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Volume 3, Number 1, 1997
David A. Smith and Jozsef Borocz, eds. Reviewed by Alvin Y. So
Titled "A New World Order?" the aim of this volume is to debunk the conservative interpretations of the contemporary global situation. The chapters of this volume were selected from conference papers presented at the April 1994 Political Economy of the World-System annual conference held at Irvine, California. They address many of the most pressing issues raised by the global transformations of the late twentieth century. The chapters are divided into three main themes: (1) the nature of the structural transformation in the contemporary period; (2) the regional ramifications of global transformations in the Middle East, the European Community, and Asia-Pacific; and (3) peoples' responses to global transformations. [Page 236] First, how is the worldwide process of global restructuring best conceptualized? Is the world-economy undergoing a fundamental change? Robert J.S. Ross's chapter argues that a new, qualitatively different variant of capitalism has emerged in the last quarter of this century. Different from the "monopoly capitalism" in the early and the mid-twentieth century, the distinguishing feature of "global capitalism" in the late twentieth century is the global mobility of capital. Globalization becomes the major lever by which capital extracts surplus from labor and gains favorable policies from states throughout the world. The emergence of global capitalism shifts the balance of class forces toward capital, leading to the decline of the bargaining power of labor unions and the relative autonomy of the state. Like Robert Ross, Philip McMichael also argues that the world is on the threshold of a major transition in the political regulation of economic activity: from a primarily national to a primarily global form of regulation. Recent episodes of global restructuring undermine national forms of political-economic organization. In the wake of the debt crises of the 1970s and under the pressure of multilateral agencies, global firms, and global and regional free trade agreements (FTAs), a new kind of colonialism emerged under which transnational forces have increasingly subsumed the powers of nation-states to police labor and enforce market discipline. The paradigmatic cases are the imposition of "structural adjustment" in Africa and Latin America, where agencies like the World Bank and the IMF dictated policy changes that seriously eroded the prerogatives of sovereign states. Ross and McMichael have contributed by showing that in the late twentieth century transnational forces gain much leverage while workers and state lose it. Still, as Jozsef Borocz and David A. Smith have remarked in the Introduction of the volume, researchers may wonder whether "global capital mobility" or corporate "colonization" of states are entirely new phenomena, although the forms they take may be. [Page 237] Second, what are the regional ramifications of the global transformations in the late twentieth century? How are they related to simultaneous changes in states and geopolitics? In the Middle East, the end of the Cold War was quickly followed by the Gulf War. Cynthia Siemsen Maki and Walter L. Goldfrank deploy the concepts of hegemonic cycles and semiperipheral mobility to explore some of the causes and consequences of the Gulf War. Their chapter points to the ambiguous, tenuous nature of U.S. hegemonic decline, Iraqi semiperipheral mobility, as well as the demise of the stabilizing Soviet counterbalance in the Middle East as critical triggers to war. The oil-based "rentier state" in Iraq provided Saddam Hussein with the political maneuverability to attempt military conquest as a means of ascent, but led to disastrous consequences. In Europe, the European Union (EU) since the 1980s has promoted a hegemonic project to compete with the U.S. and Japan for global domination. However, Denis O'Hearn's chapter shows that the EU's central aim of increasing the competitiveness of the largest and most technologically advanced firms, sectors, and regions threatens to exacerbate uneven development among its regions. The EU's hegemonic project, in particular, is pushing the countries of "the European periphery" (Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland) toward continued economic marginality, poverty, and unemployment. While the hegemonic project has intensified regional peripheralization in the EU, Richard C. Hill and Kuniko Fujita's chapter argues that the Japanese project has led to a pattern of "flying geese" in East Asia. In this framework, the technologically advanced nation of Japan is the head goose which leads the way with continuous industrial upgrading and new product development, while the East Asian NIEs and Southeast Asian states follow along as recipients of industries that are no longer profitable in Japan itself. Subsequently, Japanese foreign investment complements and strengthens the comparative advantage in investing and receiving countries alike. [Page 238] This benign view of Japanese investment is implicitly challenged in Frederic Deyo's study of state and labor in Thailand's industrial restructuring. In the Thai context, the Japanese/East Asian investments and neoliberal reforms have not led to industrial upgrading of the enterprises. Instead, they have encouraged a "market-despotic" labor regime to develop, increasing hardships on labor, and undercutting the capacity of organized labor to contest new managerial strategies. In addition, Stephen Bunker and Paul S. Ciccantell explain Japan's bid for hegemony, not by the flying geese framework, but by the critical role of transport and raw materials supply. Thus, Japanese economic success owes much to Japan's ability to secure a stable supply of raw materials via Japanese shipping and shipbuilding which made possible the development of both the Japanese steel industry and a diversified industrial economy based on low-cost-imported raw materials. The final theme of the volume centers on people's responses to global transformation. Have "anti-systemic" forces risen up to counter the restructuring processes? What is the prospect that new social movements can resist and transform the capitalist world-economy? There are several chapters on ethnic mobilization and labor, urban struggles, and environmental movements. Timothy J. Scrase maintains that the "culturalist" approach to globalization has encouraged the commodification of the causes of indigenous people (via the selling of "native" products) and obfuscates the political-economic underpinnings of "new social movements." For instance, many Indian insurgent groups that seem to be based on religious fervor or ethnic chauvinism are responding to material deprivation and inequities generated by capitalist restructuring. In her ethnographic study of Indian leather workers, Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase examines how the transnationalization of the footwear industry had destroyed the livelihoods of traditional artisans, leading to the emergence of fundamentalist ideologies and the reinforcement of gender hierarchies. In the chapter on Zurich, Switzerland, Stefan Kipfer traces the urban struggles between a corporate "growth coalition" (that pushed for development and internationalization of the central business district) and popular forces (that wanted to preserve neighborhoods). In the chapter on global ecological movements, Sing Chew shows how environmental degradation during the course of capital accumulation consistently engenders social movements across the globe that resist the destruction of nature. Subsequently, Chew argues that ecological movements have the potential to be transnational and transformative. [Page 239] In the last chapter, Andre C. Drainville traces the transformation of "left internationalism" from the "socialists, Marxists, and anarchists" in the nineteenth century to various "international solidarity" movements of the present. These contemporary "Left international" movements are based on a variety of issues that connect concerns about global capitalism with struggles for labor rights, gender equality, environmental protection, racial/ethnic equality, and so forth. The "Left international" movements are united, not by shared allegiances to political programs and ideologies, but by a shared experience of marginality during the present global restructuring. These movements are radical because they reveal the increasing social fragility of the new world order and because they attempt to gain social control over production in the particular setting of the world-economy where it is most fragile. My only complaint about this volume is that it has not included one or more chapters on the downfall of Soviet communism, the transformation in East Europe, or the transition from state socialism to capitalism. Other than that, I enjoyed reading this excellent volume. It is highly informative and full of insightful analysis. Thus, this volume is indispensable for any researcher who would like to know more the nature and ramifications of the global transformations in the late twentieth century. In addition, since the chapters are so well-written, this volume could be used as a text in upper-level courses on development, political economy, and world history as well. [Page 240] |
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