for minor fluctuations in commercial deliveries between the two countries; beyond the limit thus fixed settlements had to be made in gold or convertible currency" (17)
Brian Tew goes ahead to add that "where convertible currency’ meant in almost all cases US dollars". It was still just "in most cases" then that the US dollar was the convertible currency. In the aftermath of the October 1929 crash, the US dollar had become rated to gold which was the international standard for finance capital in its exchange at $35 per pound of gold. The Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944 was to uphold this earlier exigency with the "Dollar standard" i.e. the US dollar being universally adopted by international capitalism as the medium for trade and settlement. In the immediate post –war years though, inspite of such agreement, there was contestations by Britain, with the dollar and the pound being circulated concurrently as means of multilateral settlement within the dollar and pound areas. This was a period of transition from a multilateral balance of capitalist world power to American globalism as imperialism.
At this point in time we cannot but go back to the Bretton Woods Conference mentioned earlier in passing, and how the dollar became the currency of the world
In response to the great depression virtually all capitalist metropole countries established high tariffs and trade barriers to protect their industries from the devastating sweep of global crisis. This made the export of commodities as impossible as the production for a domestic market which had collapsed. Roosevelt’s Keynesian New Deal resulted in a gradual re-awakening of capitalism in America as the Second World War unfolded against a backdrop of long queues of working people for handouts while the Soviet Union thrived. This raised the specter of communism. The situation became worse after the war. The victorious Allied governments in Europe were bankrupt, their territories where devastated and they were up to their necks in debts to the United States which had physically been unscathed by the war.
On July 1-22, 1944, finance ministers of the United States, Britain and France met with finance representatives of 41 other countries that had been in the Allied camp during the war, at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. This meeting is officially referred to as the United Nations Monetary and Finance Conference. The Soviet Union which was a major power in establishing the United Nations was however excluded from the conference.
The conference established the: World Bank; International Monetary fund and; General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. The conference also established the dollar standard and set the tone for American’s bailing out of Europe and south-East Asia with the Marshall plan-geared at absorbing the post-war socio-economic shocks that could have stirred political revolutions, which could have looked up to the soviet alternative.
The western powers were quite clear about utilizing the Bretton Woods Institutions as tools for capital’s domination of the world. Efforts by John Maynard Keynes who represented Britain at the conference to include provisions that could ensure that the IMF provides safety nets for poor countries falling into debts were not only rebuffed. He was made to know by the United States functionaries that, pursuit of such line of thinking could result in America’s withholding of loans to Britain.
Another example is that of GATT and what would have been the International Trade Organisation (ITO). GATT was supposed to be a temporary platform for international trade negotiations. The ITO was established with the adoption of the ITO charter at the 1948, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The charter had such provisions as that calling for full employment in all member-states which the US and UK considered as socialism under a guise (as if Keynesianism is not a manifestation of "invading socialism"). The U.S did not ratify the charter in 1950 as scheduled by the conference, resulting in the death of the ITO the United States of North American rather threw its weight behind the GATT. The first round of the GATT was in Geneva (1947). Subsequent rounds were; Annocy (1949) Torquay (1950-51), Geneva (1955-56) and (1960-61), the "Kennedy Round" (1962-27), Tokyo (1973-79) and Uruguay (1986-94)
The World Trade Organization was created in April 1994 at Marrakech, in Morocco, marking the end of the Uruguay round. The WTO was formally established on January 1, 1995 with 128 member-states. GATT represented an ad-hoc (even if long lasting one) arrangement for the supra-national governance of trades in the capitalist world during the cold war. With the collapse of Stalinism in the East, and new markets to conquer, WTO became an institutional structure of capital’s global governance. While GATT sought to resolve on trade in commodities, WTO regulates services as well, which include transportation, communication and healthcare. This reflects finance capital’s vested interest in controlling as well as driving the process of informatisation of production making the products of immaterial labour, commodities, which function within the rhythm of the logic of its domination and re-production
The WTO has come to gain notoriety especially as the anti-globalisation movement’s Seattle spark can be traced to it. We shall be coming back to this in the next section.
Chakravatha Raghavan of the Third World Network in his "International Finance: from Globalisation to Crisis" (1996) making reference to an UNCTAD report of the same title noted that "foreign direct investment even though concentrated in a few South countries, has now superceded trade as the most important mechanism for international economic integration". This being barely a year after the WTO’s formalization is the more interesting. The continued importance of FDIs can definitely not be overestimated in the present world.
