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Volume 2, Number 2-h, 1996AGENCY AND ENLIGHTENMENT Comment on W. Warren Wagar's "Toward a Praxis of World Integration" Robert J.S. Ross Department of Sociology Clark University Worcester, MA 01610 USA rross@vax.clarku.edu Copyright 1996 by Robert J.S. Ross. v. 6/10/96 However rare, a call to the secular and universal values of the Enlightenment is a special pleasure in an era of fractional identities where the dominant intellectual process is one which poses a "victim Olympics" as the highest form of analysis. That said, Wagar's assertion of the desirability of a "democratic, liberal, and socialist world commonwealth" would, should it actually become someone's praxis, require an historic agent. Wagar leaves this in a voluntarist mode: people should become self-consciously internationalist and form, as metaphorically and not so metaphorically limned in his provocative novel, a "world party." I have two observations about this hearty call to world citizenship. [Page 1]
First, as a sociologist and one influenced by Marx I am inclined to wonder, about any such phenomenon as a party, as to its class base -- or, at any rate, the interests men and women would see satisfied by the program of such a party. As I see it from the vantage point of North America, there are (at least) two distinct and conflicting sets of interests in a world party. There is an internationalist or global fraction of the capitalist class whose program is now being widely implemented in the form of trade liberalization and financial integration on a world scale. This fraction of capital, now dominant, has a number of specialized organs -- the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization -- which it influences or controls through its domination of the international economic policies of national governments, and through the control of central banks. This fraction of capital -- or its leadership -- has close to the prerequisites of a party: common interest, recognition of those interests, informal and formal means of communication, and key institutions whose behavior naturally attracts a politics of influence. There are barriers to the formation of an explicit world party by capitalist class interests. First, they do not need a party as long they can control relevant institutions. Second, given that control, this formation's interest is most decidedly not in a centralized government, for regional variation in policy allows capital to set geographically diverse political jurisdictions in a "race to the bottom" competition for low cost production and low social overhead costs. Third, to the extent that the biggest fractions of globally mobile capital are headquartered in jurisdictions which are nominally democratic, an explicit party would make its leaders and their interests terribly vulnerable to populist and demagogic attacks. Taken together, these considerations indicate the following hypothesis about the formation of a market oriented world party: Proposition I: [Page 2]
It will not be formed until some political obstacle forces the global
fraction of capital to unite in ways that cannot be accomplished
informally or through the meeting ground of existing international institutions.
Corollary I.1:
A capitalist or market oriented world party would be induced by the
formation of a socialist or working class oriented party.
Corollary I.2:
There already is a functioning network of communication and
institutional politics which de facto fills the functions of party. Like
other elite formations (as distinct from mass or popular formations) it
functions quietly, without formal mechanism, and as much as possible
outside of the glare of publicity. This is a model of the global
capitalist party as having a process like Tory leadership selection: it
takes place in clubs and on golf courses and is never there until you need
it.
Of course a socialist world party would be in the imputed interest of a
working class. Alas of all the classes and strata of capitalism the
working classes in both the older industrial regions and the new ones are
the least internationalist in their orientation, and the most vulnerable
to division based on ascriptive identities -- race, ethnicity, religion,
etc. Overcoming subjective divisions and parochial privileges will be a
necessary step in the formation of a consciousness which would permit an
activist internationalist politics.
What is missing from Wagar's view is a step-by-step envisioning of the
process by which concrete humans recognize their problems, develop the
cultural and political tools and concepts to solve them, and build the
networks of relationships which are the basis of common political action.
Now, I do not know if this will take place. But if it does, it will require
actors and agency. In the past capitalism has built it own opposition,
and I suppose it will do so again.
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The era of consolidation of the big enterprises, monopoly capitalism, brought forth industrial unionism and the multiplant multilocation national bargaining umbrella. In the future, global capital will call forth, I propose, global labor. And global labor will finally create its own political vehicle to prosecute its political program in many national arenas. Thus, my contribution to the discussion provocatively begun by Wagar is to propose that to speak of a world party in opposition to global capitalism one must look for its basis: globally self conscious and organized labor. There is of course some reason to believe that the coming era will see broadening recognition of the interdependence of workers on a global scale and the interpenetration of their interests. Indeed, one hypothesis about the most likely bases of working class cooperation in the coming years is that union international cooperation will develop from a base of same industry same region (i.e., older industrial regions, transportation workers) outward in diversity of industrial type and variation in levels of social reproduction. (Ross, 1995a, 1995b). Such cooperation would be the logical and necessary response to the material weakness presently confronting labor and labor unions. I have begun collecting, anecdotally, examples of this. In the political realm, the seeds of such consciousness are the "labor rights" approach to trade politics: trading partners should be required to extend rights to organize and fundamental protections (e.g., against child labor) to all who seek entry to a given market. This is clearly a stance which can be taken most effectively by big market workers as an aid to themselves and to their fellows in smaller countries. The logic of this position calls forth the following partial list of propositions. See Ross (1995b) for a longer and more detailed discussion). Proposition II: [Page 4]
The most likely direct organizing and political cooperation among
laborers and their unions will be within trading blocs as unions of higher
paid/benefit workers have an interest in the improvement of conditions of
their peers across borders.
Corollary II.1
The easiest relations are among workers where the gap in living
conditions is measurable, thus threatening those with a higher standard of
living, and giving incentive for cooperation with those lower. But the
gap must be small enough so that there are actually things to discuss.
Common understanding of organizing, common understanding of legal rights,
enough convergence in social structure so that demands to level up are
conceivable. Thus, European works councils, common campaigns in relation
to North American employers or Transatlantic firms, or MNCs operating
between Western and Central Europe. All of these offer concrete incentive
for cooperation and the possibility of culturally coherent communication.
Corollary II.2
Given the above, then workers with common employers are more likely
to cooperate than others. Given liberalized trade, the next level of
cooperation is workers with common employers, i.e. conglomerates or multi-
location firms across larger expanses of geography and culture.
Corollary II.3
Industries with stronger unions and traditions of organization will
probably face global action before others. One's impression, for example,
is that there is more of a history of cooperation in the automobile/metal
workers confederation on a worldwide basis than many other unions, and the
same may be true, despite its many difficulties, among garment and/or
textile unions. This is a matter of empirical research.
Each of these hypotheses can be the subject of empirical work. The
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results will tell us where international labor cooperation has its growth
nodes. These are the historically justified grounds upon which to look
for the growth nodes of a world politics built on a universalist vision.
While I believe the process will be long, I close with a final proposition
about the limiting condition of that duration: when all the world's labor
has been drawn into a single pool, when the last peasant has come to the
city or been made a wage laborer, when there is no longer a reserve of
semi-starved subsistence agriculturalists to form a new reserve army of
labor, then will solidarity cease to be a sentiment and common action will
be the common fate of the world's workers.
Ross, Robert J.S. 1995a: "Global Capitalism and Labor at the End of
History." Socialism and Democracy. (9)2 (Winter 1995-96): 1-23.
Ross, Robert J.S. 1995b: "Global Capital, Global Unions: Speculations
on the Future of Global Unionism." In Die Geburt der Weltwirtschaft,
edited by Karl. S. Althaler & Hardy Hanappi. Vienna: Sonderzahl
Verlagsges.
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