Foreign Direct Investment is the main mechanism for finance capital’s control over exported surplus capital. According to indices set by the United Nations, where the percentage of a transnational corporation’s equity in its foreign affiliates is below 10% it is simply a portfolio investment. FDI proper entails 10% or more of equity stake. FDI stocks today constitute 20% of global GDP (i.e. an aggregate of all countries GDP). This seemingly huge amount however shows the periphery-to-metropole expropriation of capital and the concentration of capital intensive aspects of the global economy in the metropoles when it is realized that the transnational corporations which are just about 370,000 with about 250,000 subsidiaries control 51% of global wealth. The domination of the world by transnational corporations and the myth of "free-market-free-trade-theories" reveal itself in the fact that two thirds of all world trade in goods and services is within the TNCs. Of these one third is in intra-firm transactions (between the TNCs and foreign affiliates/subsidiaries, established or acquired with FDIs) and the other one third is in the form of inter-corporation trade. With almost 70% of world trade in the kitty of the TNCs it does not take a genius to conclude that the remaining one-third could be manipulated using adequate "market pressures".
In the years from 1945-1960, three quarters of FDIs were from the United States. This percentage reduced with the collapse of the Bretton Woods Arrangement but bounced back with the ascension of the Washington Consensus. Over half of the one trillion dollars exchanged in the global financial system further the American corporatocracy. Perkins in a lucid style sheds light from the inside, on the macabre ways and manners of the growth and development of the corporatocracy of American finance capital (18). Before coming to the purest expression of finance capital-hedge funds; we come back to its other two so-called multi-lateral economic institutions, the Bretton Woods Institutions; the World Bank and; the IMF
The equity structures of these institutions are skewed primarily in the interest of the US and generally with its control, in the hands of the triad of neo-liberal globalization. The World Bank with 177 members has the following equity structure; USA, 17.9% Japan, 7.43%; Germany, 5.74%; France, 5.5%; Britain, 5.5%. That of the IMF has the UK, Germany, France, Japan and Saudi Arabia owing 43.74% added up with the US owing 17.6%". Thus the six highest subscribers’ control 61.34% of its "votes" within a comity of 183 members-states!
The World Bank established as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as sprouted in the defence and promotion of finance capital to be the "World Bank Group"; the IBRD remains, but added to it so to speak are the: International Development Association; International Finance Capital (which funds private enterprise) and Multilateral Investments Guaranty Agency, MIGA (which insures FDIs).
In the 2001/2002 financial year seven Nigeria firms secured loans from the IFC (GTB, FSB, IBTC, Citibank, Oha motors, Diamond Bank and Safety Center Inter. Ltd)
To understand these global institutions that while in the service of finance capital are presented as non-partisan development-seeking multilateral economic institutions, are tools of the American empire, one needs only read the words of George Kenner, a senior planner in the US state department, in 1948, he said:
"We have 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of the population. In this situation our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with sentimentality… we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization"
According to Roberto Sarti of the Italian PRC "the World Bank and the IMF were invented to implement this strategy. Their base is Washington where they are joined by an umbilical cord to the United States treasury a few blocks away. This is where globalization of poverty and the use of debt as a weapon of control were conceived". He further added and correctly too;
"It was the triumphant American state that fashioned the present ‘global economy’ at Bretton Woods in 1944, so that its military and corporate arms could have unlimited access to minerals, oil markets and cheap labour"
In summing up this section, we shall now look at two things the nakedness of the "new fangs of finance capital" so to speak and the lurch into recession from credit crunch with the sub-prime mortgage finance crisis which started in America in August and now with Alan Greenspan admitting that "we (the bourgeois that is) are living in fear", has sucked the entire global financial system into a crisis like never before in the past four decades.
Finance capital in the post World War II era has taken a new and more powerful dimension. The elements of this dimension include institutional funds (e.g. pension funds, endowments and foundation trusts); private-equity firms, structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and hedge funds.
In 1949, just a few years after the Bretton Woods Conference, Alfred Winston established the first of what is called hedge funds. By 2005 there were 196 "hedgies" worth 1billion in assets managing $743b in investments. A year later in 2006, the volume of investment funds managed by "hedgies" had increased by 17.5% to $1.442 trillion. There are over 8,000 hedge funds now in existence and they manage over one and a half trillion US dollars with their managers most of whom are billionaires grossing between $100-$500million annually as their income.
Hedge funds are pools of capital "for institutional or wealthy individual investors that employs one of various trading strategies in equities, bonds or derivatives, attempting to gain from market inefficiencies and to some extent, hedge underlying risks" according to The Economist of London (March 4th-10th 2006, edition). Some of the commonly utilized investment strategies of "hedgies" are; "convertible arbitrage", "emerging markets", "fund of funds", "global macro" and "market neutral". Up to 10 years back, this mega-bucks engine room of finance capital was returning up to 50% on investments for capitalist that simply hand their money to them to speculate with. With competition and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, they still earn up to 10-15% return on investments
At the heart of the sub-prime mortgage crisis are hedge funds with their "leverage" and "collateralized-debt obligations" (C-D-Os) and "collateralized-loan obligations" (C-L-Os) to the primary institutions of finance capital: banks.
Hedge funds as The Economist (August 18th- 24th 2007, edition) put it are "secretive, clever and often highly lucrative". "The veil of mystery" which shrouds them was however "partially lifted…after market turmoil left many of them with big losses-and anxious investors"
Why we might ask? Leverage entails banks backing the fictitious capital of "hedgie" sharks. An example of how this results in "belly-up" situations for international finance capital was how the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, leading hedge funds, in 1998 triggered turmoil in the global finance market. For every $1 of its funds, Long Term Capital Management had a leverage of $26 borrowed from banks
How is this done? Enter the rating agencies. Finance capital in its development entails "specializations" (i.e. a systemic way of circulation for the surplus it appropriates). A key one of these specializations comprises the rating agencies. Loans are sliced, packaged and re-packaged based on ratings of finance capital firms "integrity"! Mortgage finance being a major source of finance capital becomes tied to the speculations of the cloak and dagger room of finance capital by a thousand threads. The default of less than 15% of American in low quality loans acquired with sub-prime mortgages tilted the apple cart. The inability to pay in itself was a reflection of the economic shadow which like a pack of cards is now falling into a crisis. The myth of hedge funds immunity from the economic cycle of capitalism is being shattered in a most brutal way. The myth of the invisible hand of the impartial market, which Hoogevelt tore into, sheds now lies scattered on the floors of sub-prime mortgage homes. With over three hundred thousand Americans thrown out of their homes, the Federal Reserves, first in September and now in January has taken steps to buckle up the tottering tower of finance capital with cuts in interest rates. The American Government also a few days back came out with measures (which Congress has supported and the senate is likely to uphold) with which by July it hopes to start turning around the sub-prime mess, involving $150 billion. These are likely to fail however, since the panic of the crisis and the bankrupt state it has and is throwing working people into will most likely, rather result in such extra cash at hand being used to bail out of loans-gone-soar or hoarded as savings.
Head or tail, capitalism is in for a real bad time, this time. This in itself might not result in the toppling of capital-yet, but to borrow from Walter Rodney, it "will not delay their day of judgment".






Globalisation and Social Transformation
"In our hands is placed a power
Greater than their hoarded gold
Greaert than the might of armies
Magnified a thousand fold
We can bring to birth a new world
On the ashes of the old"
- Ralph Chaplin
"Solidarity Forever"
The whole world seems to be in agreement on a few basics, which include the following facts;
The present epoch of humankind is one in which the social wealth is much more than enough for every man, woman and child to live a healthy and fulfilled life
Yet over 1 billion people live in "extreme poverty".
The gulf between the prosperous and the pauperized is greater than ever before in human history.
There is an urgent need to "do something about it".
Beyond the foregoing however, discussion fills the air, especially with regards to defining and taking action on what it is to be "done about it". On the far side of the right of the divide, there even exist those akin to Martians, who believe that nothing can be done about it. These however are not only so infinitesimal; they are of no use for any engagement, constructive or otherwise.
Can the present globalised world be transformed? What would or could its transformation entail?
Representatives of global capital and rulers of states do realize that the present state of the world is the result of transformation from subsistence to abundance. Jeff Sachs for example, notes that "A few centuries ago, vast divides in wealth and poverty around the world did not exist. Just about everybody was poor, with the exception of a very small minority of rulers and large landowners." He realizes the transformational powers of the industrial revolution. "The onset of the Industrial Revolution", he asserts "supported by a rise in agricultural productivity, unleashed an explosive period of modern economic growth". He further noted that, buoyed by such a djinni of productive forces at its fullest blast ever in human history, population soared higher but "the world’s average per-capita income rose even faster, increasing around nine fold between 1820 and 2000".
The statistics speak for themselves. Half of the world’s population lives in poverty with over 1.1 billion people living on less than one US dollar a day. Twenty four thousand people die every day, from hunger. While the gaps between and within countries keep getting wider across the globe, the situation in sub-Saharan Africa is most pathetic. It is the only region in the world where the population and the ratio of the population living in object poverty has increased from 1987 to date.
This obvious reality of social crises in the face of massive development of resources for human progress, not to talk of rising popular resistance to this debilitating situation, led the governments of the various nation-states to the ratification of the covenant known as the Millennium Development Goals in September 2000 at New York. A steady commitment of barely 0.7% of the gross national income of the advanced capitalist countries over the first fifteen years of the 21st century, it was believed, would pull out the immense majority of the human race from poverty. Thus far, less than 0.09% of the 0.7% promise has been fulfilled annually while stupendous amounts in capital flight are milked from these same countries.
In this section of the paper, we shall start with an attempt at locating the characteristics of globalisation as post-modernisation in the process of production. From this we shall take a critical look within the limits of brevity on the internationalization of solidarity and alternatives to the Empire’s globalism as globalization, and the limitations of these.
A succinct analysis of "post-modernisation or the "informatisation of production" can be gleaned from the Marxist-autonomists; Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their Empire, first published in 2000. They take as their point of departure, the common view of "the succession of economic Paradigms since the middle Ages in three distinct moments, each defined by the dominant sector of the economy". The first paradigm rests on the primary production of an agrarian society "and the extraction of raw materials". Economic modernization they asserted involves the movement of society to that where the secondary or industrial sector is dominant. Thus modernization equals industrialization. Post-modernisation which is the dialectic of the transformation to what some call the "information age" or "information society" leads to services i.e. the tertiary sector becoming dominant.
While not losing sight of the fact that "the most obvious definition and index of the shifts among these three paradigms appear first in quantitative terms" they are quick to point out that "quantitative indicators cannot grasp either the qualitative transformation in the progression from one paradigm to another or the hierarchy among the economic sectors in the context of each paradigm"
A more extensive appraisal of the thesis of Hardt and Negri will be differed to some other time. Some critical aspects for our argument here and now will however be adduced.
With the informatisation of production, labour becomes increasingly defined as immaterial labour, freeing the reproductive essence of humans (the disciplines of cybernetics, and robotics for example, are inklings of the scientificity of what is seen as utopian in Marxism). Labour power in general hitherto could be conceived of only as: abstract labour which can be concretised only within heterogeneous labour processes, becomes homogenized on one hand and affective on the other, in both of which result in and can be the effect only of endogenous cooperative interactivity. In simple terms "cooperation is completely immanent to the labouring activity itself" providing "the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism". In considering spontaneity in this sense not in a voluntarist manner, a major consequence of this thesis which to a great extent grasps the crux and rhythm of the present state of human development is its tearing asunder of the Fukuyamist resort to Hegel in justifying, liberal democracy as humanity’s last bus stop.
Globalisation is the greatest validation of the Marxian thesis of communism’s evolution in the womb of capitalism.
I would further want to relate what I consider the three waves of capitalistic globalization of the bourgeois moment on the transformatory and transforming arena of human history.
The triangular globalization of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a critical moment of mercantilist (pre) capitalism necessary for primitive accumulation without which Europe’s modernisation, the industrial revolution, might not have been possible. The second phase of capitalistic globalization, can be grasped as colonialisationist globalization, which was the launch pad of capitalism to its highest level; imperialism. The present globalization or the Empire globalism at its peak with the informatisation of production reflects the utter senselessness of capitalist appropriation of the ever more socialized human reality, to discerning eyes.
We can now look into the concept of "internationalism" in the struggle against capital and its most recent manifestation as what as come to be known as the "anti-globalisation movement" ignited eight years and two months ago in Seattle
The term "internationalism" was first used in the political lexicon of the working class in the 1850s. On September 28, 1864 leaders of the labour movement from Britain and other countries on the continent of Europe came together in London to form the International Working Men’s Association, otherwise known subsequently as the First International. After its first Congress which held two years later in Geneva "internationalist became a label for its members". A key point to note here is that the First International represented leaders from within the different strands of the labour movement. As Toyo (2006) simply put it; "the term "labour movement is used to cover both the trade union movement and the socialist movement taken together as the movement of the working people" (21). As we all know the First International sank into oblivion shortly after the 1871 Paris Commune largely due to intrigues between the Marxists (Communists) and Bakunin’s group of Anarchists which saw to its secretariat’s relocation to the Siberia of America.
The Second International was established on July 14, 1889, the Centenary of the fall of the Bastille (22). Like the First International, trade unionists and leaders of socialist parties many of which were then mass parties guided by Marxist ideas were gathered together under the banner of workers’ internationalism. The year 1889 however also marked the internationalization of trade unionism, changing the form in a sense of what "internationalism" had been from the First International. This was with the formation of the first of what today are called Global Union Federations (23) By 1903 the trade unions took a further step with the formation of the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres in Dublin, Ireland. This purely European International became the International Federation of Trade Unions in 1913 after it was joined by the American Federation of Labour (AFL). The IFTU and "the international industry federations" were (just like the second international), "blown apart by the nationalism of the First World War" in the words of Aidan White (24). Probably the greatest opportunities for a communistic workers, international today was lost fifty nine years ago by the monstrosity of Stalinist bureaucratism of the Third International (in its age of decay). Rather than reconstitute the IFTU, trade unions across the east and west of the divide of what in March 1946 Winston Churchill would come to describe as the Iron Curtain" had in 1945 come together to form the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). The overbearing influence of the Kremlin especially in seeking an integration of the international industry federations into the WFTU was to lead to the disaffiliation of national trade union federations of countries in the west, starting with the Dutch FNV. That same year, they formed the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). ICFTU merged with the smaller World Confederation of Labour, in November 2006 to form the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
A very powerful demonstration of worker’s internationalism in the 20th century was the rally of over 60,000 Volunteers from 55 countries to the revolutionary call – NO PASARAN! (they shall not pass) in defence of the Spanish Revolution. International battalions and brigades of worker-activists, anarchists, socialists and syndicalists; stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Spanish comrades, in the face of the fascist guns of Franco.
When the dust of civil war in Spain would settle in October 1938, about 10,000 volunteers had fallen to rise no more.
"Internationalism" of both the socialist and the trade union components of the labour movement started its process of becoming global especially with regards to the Third World (particularly Africa) after the second world war (the SACP, then CPSA was before WWII, the only communist party in Africa for example, while none of the international trade secretariats, WFTU or ICFTU had any affiliate in Africa until the 1950s) Globalisation now foists a global agenda on workers’ internationalist.
The overarching perspective of the international trade union movement rests on social democratic principles of a better world, a fairer system but not necessarily an overthrowing of the present social – economic formation and the building of a communistic one. White captured it when he averred that: "unions recognized the need to create social and political institutions driven not by doctrinaire free-market ideologies or by dictatorial collectivism, but by a willingness to shape a society responsive to the freely expressed will of working people". This is not surprising, as Lenin noted: "the spontaneous development of the working class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology…for the spontaneous working class is trade unionism". And we might add on one hand that this situation develops from the Marxian assertion of the dominant ideology in any epoch being that of the ruling class and on the other hand; Stalinist totalitarianism did an excellent job for the bourgeoisie by painting the only (then) existing alternative to bourgeois "democracy" as the most repulsive and detestable "dictatorial collectivism" = socialism formula! How then has workers’ trade unionist internationalism been "combating the fangs of international finance capital"? Radically we could say, but not necessarily revolutionary. Social dialogue and the quest for expanding industrial and political democracy with the paradigm of capitalist development have been at the core of its strategy.
Deputations, demonstrations, representations, and quite importantly; Global Framework Agreements, have been the instruments for realizing its strategy.
The international trade union movement is however re-awakening to its self-discovery with the dynamics of the "anti-globalisation movement", within which it is playing greater roles and the realities of "globalization" in general.
Before looking at the anti-globalisation movement" we may look at the other side of the coin we of what we might call "workers’ internationalism" in the broad sense of the world; the international socialist movement, in the past century.
The first issue here might be a sense of definition of "the socialist movement" to come to grasp with its internationalism.
Trotsky using the pseudonym Balashoz in 1919 declared that "official social democracy, which had been built under the sign of social revolution, had turned into the most counter-revolutionary force in Europe and the whole world" (25). The then "official social-democracy" of the revisionist Bernstein and the renegade Kautsky, placed side-by-side with the "third way" "neo-progressivism" of Blair, Giddens, Kay and Schroeder which is the "official social-democracy" of the era of globalization however, almost seems revolutionary!. Be that as if may, we are inclined to believe with Iyayi (2003) that "history also confirms – (that there are) two major lines in the socialist movement" (26). He goes on to identify this as "(1) Social democracy and (ii) Marxism – Leninism" (27)
"Official social democracy" or the second international, re-organised itself after WWII in the early 1920s as the "Socialist International." Social democrats have constituted governments in virtually all of Western Europe (and parts of Latin America) at some time or the other since then. They have also been (and in Germany, presently are) in coalition governments with the liberal (and even conservative) bourgeoisie demonstrating the utter absence of any real difference between them. They lay claim today, to being the "Third Way", while in reality they are a mere rivulet of the stank and stinking river of bourgeoidom.
The importance, if so it could be put of "official social democracy" to the internationalism we are talking about here lies in; (i) its influence on trade union internationalism and (ii) its youth movement organized globally as the International Union of Socialist Youths (IUSY). These two flanks of social democracy are the left of social democracy and have been very active playing to some extent or the other, radical roles in the broader anti-globalisation movement, raising critical questions which in themselves could still be considered as within the rubric of social democratic perspectives but which might lead elements within these flanks from the pursuit of reforms to the quest for social transformation.
The Marxist line might be said organizationally speaking, at the very least to be more problematic.
A plethora of "Internationals" exist representing global (to some extent or the other) tendencies of Marxism and "Marxisms" with sections most of which are mere sects in a few countries (hardly any exists in up to one-third of the countries in the world). These include organizational structures like the loose International Communist Seminar group of the ex-Kremlin line, the various "Fourth Internationals" and other Trotskyite internationals such as the International Marxist Tendency and the Committee for a Workers International and the unstructured Cliffist International Socialist Tendency of the SWP-line.
These different "Internationals" and their "sections" have been very active in the globalization of solidarity and resistance against capital. They have also placed socialistic platforms before the anti-war movement and the broader anti-globalisation movement.
The most active internationals and indeed socialist (in a Marxian sense) groups within most nations in the present world are Trotskyite, the largest of these being that of the unified secretariat of the Fourth International, followed by the IST and then the CWI. The IMT best realizes from concrete analysis of concrete reality, the necessity for communists’ work within the traditional organizations and parties of the working class.
The extent of influence wielded by Marxist forces internationally is partly limited by its multifarious platforms at times internecine and acrimonious conflicts. Not that unity without principles would under any guise be welcome but "unity at some level or the other on the basis of a minimum international programme for socialism of the contending internationals" (28) within the broader anti-globalisation movement would engender the building of workers hegemony within the heterogeneous anti-capitalist waves of the movement.
In passing, at least for now, it must be pointed out that one socialistic "line" that has been very influential in the anti-globalisation movement, has been the Anarchists. The Direct Action Network (DAN), which was the Seattle movement’s version of "Campaign for Democracy" was organized by anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists (29).
To understand what happened or better still started in a sense in Seattle, is critical to understanding the new internationalism which is "combating the new fangs of international finance capital"! The movement of Finance Capital between countries had traditionally been within the framework of Bilateral Investment Treaties, the restructuring of world capital for its expansion – at the heart of the present, neo-liberalist globalization – necessitated the restructuring of the framework of investment relations between countries. Between 1995 and 1998, the 29 OECD countries held discussions shrouded in secrecy towards fashioning out a "Multilateral Agreement on Investments." When copies of the Agreement’s draft were gotten by activists and circulated on the internet, the clouds of resistance started gathering against finance capital. The threat of its downpour in mass action played a crucial role in the exit of, first France, from the discussions and its subsequent storm at Seattle.
The advanced capitalist countries still tried to re-package and integrate the proposed MAI into "globalization" as MIA (Multilateral Investments Agreement) at its WTO ministerial summit in Cancun. This attempt likewise collapsed like a park of cards
Back to Seattle however, the mass action started on November 30 with the AFL-CIO actively involved and the anarchists’ nucleus that was to be DAN. Over 50,000 persons participated in the mass demonstrations that swamped the city and Paul Scheil; the city’s mayor had to impose a curfew and "no protest zone" of some blocks from the Washington Trade and Convention Centre where the WTO summit was holding. 157 persons arrested outside the no-protest zone were paid $250,000.00 on 16th of January 2004 by the city as compensation while on 30th January, 2007 the bourgeois courts ruled that the city of Seattle violated the protesters constitutional rights by arresting without what it considered "hard evidence".
Since Seattle, every major gathering of international finance capital’s governmentally representative structures (IMF, World Bank, G8 – and especially the embryonic bourgeois world government; the WTO) has been met with street protests. The World Social Forum now sees itself as the movement of these movements. The Italian Marxist journal Falce Martello in its 19th June 2001 editorial noted that: "the Seattle movement, despite its heterogeneity is based on a deeply felt conviction: the current system is not compatible with the needs and development of humankind….this is a fundamental starting point, but we cannot stop there." The anti-globalisation movement inscribes the possibility of a new world on its banner but "what does a "different world" consist of?"
The likes of Marco Rovelli have declared that "we must first of all build an alternative to the 20th century – style model summed up in the factory – party – state axis, we must identify the places, the spaces and the means by which to organize non-identification with the capitalist model?" For this representative sociologist of the present dominant trend (dominant exactly because of its fuzziness, which best expresses the movement’s need for self-clarification) and this present level of the alternative globalization movement, the issue is not socialism but anti-capitalism, the arena of struggle is not the work place, but the "third sector," the emancipation of society from its inhumanity in an age of abundance was not to be the task of workers’ power but rather that of "counter power".
We will have to sum up this section at this point in time by simply flagging off other issues to address such as "fractures in globalization" (to use Steve Faulkner’s words) such as the Bolivarian revolution and the autonomia movement in Latin America (and parts of Europe, such as Italy) and such alternatives as that of ANSA in South Africa. These are all part of what broadly speaking is the "new internationalism". The extent of "new-ness" of the new social movements would as well be considered as would the place of identity politics and alliance politics in the dynamics of the new internationalism of the anti-globalisation movement
Suffice it to say at this juncture that the world is at a threshold. Joseph Stiglitz in grasping the globalism of Empire behind the present construct of globalization noted that: "countries find themselves in situations where they are having policies imposed on them. It is not unlike the nineteenth century opium war when countries were told to open up their markets and this threat was backed up by military force".
The corporatocracy of the bourgeois governing global capital (well captured by Tony Blair on a $1m salary with the American J. P. Morgan Chase Bank after asserting that "globalization is irreversible and irresistible") is only one end of the pole. At the other end are forces arrayed in the battle formation for social transformation. The movement in the process of its engagement with international finance capital and within this process the engagement of Marxist forces with other progressive forces will transform itself through its self-discovery in theory and praxis within the 21st century working class



CONCLUSION
"Social changes, social revolutions occur only as a result of the struggle of the people for social progress. The more profound and comprehensive peoples knowledge of the laws of social development, the higher the state of awareness, unity and organization of the mass of the people, the more successful the struggle for social charge

- E. Kolawole Ogundowole
Echoes of Social Change
At the core of the struggle against finance capital and its present globalization are issues of "social change and the question of the correlation of reform and revolution" as Ogundowole would couch it (32). While questions of both strategy and tactics exist (not to talk of principles and perspectives, considering the heterogeneity of the "new internationalism") are in contention, it could be arguably stated that the internal dynamics of the "new internationalism" or the globalization of alternatives for a better world is that of contention between those that see a different world emerging from reforming the present paradigm and those who want to smash it and "build a new world on the ashes of the old".
For some it is impossible to overthrow capitalism. The small mindedness of this could be revealed "by way of comparison" as Eskor Toyo did of feudalism and capitalism showing how decay and break-away of and from a social-economic system and its final destruction could be separated by centuries (33). A "globalised system such as capitalism" can however not take so long or for argumentative purposes (which become of less value as globalization is consolidated) could at worst result in the "centuries of deformed workers’ states" of Michel (Raptis) Pablo’s thesis.


For others the alternative to market forces is "dictatorial collectivism". They thus only detest "market fundamentalism" and not the logic of the capitalist market system in itself. This is however quite far from the truth. As Grant and Woods (1998) put it "socialism is democratic or it is nothing".
For still some would-be socialists, the so-called "invisible hand" of the market is best suited for ensuring economic efficiency. Tied to the collapse of soviet economics however, was the stifling of democracy. As Roy Medvedev a socialist within Stalinist Russia observed in 1972. "Real political and cultural democracy would also encourage the development of economics as a science and thus would have a very beneficial effect on the Soviet economy". Such commonsense was however nonsense to the apparatchiki of Soviet diktat until it was too late for both Glasnost and Perestroika, to save both the bureaucracy and the collectivized (socialistic?) system, less than two decades later.
The Nigerian left has a lot of questions to ask itself. Why did the efforts at forging the NSA in 2003 fritter away? What is happening to ANSA? What is the state of the various groups? What relations exist between the socialist left and socialist-oriented parties on one hand and between the socialist left and the working people on the other? Why is the revolutionary left only at the margins in the Labour Party, how do we or rather, how can we make the revolution? What is the revolution?
On a final note, I cannot but to some extent agree with Marighella (1969) that "….under any theory and under any circumstances, the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution". How does our generation out of the relative obscurity of pre-globalization discover the "revolutionary – critical dialectic" in our Marxism and fulfill our mission of global socialist revolution in the twenty first century?
For those who consider Marxism as past its prime or seek a new theory of social change, the food for thought we leave them with is this: the BBC News polls guided by two unambiguously bourgeois intellectuals (Roger Scruton and Edward Boro) to determine the Greatest thinker of the last millennium could not but conclude that it was none but Karl Marx. Such eminent scholars as Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Aquinas, Hawking, Kant, Descartes, Maxwell and Nietzsche came behind him because he thought out the poetry of humanity’s future from the plain prose of its past and the cruel drama of its present, which he witnessed.
Notes
(1) Lichteim, G: (1969) A short History of socialism Fonta Books
(2) Cosatu/Sacp (1999): Building socialism Now: preparing for the new millennium
Cosatu & SACP
(3) I had less than a week notice to prepare this essay for the January 25-27, 2008 National Conference of the Socialist Workers’ Movement (Mayist) based on discussions with comrade Bakhout.(The meeting was subsequently shifted by a week and I had to develop the section on Contemporary Society… based on further discussions hinged on furthering understanding on "the fangs of International Finance Capital…this was done on25-27, January, to allow for typing, e.t.c) This is why the essay’s sub-title is "A Preliminary Outline". It is hoped that a more detailed analysis based on deeps self-clarification and time to think out and write these views would result in "A critical appraisal of the problems and prospects for socialism in the 21st century, in the next few months.
(4) Howard D (1977): The Marxian Legacy
The Macmillan Press Ltd.
(5) Giddens A (2003); The Progressive Manifesto Policy Network, Giddens, A ed
(6) Kolakonski (kolawosk, L. & Hampshire, eds) Guartet Books
(7) Engels F (1890) "some problems of the relationship between "base" and "superstructure in Harry Goulbourne (ed) (1979) Politics and the state in the World pp5-10, The Macmillan Press Ltd
(8) Fukuyama I. (1992): The End of History and the Last man, Pengum Books’
(9) UNDP (2007): Beyond Security; power, poverty…Human Development Report (2006)
(10) Adams Smith (1776): The Wealth of Nations
(11) Clarke, S (1988): Keynesianism, Monetarism and the crisis of the state aldershot: Edward Elger
(12) Lewn: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of capitalism Progress Publishers, Moscow, Seventeeth printing 1978
(13) In an earlier essay (‘working class perspectives on Globalisation and public services reforms, 2005) we had argued that "globalization is the highest stage of imperialism. It would however be much more apt to consider it as a climax phase, a moment within the totality of capitalism at its imperialistic stage)
Nb: the type-out was ravaged by a computer virus and I had to battle to reclaim it! References 14-34 suffered most- from time, which there is very little of now, to meet the deadline-. This shall however be addressed in the subsequent return to the paper after the Conference. This however would not be as immediate as would have been necessary due to some more practical work within the working class.